of God who made use of sin to destroy sin as saith the Apostle of the Gentiles De peccato damnavit peccatum and changing his death into a sacrifice made it a satisfaction for all our iniquities For if Baptism make us die to sin it is upon no other ground but because it imprints in our souls the merit and image of the death of Christ and by an invisible but a true and real grace works in us a desire to part with all that is derived from Adam This makes the * Infelix ego homo quis me liberabit de corpore mortis hujus Rom. 7. Saints that they cannot endure the rebellions of concupiscence that they employ all their strength to smother these embryo's that being true to Grace they resist all the motions of its Enemy groaning when they are compelled to follow or suffer his disorders They know that Christ died to oblige them to die to sin that he was not nail'd to the Cross but to crucifie them to the world nor buried in the grave but that the earth might be their sepulchre All that is in the world Crucifixus est Christus ut vos crucifigamini mundo mortuus est ut vos moriamini peccato saeculo vivatis Deo sepultus est ut vos consepeliamini illi per baptismum Apostolo dicente Consepulti sumus c. ut sicut ille semel surgens à mortuis jam non moritur ita vos vetustate mortalitatis per Baptismum mortificati vitale indumentum induti non iterum per peccata in anima in morte retrahamiâ—i Aug. de Expos Orat. Dom. Symbol Serm. 3. displeaseth them diversions are their torments that which is a recreation to sinners afflicts them and knowing very well the minde of the Lord Jesus they endeavour to fulfil it even with the loss of their own lives Saint Augustine entertained the Catechumeni heretofore with these obligations and expounding to them the doctrine of the Gospel taught them that Baptism engaged them in death Jesus Christ said he was crucified that you might be so to the world he suffered death that you might die to sin he was buried that you might be together with him and having put off the old man Adam and being cloathed with the new man Jesus Christ you may die no more in your souls by sin All the other Fathers speak the same language teaching us that there is a death and a life hid in Baptism producing real effects in our souls Thence ariseth the inclination all Christians have to die and to live thence proceed those obstinate conflicts they entertain self-self-love with thence spring those violent desires to be separated from the world and the flesh that they may be no longer subject to their tyranny But because this Mystery very much concerns our salvation it deserves a more ample explication from us that we may disclose the truths and obligations that lie wrapt up in it The Son of God is willing that as his death is the Principle so it should be the Rule and Example of our salvation as he died to deliver us he would have us die to honour him and as he entered not into glory but by the door of the Cross neither must we pass to the resurrection but by the gate of the Grave He died saith the great Apostle that by his death he might ruine the Empire of sin He died that losing all the imperfections he drew from Adam he might rise again to life everlasting He died that satisfying his Father we might be no longer responsible to his Justice All these considerations oblige us to die in Baptism Pro omnibus mortuus est ut qui vivunt jam non sibi vivant sed ei qui pro ipsis mortuus est debet ergo vita hominis in se deficere in Christo proficere ut dicat cum Apostolo Vivo ego jam non ego Aug. Serm. de Epiphan if we intend to be the images of Jesus Christ we must destroy sin by death that dying we may be born again and making a sacrifice of our death we may be changed into spotless Victims But as the Son of God was not content onely to die but was willing to joyn the ignominy of the grave to the bitterness of his death Sicut Christus sepultus fuit in terra sic baptizatus mergitur in aqua Nicol. de Lyra. because there was a second punishment of sin comprised in those words of our Arrest Dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return he will have our death followed with a funeral and that the same Sacrament that makes us die bury us together with him Consepulti sumus cum Christo. Burial addes to the dead corpse two or three notable conditions The first is Coemeteria extra urbes utnullum esset viveniuÌ„ cum mort uis mmercium that he that is buried is separated from the company of the living that he remains in the regions of death and hath no more commerce with the present world So the Christian is buried with the Son of God because he is removed from amongst wicked men neither doth the state of death into which he is entered suffer him to converse with them Quid est mori peccatâ— consepeliri cum Christo nisi damnandis operibus omnino non vivere nihil concupiscere carnaliter nihil ambire sicut qui mortuus est carne nulli detrahit nullum aversatur Prosp de vita contemp c. 21 He hath now no ears to hear calumnies no eyes to gaze upon the beauties of the earth no desires nor pretensions after the honours of the world and his death being attended with a funeral he protests aloud that he hath renounced all hopes of the things of the world The second condition of this state is the duration that goes along with it For though death be eternal in respect of the Creature nor can any but an Almighty power re-unite the soul with the body when once separated yet there seems to remain some faint hope as long as the body is not committed to the grave we watch it to see if that which appears a death be but a swoon or trance and there have been those that have died and rose again the same day without a miracle But when the body is laid in the sepulchre drooping Nature is then past all hope This dismal abode hath no intercourse with life 't is an everlasting habitation whence there is no return but by a prodigie Sepulchra eoruÌ„ domus illoruÌ„ in aeternuÌ„ jam quia constructa sunt sepulchra domus sunt sepulchra quia ibi semper crunt ideo domus in aeternum Aug. in Psal 48. 't is the place where worms serving for ministers of the Divine Justice discharge their fury upon men till being reduced to powder there remains nothing of these famous criminals Thus the Christians when baptized are as it were interred to
Nature For if Jesus be the Natural Son of the Father the Christian is his Adopted one if Jesus be the Heir of the Father the Christian is the Co-heir of the Son according to the expression of the great Apostle if Jesus be Innocent the Christian is Justified if Jesus be born of the Spirit the Christian is regenerated thereby and receives in his Baptism what the Son of God received in his Birth Inasmuch as this last wonderfully exalteth the glory of the Faithful I conceive I ought to bestow this whole Discourse upon this matter and to make it appear that the Holy Ghost by an excess of bounty will be to every Christian what he is to Jesus Christ Faith teacheth us that though Jesus Christ be the Son of the Everlasting Father yet is he withal the Workmanship of the Holy Spirit he that was barren in Eternity became fruitful in Time he that produced nothing in the Heart of the Father produced the Word Incarnate in the Womb of the Virgin and he that before the world began was the Spirit of the Son in the fulness of time became his Principle The Scripture insinuates this Truth when it brings in the Angel speaking these words to the Virgin The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee And the Church teacheth it all her children in the Symbole of her Creed in these terms He was conceived of the Holy Ghost Et licet aliud quidem ex te aliud ex Patre sit jam non tamen cujusque suus sed unus utriusque erit Filius Sanctus Bern. super missus est homil Thence it comes to pass that his conception is so pure that sin hath no part therein and that he is free from shame as the mother that bare him was from sorrow He was so born saith Tertullian that he need not blush at the name of Son This great priviledge is granted the Christian in his Baptism and his second birth is as holy and as noble as his first was shameful and criminal In the one he is a sinner before he is reasonable and the slave of the devil as soon as he is the subject of Jesus Christ but in the other he is happily born again by the vertue of the Holy Spirit he receives grace as an earnest of glory he is adopted by the Father for his son acknowledged by Jesus Christ for his brother treated by the Angels as their equal and exalted to so high a condition that the holy Spirit disdains not to be stiled the Author and Principle thereof This is it that holy Scripture holds out to us by these words Vnless a man be born again of water and of the holy Ghost I would enlarge my self upon this meditation had I not explained it already in another passage of this Work Neither would it be any hard matter to make it appear that the Regeneration of a Christian is little inferiour in this particular to the Birth of Jesus Christ The second advantage that is common to them is that the same spirit which is their Principle is also their Director and that he that gives them life gives them conduct and motion These two Things are inseparable in Nature and in Grace the same causes that make us live make us act these Starres whose influences contribute so much to our birth are not lesse conducing to our fortune and as they are the Principles of our Being they are in some sort the Guides of our life if they have no dominion over our spirit they have over our humour and if they force not our liberty they many times sollicite our inclinations But not to rest in second Causes it is plaine the creature depends as well upon God in his motion as in his Being he governs men whom he hath created he guides Princes whom he hath raised to the Throne and he as absolutely hath their wills in his hands as their Scepter By the same reason the Holy Spirit which is the Principle of Jesus Christ is his Director he undertakes nothing but by his conduct and as he received his being from his goodnesse he submits all his actions to his power The Scriptures furnish us with a thousand proofes of so important a Truth all the Evangelists are the faithfull Witnesses thereof neither doe they ever take notice of the designs of the Son of God Ductus est Jesus à Spiritu quia Humanitas Christi erat organum Divinitatis ideo ad omnia movebatur instinctu Spiritûs sancti hoc igitur motu ivit in desertum locum aptum or ationi Glossa ordin but they make it appeare at the same time that the Holy Spirit is the first mover of them For if he retire into the desarts to converse with beasts if he enter the list wherein he seemes to injure his glory to assure our salvation if he spend dayes and nights there in prayers and fasting if he suffer his slave to tempt him and if he refuse not to combate him upon Earth that he had driven out of Heaven 't is because the Holy Spirit engageth him in the conflict and layes an obligation upon him to beare the punishment of our sins to deliver us therefrom if he passe from one Province to another if he leave a rebellious City to instruct another more obedient to his divine sermons 't is by the direction of his guide Jesus returned into Galile in the power of the Spirit If he work Miracles in Judea 't is not so much to magnifie his power In Spiritu Dei ejicio Daemonia as to comply with the motions of the Holy Spirit and though these signall wonders cost him but a few words or desires he never wrought them but his divine Principle obliged him thereto by some secret inspiration if he unfolds the Mysteries of our Religion if he declare to his Disciples the will of his Father and discover to them those grand designes contrived from all Eternity In ipsa hora exultavit Spiritu Sancto dixit confiteor tibi Pater Domine caeli terrae quod abscondisti haec à sapientibus prudentibus revelasti ca parvucis Luk. 10. and which were not to be executed but in time 't is the Holy Spirit that animates him to this discourse and obliges him to manifest that to men which till then he would not impart to the Angels If finally the Son of God offer himselfe up upon the Crosse for our salvation if he drown our sins in his blood if he reconcile us to his Father by his death and satisfie him with the losse of life and honour 't is the holy Spirit that engageth him in this Agony and who inspires him with love enough to vanquish the ignomy and paine thereof He offered himselse without spot to God by the Holy Ghost so that the life of the Son of God was spent in a continued obedience to the Holy Spirit he undertook nothing but by his orders executed nothing but by his
is often a disguised misery and a reall torment Among so many adversities Heaven that watcheth over the welfare of Christians hath furnished them with Hope which never confounds those it assists for it awakens their courage with recompenses stirres them up by the examples of former Saints quickens them by the shortness of their life and making them balance what they suffer with what they expect gives them occasion to say with Saint Paul Non sunt condignae Passiones hujus temporis ad futuram gloriam quae revelatur in nobis But inasmuch as Jesus Christ is the principal object of this Vertue hence ariseth the strongest comfort it can bestow upon us for representing us his Shame and his Glory his Death and his Resurrection it makes us patiently suffer the afflictions of this present life in consideration of the advantages of the future The Son of God saith Saint Augustine becomes the hope of the Faithful they behold in him labour and recompence labour in his Passion recompence in his Resurrection and in these two states rather different then contrary they behold two kinds of lives whereof the one being miserable and present must be indured with courage the other being happy and future must be expected with patience Jesus Christ hath manifested the former in his Crosse the second in his Glory to the end that having born the former in this world they may hope to possesse the second in the other world Though this Example be able to encourage the most fearful and comfort the most afflicted we must acknowledge neverthelesse that the assurance we have that God wil not forsake those that are his is a powerful Consolation which is indeed the reason Hope makes use of to encourage Christians nor was ever exprest more eloquently then in the words of the Psalmist who representing them the power of their Soveraign obligeth them to hope all things and fear nothing Ideo nihil dicit ut omnia dicat tu omnia credas Spera in Deo ipse faciet In a word it mentions all in naming nothing and giving no bounds to its promises suffers us to hope every thing from God it instructs us by silence leaves us to think what it expresseth not and lest some favours might be forgotten in the rehearfall chuseth rather to be altogether silent then to forget any If I may serve for his Interpreter me thinks his meaning is that from the Almighty power of God we may expect every thing That he will stop the Sun shake the Earth remove the Mountains from their stations open the abysses of the sea and do an hundred miracles for our sakes if we hope in his goodness or this Vertue will have us understand that God will heal us if we be sick that he will comfort us if we be afflicted enrich us if we be poor restore us to liberty if we be in prison and deliver us from the grave when we are dead Finally we may hope all that he can do our hope is as large as his power and without rashnesse we may expect as many favours as he can work miracles Seeing this Vertue is as lowly as generous it keeps us from complaining when successes answer not our desires and teacheth us that there are two wayes whereby God assists us when we are persecuted the One is glittering and full of pomp showrs astonishment into the soul of our Enemies tameth lions that would devour us quencheth flames that would burn us to ashes and disarms Executioners that are ready to sacrifice us The other is more reserv'd and less splendid for not delivering us from torments it gives us courage to bear them makes us victorious by enduring and working the miracle in our selves sweetens not the cup of our punishment but increaseth our constancy whereby we triumph over it The former of these wayes appeared in the three Children who were thrown into a fiery furnace by the command of a heathen Prince The fire spar'd their clothes respected their bodies and having consumed their chains that they might walk at liberty sought out their Executioners to execute vengeance upon them The second appeared in the person of the Maccabees who vanquish'd in suffering tired their Enemies and in an age that trembles at the frowns of a Master laughed at the fury of a Tyrant Might I pass my judgment upon these two Miracles I would prefer the later and had I liberty to chuse I would rather be in the condition of the Maccabees then in that of the companions of Daniel But leaving this Digression to pursue my Discourse Hope is not founded upon promises but upon assurances it hath earnests that dissipates all doubts and considering what hath passed easily beleeves what is yet to come For though God be the supreme Verity though his words be Oracles and reason it self perswades us that he promiseth nothing to his subjects he does not perform yet is he so good he gives them earnest of his promises and as if he were afraid to weary their hope in making them expect too much he sweetens their anxious pains by pledges of affection which make up a part of that summ he hath promised them he gives us favours whereby we are enabled to hope for what remains behinde the death he suffered for us is an assurance of that life he prepares for us neither can we doubt saith St Augustine that we shall not reign with him in heaven seeing he was willing to die for us upon the Crosse For what Goods may we not expect when his death is a pledge of his love and an assurance of the happinesse we look for Let us hope then for his Kingdom and when the greatnesse of his promises shall raise any doubts in our soul let us consider the greatness of our Surety and we shall securely wait the accomplishment of our desires Having considered the necessity of this Vertue 't is just that we consider its Nature and consulting the Divines and Fathers be acquainted with its Definition Philo the Jew calls it the Fore-runner of Joy a Harbingerpleasure preceding the Eternall one an antepast of Blessedness so that following the opinion of this Philosopher he that hopes may boast himself happy before-hand The Master of the Sentences comes neer this sense when defining this Vertue he calls it a certain assurance of a future Felicity the certitude that accompanies it sweetens the pain which the remoteness of the Good it waits for occasions and she thinks her self happy because the felicity she promiseth is certain St Augustine calls it by a more magnificent name and making it passe for a view of the supreme Good seems with Philo to confound it with Joy for he saith that Faith cures the eys of the soul and that Hope makes her see what she desires But because things never appear so clearly as when they are opposed with contraries I conceive I cannot better discover the nature of Christian Hope then by confronting it with that that
by the Resurrection nor will the Faithful be truly consummated till he shall be transformed into God by the splendours of Glory Therefore doth Saint Augustine in his Comment upon that passage of the Psalmist Introibo in domum tuam in Holocaustis deliver these excellent words which serve greatly to illustrate this truth The Holocaust is a Sacrifice wherein the Victime is wholly devoured by the fire and the Church in the expectation she hath one day to be admitted into Heaven useth the same language and perswades her self that the fire of glory will consume her to the end that nothing of her self remaining in her she may be wholly her Beloveds This desire will not be accomplisht till the general Resurrection when our mortal shall be cloathed with Immortality and life shall triumph over death the Divine fire will produce this effect and consuming all our perishable being will make of us an Holocaust For nothing mortall shall remain in our flesh nothing culpable in our soul both of them shall be consummated by life that passing into a new being we may become the Holocausts of the Lord. That which ought to befall all Christians at the day of the generall Resurrection did happen to Jesus Christ at the day of his glorious Resurrection Death was swallowed in Life Glory consumed infirmity and leaving the likeness of sin he entred into the Majesty of God his Father But because this sacrifice would be impetfect if the Communion did not succeed the Consummation The love power of Jesus Christ invented a means whereby without departing from God he might communicate himself to the Faithful and make them partakers of his body and bloud This is done upon our Altars where offering up himself daily he finisheth the sacrifice of the Cross and by a mystery worthy of his charity he communicates not only the merits of his death but the very victime that was immolated upon Mount Calvary It bears the name of sacrifice not only because it finisheth that of the Cross which precisely contains nothing but the killing of the sacrifice but for that it exhibits all the marks of a true sacrifice For besides that it is the verity of the sacrifice of Melchisedeh instituted by the High Priest who hath commanded his Ministers to doe it in remembrance of him We may say without any offence to piety that it hath more shew of a sacrifice then that of the Cross because it begins with Prayer succeeds the eating of the Paschal Lamb as the substance the shadow contains an innocent victime is instituted by words dedicated to sacrifices and examining it seriously we shall find the oblation of the victime because there it is offered by the hands of the Priest His mystical death because immolated not by the knife but by the Word of God its perfect consummation because in a glorious condition which rescues it from all humane miseries and its communion because taken into the bosome of God Sacrificium corporis sanguinis Christi successit omnibus sacrificiis veteris Testamenti quae immolabantur in umbra hujus futuri Aug. and the mouth of the Faithful But though all these conditions should fail it would be enough to say that as the death of Jesus Christ though but the killing of the victime ceaseth not to be a true sacrifice that of the Altar though but the communion of the victim ceaseth not to be also a true sacrifice though to speak properly both of them make but one perfect sacrifice according to the true sense of those words of Saint Paul Vna oblatione consummavit sanctificatos and that one and the same Jesus is continually the victime but in such different conditions that they give occasion to Divines to make them pass for two distinct sacrifices The Ninth DISCOURSE Of the difference between these two Sacrifices and what the Christian receives in the one and in the other THough it were very easie to demonstrate the wonderful resemblances which are found between the sacrifice of the Cross and of the Altar and without doing violence to Scripture we might make it appear that one is the image of the other that the same victime is immolated in Both that the Eternall Father is equally honoured in Both and that the Faithful receive thence like advantages yet because things are illustrated better by their differences then their similitudes and that which distinguisheth them from others is always more particularly theirs I have designed this Discourse to unfold the oppositions Nature and Grace hath placed in these two sacrifices Quod autem mortuus est peccato mortuus est semel quod autem vivit vivit Deo Ro. 6. which though one and the same thing in their ground and foundation are notwithstanding different in their circumstances whereof the first is that that of the Cross was never offered but once and this of the Altar is offered every day For the right understanding of this difference we must know that the sacrifice of the Cross is a sacrifice of Redemption Qui non habet necessitatē quotidie quemadmodū sacerdotes prius pro suis delictis hostias offerre deinde pro populi hoc enim fecit semel se offerendo Hebrae 7. where the victime is charged with the sins of the world satisfies for them by the infiniteness of his merits appeaseth the Justice of the Eternal Father and delivers men from the tyranny of the Devil Inasmuch as all those things are no otherwise performed then by the death of Christ which cannot be repeated without a miracle and the Glory whereinto he is entred suffers him not to die a second time Saint Paul tels us that he redeemed the world by that one only sacrifice The Priests of the Old Testament were bound to reiterate their sacrifices because the merit of the victime was limited and to speak properly were neither acceptable to God nor meritorious for men but because they were the Figures of Jesus Christ But inasmuch as the Sacrifice he offered to his Father upon the Cross is of infinite merit he need not repeat it and having sufficiently expiated all the sins of the world it had been useless to pacifie God who was no longer offended and to satisfie for those faults which were already pardoned Thence it comes to pass that the Sacraments which exhibit the death of the Son of God and are applicatory to us of their merit imprint a Character upon us and are never performed twice Baptism is administred but once not onely because it is the Christians birth which cannot be done over again but also because it is the Figure of the death of Christ which according to the language of S. Paul Sicut semel Christus moritur in Cruce ita semel Christianus moritur in Baptismo Aug. cannot be readministred without offence Therefore is it that the same Apostle condemning those that gave themselves over to sin in hope to make an atonement by a second Baptism said to the
Hebrews that they crucified again the Son of God and that contrary to his intention and that of his Church they would make him die twice in their person who died but once in his own Rursum crucifigentes sibimet ipsis Filium Dei ostentui habentes But inasmuch as the Sacrifice of the Altar is a Sacrifice of Religion it must of necessity be repeated and for the continual honouring of the Eternal Father must continually be immolated in our Temples Therefore is it that the Synagogue which was the Figure of the Church had some Sacrifices which were offered but once every yeer nor had been offered but once at all had they had the merit and value of that of the Cross But there were others offered every day which the Scripture for this reason calls Juge Sacrificium The Church which hath not less piety then the Synagogue imitates and outgoes it in this point because it offers a daily Sacrifice and never changeth the Victim For 't is always the same body she produceth and immolateth that satisfying her love she may render an honour to God which ends not but with the world Her Beloved who hath inspired her with this desire hath given her the means to put it in execution she acts by the vertue received from him she repeats his words to repeat his miracles she produceth upon the Altars him that produced her upon the Cross she becomes the mother of him whose daughter she is and by a happie exchange conceives in her chaste womb him that heretofore conceived her in his wounds Thus this Sacrifice of Love is repeated every day and the Victim being incessantly produced by the Priest the Eternal Father is continually honoured The second difference is that the Sacrifice of the Cross is General and that of the Altar Particular Upon the Cross the Son of God was offered up for the salvation of all men his love is extended over all the Nations of the earth he excludes no Condition from this universal benefit he looks upon the Gentiles together with the Jews he mingles the Guilty with the Innocent and making no distinction of persons dies as well for Slaves as for those that are Free Ne existimes pro illa tantummodo gente hanc hostiam offerri propterea extra muros extra civitatem occiditur ut intelligas quoniam communis est hostia pro humano genere oblata Aug. and for the Poor as well as for the Rich. Therefore neither was this Sacrifice offered in the Temple nor in the City of Jerusalem that all people might know this favour was not particular and the most desperately-wicked might pretend to it since the first that felt the effect thereof were Theeves and Murtherers But the Sacrifice of the Altar is particular being instituted in the Church it relates onely to the Faithful its Merit though infinite reacheth not to strangers excommunicated persons are banished from it neither are the Catechumeni admitted The wedding-garment is requisite for those that are received and being a Feast as well as a Sacrifice they must be the Friends of the Bridegroom that are partakers of it But the third and most notable difference is that upon the Cross the Sacrifice was blended with Sacriledge whereas upon the Altar it is altogether pure attended with nothing that makes it not acceptable to God It is one of the Miracles of Providence to make wicked instruments serviceable to its designes and to employ their very malice to the execution of its will and intendments Joseph ows his Greatness to the Hatred of his Brethren and their ill disposition well husbanded by the conduct of heaven made him sit upon the Throne of Egypt That prodigie of Patience whose example comforts all that are miserable is glorious by his very detriment and had not the devil been permitted to afflict him he would not be the wonder and astonishment of all the Righteous The Martyrs were not admired by Christians but because they were persecuted by Tyrants and had they not given proofs of their courage in the Conflict they never had triumphed with Jesus Christ in Glory But that which most astonisheth me is that the very Passion of the Son of God was not effected but by the malice of men and devils this Sacrifice is accompanied with a Sacriledge and the holiest action of the world is shrowded under the appearance of a murder In respect of the Son of God there is nothing more sacred then his death 't is the most illustrious testimony of his Obedience the last office of his Piety the greatest expression of his Love and the most memorable action of his Life There is no Creature that is not beholding to him for it Men owe him their Salvation the Angels their Crowns the Elements their Deliverance the Earth her Purity and Heaven its Ornament and Glory If we consider this Death in respect of the Jews we want words to express the horrour thereof with It was the most unjust Sentence that ever was pronounced the most shameful ignominious punishment that an Innocent ever suffered the most execrable attempt that ever was projected by Rebellious Subjects in a word the most abominable Parricide that ever was committed by unnatural Children Comparing the motive of the Jews with that of Jesus Christ we cannot say whether God was more honoured or more offended upon Mount Calvary nor whether Nature conceived more horrour or compassion at the Tragedie The Eternal Father was abundantly satisfied Ibi Deus per malos quidem sed tamen ipse bonus per injustos sed justus juste ita in eos vindicavit ut perimerentur multa hominum millia ipsa civitas everteretur Aug. in Psal 73. because in consideration thereof he forgat his injuries and our sins and consented that his enemies should become his heirs But on the other side he was mightily offended because he discharged his wrath upon Judea armed the Romanes against the Jews sackt Jerusalem and his Temple and his just indignation not satisfied with so many miseries persecutes to this day that vagabond and criminal Nation Nature imitates the minde of her Author all her parts testified their Anger and their Pity The Earth trembled to swallow up the executioners in her fearful abysses the Rocks clave asunder with grief the Stars sunk into the Firmament that they might not be the witnesses of this Parricide the Sun was eclipsed that it might not enlighten such prodigious wickedness and whole Nature being not able to destroy them endeavoured to die with her God that died for her Thus Sacriledge was mixed with the Sacrifice of the Cross the Father was Oftended even whilst he was Satisfied and the whole world was scandalized by the crime of the Jews at the same time when it was purified by the Blood of Jesus Christ But Sanctity is altogether spotless upon our Altars there appears not that Medley which makes a confused mixture of Love and Hatred in our hearts and the
their affections upon the supream good and seeking their felicity in God say with David Mihi autem adhaerere Deo bonum est 'T is in this point properly that holinesse consists he that wisheth any thing else is blind or wretched and he that wasts himself with other desires is not yet fully informed that the supream good is the end and rest of the Christian Therefore is it that Saint Augustine speaking to his Auditors uttered these notable words Let us be grieved to see men distracted with the diversity of their desires Let us see their different conditions which arise from the difference of their designs Let some take arms and seek for Glory in the mouth of Danger hazard their lives to get themselves a Name and place their happinesse in killing and slaying Let others more harmlesse but not lesse ambitious plead at the Barr gain reputation in defending Innocence and aspire to the Glory of Orators being not able to purchase that of Conquerors Let others more humble but not lesse interessed hold commerce and Traffique with Strangers passe the Seas to content their Avarice descend into the bowels of the Earth to dig out Treasures Let others more Innocent but not lesse miserable till the ground master barrenness by their laborious Improvement and at the years end reap a rich and plentifull harvest Let all these different Conditions divide the heap of perishable Goods between them but let Beleevers instructed in a better School protest that God is their portion and that now and for ever they will have no other Inheritance These last words insinuate to us the last circumstance of Holiness which is not true if it be not Constant and pertinent A little to clear this Truth we must know there is no Christian that is not united to God the Character he received in his Baptism is a mark of his dependance Faith which he retains with sin is a sacred tye fastning him to Jesus Christ and gives him the honour to be a member of his Body Charity is a perfect Bond compleating what the others have begun which knits him so close to his Head that their Good and Evill are indivisible But if the Christian intend to be Holy Perseverance must second Charity and this faithfull vertue link them so constantly to the son of God that nothing can separate them Many heard his words admired his miracles loved his person who because they fell off attained not to that excellent title of Saints 'T is this last Condition which Crownes Holinesse the ultimate Character distinguishing the Elect from the Reprobate Finally Absque perseverantia nec qui pugnat victoriam nec palmā victor consequitur Bernard 't is this glorious mark that finisheth our salvation and begins our Beatitude It depends absolutely upon the good pleasure of God and as he refuseth it not without Justice neither does he indulge it but out of exceeding mercy It fixeth our will without constraining it renders it immoveable without taking away its liberty and gives it so much force that it equally triumphs over Griefs that astonish us and pleasures that corrupt us He that hath not this Grace cannot complain nor can he persevere He cannot complain because God denies it not but to his sin nor is his Reprobation founded upon any thing but his Infidelity He cannot persevere because this assistance depends not upon his Merit It being the immutable Decree of Gods good will and pleasure which makes men Saints and blessed It is by vertue of this Eternal ordinance that they resist temptations ouer-rule Tyrants and vanquish Devils 'T is by vertue of this internall Grace that they defie all Creatures and say with Saint Paul That nothing can separate them from Jesus Christ I am sure saith that Great Apostle that Death with his terrors Life with its charms Angels with their beauties Devils with their deformities Things present with their allurements Things future with their promises Heaven with its glory Hell with its torment can never separate me from the love of God And indeed how should they saith St Augustine because Death though never so hideous leads us to Him Life is found in his possession Angels and Devils are the Ministers of his Justice or of his mercy Things present are false Things to come uncertain Hell with God would be my Happinesse and Paradise without him my Torment Or if we will take this passage another way let us say again with Saint Augustine That nothing can separate us from Jesus Christ Not Death because there is none so dismall as to be deprived of his Love Not the Angels because being united to him we are stronger then all Spirits combined together Not the vexations of life because they are sweet when undergone for his Honour and serve only to give us a nearer conjunction to his person Not things to come because nothing can be bestowed nor promised which can countervail him Not Heaven because it is the recompence of those that serve him Not Hell because it is made for none but those that forsake him From all this Discourse it is easie to judge that the perfect Christian is a Saint that he ought to be wholly unbottomed from all things and so closely united to Jesus Christ that nothing can remove him But 't is easie to judge withall that we are at a great distance from Holiness because a small Interest a weak Temptation a shameful pleasure a light Injury separates us daily from him for whom we ought to sacrifice our Interests renounce our pleasures subdue our Temptations and forget our Injuries The Sixth DISCOURSE That the Christian is a Martyr THe condition of Christians would be very miserable did their vertue depend upon their Enemies and were they so streightened that they could not compass the Crown of Martyrdom but must be beholding to the Cruelty of Tyrants But the Peace of the Church hath her Martyrs as well as her Persecution Love is witty enough to exercise their Courage without employing the fury of Infidels Every Christian may without Impiety be his own Executioner and provided he live according to the Laws the son of God hath prescribed him will finde his punishment in his obedience All the vertues of Christianity will assist him in this designe Every Maxime of the Gospel will make a part in his Agony and having practised all that Jesus Christ commands or counsels he may boast though he be an unprofitable servant he ceaseth not to be a faithful Martyr For if it be true that the Cause and the Punishment makes the Martyrs we must confess that all they that live according to the Laws of Christianity may lawfully pretend to this glorious quality because they suffer much and for the height of their happiness they suffer for the Son of God This last condition is so necessary that in the judgement of S. Augustine 't is not so much the Punishment as the Cause that makes the Martyr The Gally-slaves that tug at the Oar
cito caperetur incarnatio non opus erat ut crederetur credendo ergo capitur quod nisi credatur nunquam intelligitur Aug. de vera Innoc. c. 45. as the difficulty of the Remedy neither does any thing make a man so sensible of the Corruption of his Nature by Sin as the difficulty of his Restitution by Grace The External Cause of his salvation is so strange that it appears incredible to all those that are not illuminated by Faith Humane Prudence cannot comprehend that the Death of a God was necessary for the Recovery of a Sinner It laughs at that Mercy that oblig'd Divinity to be cloath'd with our miseries it beleeves such excess of love unworthy an infinite wisdom and that to be perswaded of the mystery of the Incarnation is to render the Divine Nature ridiculous and humane Nature insolent Nevertheless Faith convinceth us that nothing hath so much exalted God as this Condescention nothing hath so much abased Man as this Exaltation For albeit the greatness of God be at the height that neither Desires nor Imaginations can add any thing to it yet if we believe Saint * Deus cum non haberet quo cresceret per ascensum quia ultra Deum nihil est per descensum quomodo cresceret invenit veniens Incarnari Bern. serm 2. de Asc Bernard he acquir'd new qualities by the Incarnation Men never more reverenced him then since he thus humbled himself and he hath done things in pursuance of this Mystery that might seem unprofitably attempted before he vouchsafed to accomplish so transcendent a wonder His Empire is increased now that he is become a servant to his Father Men have erected Altars to his Majesty since the Jews lifted him up upon the Cross and the Crown of Thorns that encircled his head hath merited the Crown of all the Kingdoms of the Universe If his Humiliation hath exalted him we must acknowledg that our exaltation hath humbled us †Haec medicina hominum tanta est quanta non potest cogitari nam quae superbia sanari potest si humilitate filii Dei non sanatur Aug. de Ago Chr. c. ii For there is no pride that wil not stoop when it considers that our sin could not finde a perfect remedy but in the death of God-Man that we must be wash'd in his blood to be purified and with his honour despoil him of Life to restore us our Innocence This Truth findes new proofs in the Birth of a Christian and if he consider the names it bears and the effects it produceth he will be constrain'd to acknowledg that he was strangely corrupted by sin since to re-establish him in Grace he was fain to bestow upon him a * Redditur nobis novitas per BaptismuÌ„ vetustate discedente deoneratur anima sarcinis peccatorum ut libertate novae vitae induta adversus Diabolum cum adjutorio Divino valeat fortiter dimicare Aug. l. 4. de Sym. c. 9 New-Birth Indeed the Holy Scriptures teach us that the Baptism wherein the Christian is Regenerated is somtimes called his Renovation somtimes his second Birth somtimes his first Resurrection that from the very name of his Remedy he may learn the greatness of his Malady Let us admire these two together and shew in this Discourse the Transgression of Man and the Reformation of the Christian Sin is a Secret poyson that hath spread its malice over the soul and body of Man Malorum omniuÌ„ nostrorum causa peccatum est non enim fine causa mala ista homines patiuntur Justus est Deus omnipotens non ista pateremur nisi mereremur Aug. ser 139. de Tempore The miseries it hath produc'd in the body are so publick that there is none but knows them because there is none but feels them The Confusion of our Humours the Disorder of our Temperament the unfaithfulness of our Senses and the revolt of our Passions are miseries under which Philosophers groan as well as Believers But as the soul is more guilty then the Body so is she much more miserable For Errour hath stoln into the Understanding Malice hath depraved the Will Oblivion hath dropt into the Memory and in so general a disorder there remains no faculty that is not either weakned or corrupted The Pride of the Stoïcks hath complain'd of this misfortune which though they have endeavoured to sweeten by Reason they have been forc'd to confess that so impotent a remedy could not cure so obstinate a malady After the Divine Justice had suffered man for many ages to languish in his * Productior est poena quam culpa ne parva putaretur culpa si cum illa finiretur poena Aug. Trac 124. in Joan. miseries at last Mercy furnished him with Baptism to rid him of his Evils But lest the Easiness of the remedy consisting of the Commonest of the Elements might render it contemptible God was willing that the very name it bears should inform us that we were so corrupt that to be cured we must be wholly new-made For in this Sacrament Man seems to change his Nature to receive a new life to assume other inclinations Ecce libertatis serenitate perfruuntur qui tenebantur paulo ante captivi Cives Ecclesiae sunt qui fuerunt in peregrinationis errore in sorte justitiae versantur qui fuerunt in confusâ—one peccati Non enim tantum sunt liberi sed sancti non tantum sancti sed justi non solum justi sed filii non solum filii sed cohaeredes c. vides quot sunt Baptismatis largitates Chrysost homil de Baptisatis citatur ab Aug. lib. 1. contra Julia. cap. 2. where being illuminated by faith he discovers other lights being warm'd by Charity he conceives other heats being united to another head he receives other influences and being quickned by a new Spirit he forms new designes Is it not indeed a prodigious change that he that was the slave of the Devil becomes the subject of Jesus Christ that a Criminal is pronounced Innocent that he that had in him the seeds of all Vices receives the seeds of all Vertues and that by a happy Metamorphosis which is wrought in a moment and with a word he is despoyl'd of Adam and cloathed with Jesus Christ This Renovation is so great and so consequentially admirable in the effects thereof that the Scripture to express the wonders that accompany it hath somtimes called it a New-birth somtimes a Regeneration The Son of God who is the Author of it testifies that no man can enter into the kingdom of heaven except he be born again of Water and of the Holy Ghost The Fathers of the Church have given it the same name and Theoyhylact teacheth us that we were so deeply swallowed up in the puddle of sin that being not able to be drawn out by an ordinary endevour nor cleansed by a simple washing we were fain to be Regenerated And
infected with the contagion of that and that sin tracing grace prevents the will making it criminall before it be free The only thing that may seem strange to us in this Oeconomy is That a Baptized person does not communicate Christian grace to his children though he be possessed of it and yet doth communicate originall sin though he be freed from it Miraris quare peccator nascatur de semine Justi non te delectat mirari quare oleaster nascatur de semine olivae Accipe aliam similitudinem non attendis quia de grano purgato frumentum cum palea nascitur sine qua seminatur Aug. Serm. de Verb. Apos 14. But our wonder will cease if we consider that a grain of corn which is sown without chaffe springs up notwithstanding with it and on the other side a learned man derives not his sciences to his children though he doe his being Ideo de baptizato non justus nascitur quia non eum generat unde regeneratus est sed unde generatus est Id. ib. And because as Saint Augustine observes Christians beget not their children by the Spirit which is sanctified but by the body which still remains corrupted neither is Grace the concomitant of the Birth of Adam but of the regeneration of Jesus Christ who absolves not the guilty till they are cloathed with his merits in Baptisme The Fifth DISCOURSE Of the Resemblances that are found between the Birth of Christ and that of a Christian AS the Christian takes his denomination of Christ so also doth he his Glory neither hath he any Priviledge which he is not obliged to him for If he have any merits that render him acceptable to God 't is from the * Ex sacramento unctionis Christi Christianorum descendit voeabulum et nomen quod nomen ille frustra sortitur qui Christum minime imitatur Aug. de vita Christi Actions or Sufferings of Jesus Christ that he borrows them If he pretends any right to heaven as his inheritance 't is because Christ is his elder Brother if the Angels do him any service 't is because he is a member of his Body and that this quality equals if not prefers him before these blessed Spirits If lastly his birth be holy 't is because it resembles that of the Son of God and receives in the bosom of the Church the same advantages the Son of God received in the womb of his Mother Indeed could the tongue of man recount the wonders of a Nativity that astonish'd the Prophets they might haply be reduc'd to three or four heads that render it glorious and full of lustre The First is That the Son of God was conceived by the operation of the holy Ghost He it was that managed this great Designe who curdled the most pure blood of the Virgin who form'd the Body of the Word Incarnate and becoming his principle did in a manner give him in Time what he had received from him in Eternity The Angel spake thus of it to the Virgin when for the interest of her Virginity she desired to be instructed how she might be the Mother of God Superveniet in te dando foecunditatem servando Virginitatem Bern. The holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the Glory of the Highest shall over-shadow thee The Holy Ghost was the dispenser of this mystery his goodness wrought this miracle of love and he that was barren in Eternity to give Jesus Christ to the world became fruitfull in time Though this favour be admirable exalting the Son of God above Prophets and Kings yet is it common to him with Christians who have the priviledge to be born of the Holy Ghost and to enter into a new life by his grace For he it is and not an Angel that sits President in this sacred * Omni homini renascenti aqua baptismatis instar est uteri virginalis eodem Spiritu sanctorcplente fontem qui replevit et Virginē ut peccatum quod ibi vacuavit sacra conceptio hic mystica tollat ablutio Leo. pool wherein wee are regenerated he it is that stamps upon us the character that makes us Christians and sheds abroad charity into our hearts whereby we are made the children of God 'T is by his vertue that our sins are blotted out and by a secret influence that penetrateth the essence of our soul that we become the adopted sons of the Everlasting Father and the brethren of Jesus Christ The holy Scripture teacheth us this transcendent verity in common ordinary words but which in their deep sense comprehend almost an infinite number of mysteries Except a man be born again of water and of the Holy Ghost he shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven As it is he that gives us the being of Grace so he gives us a right to Glory and as he made the Virgin * Originem quā sumpsit in utero Virginis posuit in fonte baptismatis dedit aquae quod dedit Matri et obumbratio Spiritus sanctiquae fecit ut Maria parerot eadem facit ut aqua rogeneret credentem Leo Serm. de Nat. Christi fruitfull to bring forth Christ so he makes the water prolificall to regenerate the Christian 'T is the opinion of St Ambrose and of St Augustine who both conspire together to make us admire the excellent grace that we receive of the Holy Ghost in Baptism The same Grace saith the later that makes Man-God makes Man-Christian the one is re-born by the same Spirit whereof the other is born and as This is wholly exempt from all sin That is fully delivered from it Thus the Christian may boast that he hath God for his Principle that he owes his birth to the Holy Ghost and that this priviledge is common to him with the Word incarnate The Second Advantage of the Son of God in his temporall Nativity is That he had a Mother who miraculously united Fruitfulnesse with Purity for the Fruit that she bare shed not her Flower the quality of a Mother made her not lose that of a Virgin and Nature stood amazed that being so pure she was notwithstanding brought to bed The * Ecce Virgo concipiet ct parict filium Isa 7. Prophets have prepared us for the belief of this miracle by their predictions they beheld it in the secrets of Futurity and knowing very well that it was one of the greatest Priviledges of the Messias they have made it one of the fairest observations in his History The very Heathen were not ignorant of it The Sybils have proclaimed it for the rarest ornament of Virginity and there were some people who moved by their Predictions erected Altars to the * Virgini pariturae Virgin-Mother Nothing in all our Religion hath carried so much lustre with it amongst the Heathen as this glorious particular neither had they much adoe to beleeve that Jesus Christ was the Son of God seeing he was the Son of
Adoption publick and valid as soon as this Instrument is drawn he that was but a stranger becomes a Son But the Adoption of Christians is as full of mysteries as of circumstances for the Son of God must make himself the son of man must charge himself with our sins and enrich us with his merits that satisfying the justice of his Father he may oblige him to change his hatred into love and to accept those for his Children that he accounted his Enemies The Christian also must be washed in the waters of Baptism must borrow the voyce of the Church to renounce the tyranny of the Divel and the pomp of the World must put off Adam and put on Jesus Christ that being filled with grace and cleansed from sin he may receive the benefit of Adoption Under the shadows of these Ceremonies there are perform'd a hundred miracles which faith only can discover For an Element animated with the Word of God acts in the soul and defaceth the spots sin had imprinted there Man changeth his condition though not his nature he that was a slave becomes free and he that deserved damnation by the fault of Adam is accounted worthy of Glory by the Grace of Jesus Christ But the last and rarest Circumstance of this Adoption is that it admits Christians into an inheritance not at all divided by the number of heirs One of the greatest misfortunes of the world is that the goods are so small Ista quae appetitis quia exigua sunt nec possunt ad altcrum nisi alteri erepta transferri etdem affectantibus pugnam jurgia excitant Senec. lib. 5. de Ira. cap. 35. one man cannot be proprietary of them without ravishing them from another every man impoverisheth his neighbour to enrich himself and humane prudence that seeks for tranquillity in estates hath not to this day been able to choak this unhappy seed the root of all disorders Soveraigns will reign alone in their Dominions Fathers will be Masters of their Families both of them are jealous of their Children nor do they invite them as partners in the possession of their goods because they know very well they cannot be divided but they must be lessened Death must take away the Father that the Son may succeed him so that the lawfullest Succession in the world is never without grief because it can never be without loss This unhappiness proceeds certainly from the scantiness of earthly goods for were they large enough to be parted without suffering a diminution every one would possess them without jealousie Kings would not fear their Successors nor Fathers their Heirs And as Light and Vertue breed no quarrell amongst those that have them in their possession there would be no more War among Soveraigns nor Law-suits among Subjects This benefit is an inseparable consequence of the Adoption of Christians Their Inheritance is so large that the number of children cannot diminish it The Good they hope for hath two properties that secure it from envie it is one and cannot be divided it is infinite and sufficeth the whole world its unity is the cause that every one possesseth it intire its infinity that none are affraid of a lessening they are all rich of the same substance they are all happy by the same felicity the difference of their condition troubles not their rest and this Summum bonum though in diversity of endowments makes men neither envious nor proud Every one is content with anothers prosperity and with his own and the charity that reigns among the Citizens of this heavenly Jerusalem doth so intimately unite their hearts that the diversity of particulars disturbs not the happiness of the whole But that which compleats their contentment to the full is that death never separates the children from their Father he hath Heirs but no Successours he despoils not himself to enrich them but living and reigning with them he conferrs all his goods upon them without losing them He himself is their everlasting Inheritance who fills their desires perfects all the powers of their soul and communicates himself so abundantly and so surely to his children that as there is nothing they can fear so neither is there any thing they can wish for And to describe this happy state with St Augustine let us profess Deus sit baereditas nostra non fortè temerè dicimus faciendo vobis Deum possessionem cum ipse sit Deus Creator non est ista temeritas â—ffectus est desiderii dulcedo spei Dic securus ama securus spera securus Dominus pars haereditatis mcae Aug. in Psal 32. Ser. 2. That God is our Inheritance to Eternity that it is no presumption to stile him so though he be our Creator and our Soveraign because it is the fervency of our desire and the sweetnesse of our hope that puts this name into our mouth Say we therefore with assurance that he is our heritage since the Scripture obligeth us to beleeve it and forbids us to doubt of it But let us remember that as he is our Inheritance we are also his that he will possess us as we shall possess him and that we shall never be compleatly happy till possessing our God we shall enâ—irely be possessed by him Let us live alwayes in this desire comfort our selves with this expectation and by a certain hope taste the happiness we shall one day be satisfied with in an everlasting enjoyment The Seventh DISCOURSE Of the Allyances the Christian contracts at his Birth with the divine Persons THe Creation is the first Allyance Man contracted with God for as soon as ever he came forth out of Nothing he began to be his Creature and all the advantages he possesseth are so many sacred chains to fasten him to his Creator His Allyance is founded in his servitude and his servitude is founded in his Essence he must be annihilated to render him an independant from the Almighty neither yet in this condition would he cease to hold of him since God * Vocat ea qua non sunt tanquam ea quae sunt Unde existimavit Clem. Alexandrinus Decum esse Dominum creaturarum antequaÌ„ esset illarum Creator commands the creatures in their non-entity from out whose abyss he hath extracted all the elements Thus man obeys God before he hath an existence he is his Vassal before he is his Creature and he submits to his Orders before he can understand them But if his obedience precede his creation his Allyance succeeds it neither hath he any affinity with God till he is made his workmanship 'T is in that instant that he enters into society with him when his spirit enlightned by Faith knows the prime verity and his will warm'd by love seeks out for the soveraigne Good Assisted with this double succour he soars above himself and knowing that he came forth from God as from his Principle he endeavours to return thither as to his ultimate end Though this be
Channel through which Providence conveighs its vertue upon the Creatures The Sun is the Throne where God sits in state and where he acts with more force 'T is by meanes of this glorious Starre that he produceth the rarest wonders of nature and from the very moment that he drew all things out of nothing he never appeares in the production of any visible Creatures but he makes use of his light or heat His Ecilpses are dreadful to the Universe he never suspends his influences but Nature suffers by it and his course is so necessary to the constitution of the World that a moment of rest would be able to destroy it Though this great body of Light have so absolute a superintendency over all Creatures yet doe I not believe that the Christians hold of his Empire though he enlighten them with his beams warm them with his heat and entertain their life with his motion yet am I of opinion there is a particular providence that governs them Dominus custodit te Dominus protectio tua per diem Sol non uret te nâ—que Luna per noctem Psal 120. that their occurrences are regulated by another sun neither is it in the power of Astrologers to discover the adventures of the faithfull In that they are the members of Jesus Christ their happiness is affix'd to his person their predestination is included in his and we must understand the secrets of the Apocalypse to divine their good or bad fortune The divel himself though never so subtil cannot penetrate this depth if he have some conjectures for the future they prove false in what concernes Christians the Grace that includes them blindes him and as the heavenly Light strikes his spirit with obscurity he is altogether unacquainted with the wayes by which providence happily conducts them to their end Therfore is it that Astrologers are never so much at a loss as when they pretend to judge of the fortune of Believers by the rules of Astrology they must dive into the minde of the eternal Father to understand his thoughts concerning the members of his Son and less then to be admitted into his Cabinet where the unchangeable designes of his predestination are contrived cannot inable them to foresee the smallest accidents of their life If the sanctity of their Condition cloud them from the curiosity of Astrologers it moreover protects them from the fury of Divels For though these wretched spirits are called by scripture the Princes of the World and the divine Justice suffers them to employ the Elements to content their fury yet have they no power over the faithfull All their rage turns to our profit they are serviceable even while they persecute Their notable attempts which testifie their power aswell as their hatred contribute greatly to our merit The Divine Providence that regulates all their motions makes use of them to our glory and wee learn by experience That nothing can hurt those that love GOD because they are beloved of him Thence ariseth that profound tranquillity which Christians enjoy For as they know nothing happens in the world but according to the order and disposall of their Soveraigne that the fury of their Enemies is subject to his Providence that the Divels execute his Will that the Elements serve his Justice or his Mercy they look upon all Accidents with a Holy indifferency they embrace Life and Death Honour and Dishonour Pleasure and Pain with one and the same disposition of spirit and knowing very well that they are the members of Jesus Christ they count it not strange that his Father makes them climbe up to honour by affronts and to felicity by persecution The Ninth DISCOURSE Of the Obligations of Christians in pursuance of their Birth INdependency is so natural to God that some Philosophers have doubted whether he could be ingaged by his promises But me thinks to preserve his Independency they would take away his Veracity and that they might make him an absolute Soveraign goe about to render him an unfaithfull one The perfections of God never clash one against another and those that seem to have some contrarietie in the creatures preserve a peacefull harmonie without loosing their differences in the Creator He is absolute in his power and faithfull in his promises he is subject to those Laws he himself prescribes and he respects his own Orders without infringing his Supremacy Seneca who had only naturall reason for his light judged that obedience did not at all injure the Soveraignty of God Ille ipse omnium conditor ac rector scripsit quidem fata sed sequitur semper paret semel jussit Senec. de prov c. 5. and that observing the ordinances he had set from all eternity hee obeyed alwaies and commanded but once David acknowledged fidelity in God as well as Independency and though he knew that all his graces were mercies he forbeares not to exact from him the effects of his promises and to conjure him upon the truth of his Word God is faithfull in all his words Wherefore I conceive I shall no waies wrong the Almighty if I say that he treates with the Christian in Baptisme That he imposes Laws upon himself which he never revokes and obliges himself to conditions which he inviolably keeps He receives the sinner into favour signes him the pardon of his sin invests him with the merits of his Son and promiseth all things necessary for his preservation in this new condition I cannot imagine that this Peace is but a Truce that there are any Christians to whom God does not sincerely and really remit originall sin Crâ—dentes in Christum per lavacrum regenerationis soluto reatu omnium peccatorum originalis quod generatio trahit liberantur à damnationc perpetua vivunt in fide spe charitate peregrinantes in hoc saeculo Aug. tract 124. in Joan. His goodness gives mee not leave to passe this judgement upon his justice and though I know that he performes an Act of Grace to a Delinquent in Baptisme I believe that considering him in the person of his Son he refuses him not those graces which so holy an alliance seem to require if he condemn them 't is not for the sin which is blotted out and if God be deficient to the Laws of this Treaty 't is because the Christian hath first broken the Covenant The gifts of God are without repentance he deserts none but those that forsake him and were we true to his grace he would never dispense with his promises The unchangeable Laws of Predestination clash not at all with this Maxime and at that instant when he resolved to leave the Reprobate in the masse of Perdition he saw their sins as well as those of Adam 'T is upon these that he rests when he refuses them Grace and had they made good use of that they received I cannot beleeve he would have abandoned them Si gratia dicitur gratis datur si operibus additur
respect towards him he puts on rather the deportment of a Lover then of a Soveraign he gains his will without forcing it and though he knows the secret whereby to be obeyed 't is always with so much sweetness that he that suffers himself to be overcome hath reason to believe he gets the Victory Therefore doth the Scripture never speak of this Change but as of a work common to God with Man And when Saint Augustine observes the differences between Conversion and Creation he bears witness to this truth in these words Qui creavit te sine te non salvabit te sine te But not to enter into Disputes more Curious then Profitable Si conversio peccatoris non est majoris potentiae quà m creatio universi saltem est majoris miscricordiae Aug. let us be content to conclude with the same Saint Augustine that if the Conversion of a sinner require not more Power it supposeth at least more Mercy then Creation because if in This God obligeth the Miserable in That he obligeth the Criminal shewing Favour to those that could expect nothing but severity of Punishments Therefore is it that the Conversion of a sinner belongs to the Holy Spirit and a work that bears the Character of Goodness must needs have no other Principle but he to whom this Divine Perfection is attributed in the Scripture 'T is true that after he hath shewed mercy to sinners he performs a piece of most exemplary Justice and animating them against themselves he obliges them to take revenge and punishment upon themselves For one of the most admirable effects of the Spirit of Love is to produce hatred in the spirit of Penitents Quia ergo non potest esse confessio punitio peccati in homine à seipso cum quisque sibi irascitur sibi displicet sine dono Spiritûs sancti non est Aug. in Psal 50. and to satisfie the Majestie of God by the excess of their Austerities towards themselves They look upon themselves as guilty of Treason against the Divine Majestie they stay not till his Justice punish them they prevent his Sentence by their own Resolutions and invent more tortures to wrack themselves then the Executioners have been witty in to torment Martyrs with This is that Divine Spirit which hath driven the Anchorites into the desarts made the Antonines go down into caves and holes of the earth made the Stilites fix upon the top of Pillars which found out sackcloth and discipline to make as many Wretches as he had made Penitents All the Austerity that is in Christianity takes its birth from the love he inspires into the Faithful Their Rigour is proportionable to their Charity the more the holy Spirit possesseth them the more are they set against Themselves and we may affirm with reason that as much as they grow in his Love so much do they grow in the Hatred of their Sin This is it perhaps that our Saviour would have us understand when he told us that the holy Spirit should judge the world and should oblige sinners to punish themselves for the offences they have committed He shall convince the world of sin of righteousness and of judgement We cannot understand this Truth if we conceive not that the Father hath judged all men in his Son and having charged him with their iniquities hath charged him also with the punishments due for them From this moment they have no engagements to sue out with the Father and the Father satisfied with the Passion of his Son protests that he hath signed over to him all the right of judging the world The Father judgeth no man but hath committed all judgment to the Son The Son by vertue of this resignation shall judge all men at the end of the world and being become their Judg and their Partie will pronounce the definitive sentence of their Eternity In expectation of this day of Doom the holy Spirit judgeth men that are converted and mixing meekness with severity in these determinations he obliges them to undergo a scrutiny upon earth to be delivered from the torments of hell Nor are we to think it strange that he that is so gentle is withall so rigorous since the Poets have bestowed these two qualities upon Love For these pleasant Tel-tales have feigned that he was the severest of all the Gods that he bathed himself in tears lived upon blood and more cruel then Tyrants took pleasure in the torments of his subjects But Christian Religion that conceals Truth under the shadow of our Mysteries teacheth us that the love of God is severe that he exacts chastisements from those he inanimates that he engageth his Lovers in penance and more strong then death which parts soul and body he divides between the soul and the spirit and exerciseth a Tyranny over whole entire man True it is the torments he inflicts are always mix'd with pleasures he makes Roses grow among Thorns and amidst such a throng of Penitents that bid him battel there is not one complains of his sufferings 'T is enough that persecuting themselves Haec tristitia quae poenitcutiam ad salutem stabilem operatur laeta est ac spe profectus sui vegetata cunctam affabilitatis retinet suavitatem Cassian l. 9. c. 11. they are perswaded they satisfie him whom they have offended the same consideration that afflicts them comforts them and when they meditate that God that loves them is infinite they meet with no pain that is not short nor any torment that is not joyous They are better accompanied in the Desarts then the Monarchs in their Palaces their humiliations are more glorious then the Triumphs of Conquerors their poverty is more happy then abundance of riches and their ascetick life more full of charms then the pleasures of the world Though the holy Spirit be thus favourable to Penitents yet fails he not to be very severe against sinners if he pardon the offences committed against the Father and the Son he never pardons those that are committed against his own Person and the holy Scriptures teach us Blasphemia in Spiritum sanctum non remittetur in hoc seculo nec in futuro Mat. 12. that of all the sins in the world none are irremissible but those which do despite to the Holy Ghost This passage leaves all our Expositors at a losse every one forgeth new Principles to resolve the difficulties thereof and there are few but strive to invent something upon a subject so often handled and so little cleared Some divide sins into three Orders according to the perfections which are commonly applyed to the three Divine Persons The first comprehends sins of infirmity which seem to clash against the Person of the Father Peccata alia sunt infirmitatis quae Patri cujus est potentia adversantur alia ignorantiae quae Filio cujus est sapientia alia malitiae quae Spiritui sancto cujus est bonitas D. Thom. in Paulum to whom power
Confessions was in the hands of mine Enemy he had cast a chain about me which manacled me so fast I could not disengage my self but was forced to follow him for of my bad inclinations he formed bad desires which basely obeying I contracted a bad habit and not timely resisted was presently changed into a troublesome necessity I call this slavery a Chain because it was composed of my own inclinations as of so many links which the Grace that prepar'd me for my Conversion was not strong enough to break asunder He made vain attempts to be disengaged his Will encourag'd with Grace stoutly opposed his Will seconded with Concupiscence himself was the Theater of this Combat he was the Victor and the vanquished but the advantage was more prejudiciall then the defeat since the worse party was the strongest and his Will yeelding obedience to the Tyranny of Concupiscence resisted the Command of Charity He pleasantly complains to God of the greatness of this Evill in the same place of his Confessions In vain did I take pleasure in Your Law concerning the inward man because there was another law in the rebelling against Yours and which against my will made me subject to the law of sin that was in my members For the law of sin is nothing else but the Tyranny of Custome which engageth the minde of man with a kinde of constraint but not without some colour of Justice because he willingly procured this Thraldom But he never more happily express'd the nature of this Evill then when he compares a bad Habit to the imperious complacency of sleep For it seems there is nothing more sweet then those drowsie vapours in the mean time there is nothing more violent and of all things that set upon a man there is none from which he can lesse defend himselfe This evill takes force from it's sweetnesse the more pleasant the fumes are it exhaleth the stronger are they the more pain they inflict the more is their pleasure the lesse liberty they indulge us the more is the love they expresse toward us 'T is by this example that this great Saint illustrates the agreeable violence of a bad habit Ita sarcina seculi veluti somno assolet dulciter premebar cogitationes quibus meditabar in te similes erant conatibus expergisci volentium qui tamen superati soporis altitudine remerguntur Aug. I was overwhelmed with the love of the world saith he as with a deep sleep and the meditations I lifted up to heaven were like the vain endeavours of men striving to awake who beaten down with the weight of drowsiness fall asleep again at the very instant they awake True it is as there is no man that would always sleep and in the judgement of all wise men watchings are better then sleep I also was of the same opinion that 't was more advantageous for me to submit to thy grace O Lord then to yield to my passion But as the most part of men suffered themselves to be more sweetly charm'd with sleep when their hour to awake approacheth so did I more enticingly imbrace my bad habit when the time of my conversion seemed nearest at hand It is but too evident by this comparison that mans weaknesse passeth even to impotency when he suffers himselfe to be swallowed up by sin and in his infirmities stands in need of a mighty arme to deliver him from the Tyrant that keeps him under Now the holy Spirit performs this good office to all sinners 't is he that breaketh their irons when they are fetter'd by concupiscence or by custome The Spirit helpeth our infirmity saith great Saint Paul he not only clarifies the Christians but fortifies them and the same grace he sheds abroad in their souls at once fils them with light and strength he joynes himselfe with the soule to subdue the rebellions of the flesh he inspires their liberty with a new vigour knocking off it's fetters he armes the faculty whereby it takes vengeance of it's enemies for as Saint Augustine excellently observes 't is not the Spirit of man but of God that fights against the flesh Spiritus concupiscit adversus carnem in hominibus bonis non in malis qui Spiritum Dei non habent contra quem caro concupiscat Aug. these two parts almost continually agree in unbelievers and wicked men if they practise hostility for their particular interests concupiscence unites them to serve her designes She masters wantonnesse with pride tames pleasure with avarice but in all these contestations the soule and body are subject to sin and these two are reconciled together to further the intentions of their Soveraign But when the soule fights against the flesh in the faithfull 't is always by the motion of the spirit 't is this divine Protection that gives her courage and delivering her from the bondage of her slave establisheth her in the possession of her lawfull authority Let us explain this Truth in the words of Saint Augustine the flesh did not lust against the spirit in Paradise there was no warre in so profound a peace nor did man see himselfe divided by the conflict of two parts whereof he was made But when once he had violated the Law of God and had refused obedience to his Soveraign he was given over to himselfe upon condition too that he should never be his own Master but be wholy at his devotion that had deceived him Then was it that the flesh began to revolt against the spirit but this happens not but in the person of good men for in that of wicked men the flesh hath nothing to rebell against because the soule being become carnall hath no other feelings but those of the flesh And when the Apostle saith That the spirit warreth against the flesh we are not to imagine that he speaks of the spirit of man but of that of God that fights in us against our selves or to speak more soundly 't is he that combates that in us that is prejudiciall to us and when he makes warre upon us 't is to procure peace within us 'T is in this sense that the same Apostle hath said further to the faithfull that if by the vertue of the spirit they did mortifie the deeds of the flesh they should live For least man should grow proud in hearing those words and perswade himselfe that it was by his own spirit that he ought to tame the flesh the Apostle presently explains himselfe that they are the Children of God that are led by the Spirit to the end we may know that 't is he that mortifies our flesh quickens our soule and gives us victory in the Conslict 'T is for this cause that he is called in Scripture the Spirit of strength and of counsell to teach us that the same that guides doth also assist us that having enlightned us he warmes us too inspiring us with courage to execute our designes after he hath endued us with wisdome to devise and contrive
primus amorem fixit secundus sparsit tertius extinxit Richar. de Sanct. Vict. the second those that look upon the whole earth as their Countrey whom he calls Courageous the third those that look upon the World as the place of their banishment whom he calls Perfect To speak truth the first are sordid because they have confin'd their love to a corner of the world the others are generous because intending it over all they have weakened it and the third are accomplish'd because having wholly stifled it their hopes are altogether taken up with heaven they long for this eternall habitation the moments that stop them here below seeme ages the diversions illusions the pleasures torments the happinesse of the World a dangerous temptation Now the Holy Spirit comforts them in this reasonable disgust he inspires them with the desire of heaven points out the glory of the blessed fills them with hope of the shortening of their exile and makes them say with David I was glad when they said unto me we will go into the house of the Lord. But the most substantiall Comfort he makes use of to mitigate and sweeten their troubles is to give them an Antepast of felicity to render them happy in the midst of their miseries and to shed his graces into their spirit with so much complacency that conversing with men they may relish the blisse of Angels For he is the earnest of our blessednesse the Assurance of our salvation the Caution of the promise of Jesus Christ and if we may say so he is a portion of the felicity which is promised us in Glory The third grievance of Man a Sinner is That the Earth is not only a place of Banishment but a Countrey of Enemies where all creatures serving as Instruments of the Divine Justice make warre upon him which ends not till he dyes For though he boast himselfe the Lord of the Universe though the sinne of his father perswade him into this errour though Concupiscence that reigns in his soule heightens the desire thereof nor can all the miseries he endures shake him out of this hope yet is he dealt with as a Criminall Every Element threatens him with a thousand dangers and into what ever corner of his State he retires he findes either Executioners or Rebels Poisons are mixt with nourishment upon the earth rocks lye in ambush for him upon the Sea the fire inflames thunder to destroy him Qui in cunctis delinquimus in cunctis ferimur ut impleatur quod dicitur Et pugnabit pro co contra infensatos orbis terrarum Greg. Mag. hom 35. in Evan. and the aire scatters contagions to infect him There is no part of the world that conspires not against him heaven punisheth his iniquities as well as earth the Sun which is the fountain of life makes him dye the Aspects of the heavenly bodies are fatall to him nor is there any Star in the Firmament which hath not some power to infest him But that which redoubles these displeasures is That all these Creatures are in the hands of his Enemy to afflict him for the devill is the Prince of the world The Scripture that designes him this Quality teacheth us that he disposeth of the Elements under the good pleasure of God to persecute man sometimes he darts down Thunderbolts and though he execute the determinations of Heaven he fails not to content his own malice he raiseth Tempests upon the Sea and Storms upon the Land forms Lightnings in the air and successively makes use of wet and drought to produce barrenness Admit this Stratagem succeed not he tries another so much more dangerous in that it appears more taking for he imployes the creatures to seduce us he discovers beauties to make us Idolaters spreads nets to catch us Creaturae Dei in odium factae sunt et in tentationem animabus hominum et in muscipulam pedibus insipientium Sapient cap. 14. and of every creature makes a Lure to engage us into sin Greatness serves to swell us with vanity riches to nuzzle us in covetousnesse beauties to awaken our wantonnesse and food which is necessary for our life to plunge us into sensuality Hee makes weapons of all the parts of our body deals with our senses to corrupt us nor is he ever more terrible then when he arms our selves against our selves Finally To leave nothing unattempted he perverts what-ever is most necessary in the world and mixes disorders in those actions that cannot be dispensed with to the end that thinking to preserve our lives we may be instrumentall to his malice and our ruine Marriage is the nursery of the world Posuit in comestione gulam in generatione luxuriam in dominatione supcrbiam in correctione iram in conversatione invidiam Aug. 't is that Sacrament that repairs the havock death makes that entertains families supplyes Kingdoms with Ministers of State and Souldiers peoples heaven replenisheth the orders of Angels and consummates the number of the Elect In the mean time our Enemy hath rendered it dangerous in rendering it unchaste he turns the remedy into a poyson and making sinners licentious of a married couple makes many times a pair of Adulterers Eating is the subsistence of life 't is that to man that Marriage is to the world it protects us from famine that tends to death it repairs our strength with pleasure and if it be the most necessary of our remedies 't is also the most delightfull But the Divel hath tempred it with gluttony and excesse thereby to corrupt it he occasions debauchments at feasts and we vitiously please our palate when we think onely to supply our necessity Government is one of the usefullest inventions of the Politick or rather of Providence The power of Kings preserves justice in States their Scepter is a terrour to the wicked and a support to the good God shews himself visible in their person and we look upon them with as much respect as Infidels did heretofore upon their false Deities In the mean time the pride that steals into Greatness through the malice of the Divel dimms their lustre makes their power odious and many times makes their lawfull Authority degenerate into a most insupportable Tyranny Correction and Conversation are equally necessary the one entertains society the other eliminates offences the one polisheth our manners the other perfects them the one renders us civil the other vertuous mean while the subtilty of the malignant spirit scatters anger into Correction envie into Conversation and corrupting the fruits and effects of each hinders us from profiting by the advice and entertainments of our friends Who would not lose all patience amidst such a throng of miseries did not the holy Spirit give us strength to vanquish the fury of our Enemies prudence to defend us against their plots and subtilties Spiritus adjuvat infirmitatem nostram Rom. 8. and consolation to support us against the bitternesse of our afflictions For he it is
that fortifies our weakness when we are set upon that dissipates our darkness when we are blinded and sweetens our discontents when we are troubled Hee weeps with us without interessing his felicity he shares in our infirmities without prejudicing his Almightinesse he is sadded with our miseries without disquieting his own contentedness he puts sighs into our hearts words into our mouthes reasons into our understandings to expresse our wretchedness and to pacifie our Judge Postulat pro nobis gemitibus inenarrabilibus The union he contracts with us is so strict that the Scripture attributes to him what it would have us do and by a strange liberty makes him partakers of our miseries as we are made partakers of his happiness The last torment of man a sinner is the doubt he hath of his salvation Death is troublesom because the hour thereof is uncertain neither hath he that pronounc'd sentence upon us express'd the time of its execution All moments are to be suspected by us every day may be our last and the accidents that cause our dissolution are so involved in futurity that they daily seize us before we are provided for them Nescit homo utrum amore an odio dignus sit sed omnia in futuruÌ„ servantur incerta Eccl. 9. But our salvation is much more concealed then our death Predestination is much more secret and more important then the end of our life and the alarms so just an apprehension strikes us with are much more lawfull and amazing There is no man that hath read in the Book of the living nor that knows whether his name be written there the whole world trembles at the thought of that irrevocable judgment the Character of Baptism the vocation into the Church the power of working Miracles the love of Enemies the forgetting of Injuries and what-ever is most glorious and most difficult in Religion are no certain proofs of our predestination Fear is alwayes mix'd with hope in our souls the Grace that quickens us may forsake us the example of the Reprobate strikes us with astonishment and after the Treason and Despair of Judas there is no Saint but trembles This is the greatest pain that afflicts Christians Vae miseris nobis qui de electione nostra nullam adhuc Dei vocem cognovimus jam in otio torpemus vae etiam laudabili vitae hominum si remota pictate judicemur Greg. the cruellest punishment that exerciseth their patience the rudest torment that proves their charity Thus would it be an insupportable vexation did not the holy Spirit sweeten it by the inward testimony he witnesseth to our Conscience But he moreover gives us assurances of our salvation he makes us obscurely read over the Book of Life he takes us into that privie-Chamber where the definitive sentence of our Eternity is pronounc'd Ipse Spiritus testimonium reddit spiritui nostro quòd sumus filii Dei Rom. 8. he applyes to us the merits of Jesus Christ and interposes himself the caution of his promises he blots out those mortall discontents which labour to cast us into despair he heightens our hope by a prelibation of glory and handles us with so much tenderness that we have much adoe to beleeve that we can be miserable in the other world having been so happy in this The Tenth DISCOURSE Of the CHRISTIAN's Ingratitude towards the Holy SPIRIT IF that Philosopher had reason to say Nibil in rerum natura tam sacrum quod sacrilegum non inveniat Sen. There was nothing so sacred in Nature that meets not with some sacrilegious person to prophane it Divines may with greater justice affirm There is nothing so holy in Religion that wicked and ungodly men do not dishonour and by their malice desecrate its holyest mysteries The divine Mercy is the source of all Graces were not God mercifull we should be eternally miserable did not he remit the injuries done against him the first offence would cast us into despair and having once lost his grace we could expect nothing but punishments in the mean time his Mercy makes sinners presumptuous in their crimes that which should convert them hardens them and that which promiseth them impunity carryes them for the most part to impenitency The death of Jesus Christ is the last testimony of his love his wounds are so many bleeding mouthes breathing forth this Truth and when we begin to doubt of it we need but consider the streams of blood that issued from his veins In the mean time Positus est in ruinam in resurrectionem mulâ—orum Luc. 7. his death is often the occasion of our fall we perswade our selves that he that could finde in his heart to die for us is too much concern'd in our salvation to destroy us upon this vain hope we abandon our selves to all wickednesse and turn our Antidote into a poyson The holy Sacrament is the highest invention the charity of the Son of God could finde out none but an infinite Wisdome could designe it nor could any but an absolute uncontrolled Power put it in execution both of them are drained in this Mystery and when the Son of God is incarnated upon our Altars to enter into our hearts there is no other favour to be wished for upon earth Neverthelesse experience teacheth us that this Grace is not onely unprofitable Sumunt boni sumunt mali sorte tamen inaequali vitae vel interitus D. Thom. but pernicious to sinners that it conveighes death instead of life mixeth a sacriledge with a sacrifice and makes the devill enter into their soules by admitting Jesus Christ unworthily But not to stand upon the proofe of so known a Truth we need but represent the Grace of the Holy Spirit and the ingratitude of wicked men to be fully perswaded thereof He is the fruitfull source of all the blessings we receive from heaven he is the dispenser of all the merits of the Sonne of God nor can we expect any thing of the one but by the mediation of the other In the mean time we prophane his Graces cast off his Inspirations his goodnesse serves onely to set an edge upon our malice the more favourable he is to us the more rebellious are we against him and the more arts he useth to convert us the more barres do we oppose to resist him we may judge of this by the names he beares and by the attempts he makes to gaine us he gives testimony of his love and affection towards us The Holy Spirit is the Principle of our supernaturall life Spiritus Domini ferebatur super aquas ad Creationem pertinet nisi quis renatus fuerit ad regenâ—rationem Faith instructs us that 't is he that frees us from the state of sin to levell us a passage to Grace if we are the effects of his power in the world we are the works of his mercy in the Church so high a favour would challenge as high an acknowledgment so that
you goes on Saint Augustine seeing the same thing happens to us every day and an ordinary and familiar example evidenceth the same truth For when ye are in the throng of an Assembly and some body treads upon your foot your tongue presently complains and though no body toucht it cries out you have hurt me what means it by that expression Might it not be replyed you are in safety the place you have in the body secures you from danger and if any part be offended 't is the foot not you In the mean time Truth and Charity require this language for being in the same body with the foot their good and bad are common he that hurts one hurts the other the society that unites them and the compassion that grows from their society constraines it to utter theâ—e complaints as just as they are true Let us apply this comparison and say though Iesus Christ suffer not in his Person he suffers in that of the Faithfull that making up one body with them he is sensible of their pains and taking part in their wrongs is offended when any one offends them By the same consequence a Christian can doe no good to other Christians but the Son or God is beholding to him for it For the Felicity he enjoyeth exempts him from all want nothing can be added to his riches by desires and he is so great and so happy that there is nothing he can either hope or fear yet is he indigent in the faithfull and he may be assisted in the person of the miserable he protests that in that terrible day when he will examine the good and bad works of his Subjects he will recompence the good offices done to the poor as done to himself nor will make any difference between the good usage he received in his naturall body and that he shall have received in his mysticall body he will equally pronounce sentence upon these different actions and every where confounding the Head with the Members will punish with as much severity those that have persecuted him in the poor as those that nailed him to the Crosse That which yee did to one of the least of mine yee did unto me This truth ought to comfort the good and strike terrour into the wicked For if Iesus Christ live still in the distressed if the condition of a Head which he preserves in Glory make him languish in the poor we must needs conclude that those that oppresse them are as guilty as the Pharisees that oppressed Jesus Christ Though his Innocence was clouded under the likenesse of sinfull flesh and the lustre of his Majesty obscured by the humility of his person his enemies did despite to a God when they thought only to injure a Man they committed a Parricide when they imagined they acted only a murder and the Father punisheth them as guilty of Treason against the Divine Majesty because the miracles of his Sonne took away all pretence from their zeal and all excuse from their offence The same judgement threatens those that persecute the poor For though nothing of worth shine forth in them that can render them considerable though Iesus be hid under the misery of their condition and reason cannot discover a happy man under an unfortunate one nor a Son of God under a child of Adam he will not fail to punish them as severely as those that knew him not in Judea because his words which are to be respected as Oracles suffer us not to doubt of this verity which makes up one of the chiefest Articles of our Faith But if it be an argument of terrour to the wicked 't is a ground of comfort and consolation to the godly For they may still succour the Son of God in wretched and distressed people they may imitate the piety of Martha and Mary Magdalen they may enjoy the priviledges which make up the glory of those blessed women they may still be the entertainers of Iesus Christ and receiving him in the person of the poor and strangers Ne quis vestrum dicat 〈◊〉 beati qui Christum suscipere in propriam domii meruerunt noli dolere noli murmurare quia temporibus natus es quando jam dominum non vides in carne non tibi abstulit istam dignationem cum uni inquit ex minimis meis fecistis mibi fecistis Aug. Serm. 27. de Verb. Dom. participate in their merits who received him himself into their houses The Son of God will not have us make any difference between his naturall and his mysticall body his hands and his feet are not dearer to him then the poor and all that is done to these may expect the same reward as that which was done to them If we beleeve S. Chrysostome there is more advantage by serving Christ in his afflicted members then there was to wait upon him in his own Person because there is more trouble in it and as our senses meet with nothing that can flatter them in that exercise our love is more pure and more disinteressed There was as much pleasure as honour to perform acts of service to the Son of God whilest he lived upon earth the Majesty of his Countenance the graciousnesse of his Aspect the Charms of his Conversation the Power of his Words were recompence enough to them that received him into their houses they had a certain adhaesion to his person from whence they were to be separated by death That visible presence which charmed their eyes diminished their merit and the love they bare to that body that was the workmanship of the Holy Ghost had imperfections which were to be purified by elongation But the Faithfull who serve the Son of God in the poor are free from this danger they behold nothing in these sad objects that can please their sense they must consult their faith to find Iesus Christ there they must doe violence to themselves to pay their homage at those shrines and that Image having no allurements all their devotion betakes it self purely to seek after Iesus Christ in Heaven But not to determine this difference 't is sufficient to know for our comfort that Iesus Christ is in the Christians that the glories of the one and the miseries of the other separate them not that he suffers in us without any abatement of his Felicity that we reigne in him without any prejudice to our merit that he is upon the Earth though cloathed with the Glories of Immortality that we are in Heaven though shrowded in the rags of misery that in the difference of our conditions Quoties ergo videmus aliquem indigentem agnoscamus ChristuÌ„ in illo quia ipse indigens membrum Christi est Bern. de Pass Domi. cap. 32. there is a perfect communication of good and bad things between him and us that his Grace is ours our sins are his with this difference onely that his Grace cancels our sins and our sins despoile not him of his Innocence The
hath vouchsafed to bear our miseries hath been pleased to speak our language The Church saith that great Doctor is made up of all the Faithful Quia ergo totus Christus caput est corpus Ecclesiae prepter a in omnibus Psalmis sic audiamus voces capitis ut audiamus voces corporis Aug. in Psal 56. because all the Faithful are the Members of Jesus Christ Though her Head be in heaven he fails not to guide her upon earth and though separated by the distance of places ceaseth not to be united to her by charity Wherefore Christ making the Head and the Body we ought not in the Psalms to separate the voice of the Head from that of the Body nor think it strange that he that never deserted the Church never held other language then his Spouse did This it it that he treats of elsewhere in clearer and fuller terms If Jesus be our Head and we his Body the Head and the Body compose whole Jesus Christ nor is Jesus Christ entire if he comprehend not both This Maxime must serve us as a light to explain the Scripture by with which if we are not always enlightned we are in danger to mistake For sometimes we meet with words that cannot be applied to the Head and which would involve us in an errour or in doubt did we apply them to the body there are others that cannot be appropriated to the Body and yet are uttered by Jesus Christ To unravel these difficulties we need but attribute to the Head what cannot agree to the Body remembring that Jesus Christ speaks sometimes in his own person and sometimes in the person of the Church He spake certainly in her name when he complained that his Father had forsaken him because we know very well the Son was never abandoned by the Father were it not when he sustained the person of Adam who was forsaken of God as soon as he became guilty But because this Truth is but too evident let us pass to the Third condition of the Marriage of Jesus Christ with his Church and see how they are two in one and the same passion One of the chiefest effects of Love is Anima est magis ubi amat quà m ubi animat to make us Live where we Love and to make us Suffer where we Live Experience better perswades us of this Maxime then Reason and 't is needless to prove a Truth which every man may evidence in himself A father knows he is more affected with the sorrows of his children then with his own a husband is not ignorant that he sufters less in his own person then in that of his wife and all Lovers proclaim that the injuries or discontents of their Mistresses wound them deeper then those that fall upon themselves Siqua sides vulnus quod feci non dolet inquit Sed quod in facies hoc mihi Paetc dolet Mart. That generous gallant wife was well acquainted with this Axiome who protested she felt not the blowe the Poniard gave her self but onely that which her husband was resolved to receive As Charity which unites Jesus Christ to the Church is stronger then Conjugal love so doth it more advantageously produce this effect in them Their sufferings are common the Son of God suffers no sorrows which the Church resents not and the Church endures no torments which the Son of God complains not of Therefore hath S. Augustine said that the Church suffered in Jesus Christ when jesus Christ suffered for the salvation of the Church and that Jesus Christ suffered in the Church when the Church was persecuted for the glory of Jesus Christ their complaints were proofs of their sufferings and as the Church complained in Jesus Christ when he cried out upon the Cross My God my God why hast thou forsaken me Jesus complained in behalf of his Church when from the midst of his glory he said Saul Saul why persecutest thou me But as Saint Paul had learnt this truth from the mouth of the Son of God himself by whom he was informed that a man could not persecute the Church but he must persecute Jesus Christ there was not any of the Apostles who so highly exalted his labours as he did For knowing very well that he was a Member of the Church in which condition he could not suffer but Jesus Christ must suffer with him he speaks of his own sufferings as of those of his Master and out of a confidence which could arise from nothing but his love he boasts that in suffering he finished the Passion of Jesus Christ Adimpleo ea quae desunt passionum Christi He knew very well that nothing was wanting to the sorrows of the Son of God that the rage of the executioners was glutted upon his person that the Truth of Figures was accomplished in his death and that himself before he bowed his head and gave up the ghost had said aloud Consummatum est But he knew also that Jesus Christ had two Bodies that he suffered in one what he could not suffer in the other and that honouring his Father in both he sacrificed himself in his Members after he had sacrificed himself in his Person S. Augustine happily expresseth the meaning of S. Paul in these words Jesus Christ suffers no more in that flesh he carried into heaven but he suffers in mine that is still persecuted upon the earth nor are we to wonder at it because it is no more I that live but he that liveth in me And if this Maxime were not true Jesus Christ had never complained of the persecution of Saul nor ever Saul have been so bold as to say he had filled up what was wanting in the sufferings of Christ But a little to clear this passage we must say that the Son of God being the Pledge and Surety of sinners was willing to satisfie the justice of his Father and bear all the pains their sins deserved Passio Domini usque ad finem munâ—i producitur sicut in Sanctis suis ipse honoratur ipse diligitur in pauperibus ipse pascitur ipse vestitur ita in omnibus qui pro justitia adversae tolerant ipse compatitur Leo. de pass Dom. Ser. 19. Death being one of the severest and the sentence that designes us to it expresses no one kinde that we might fear all the Son will have them undergo all and by that stratagem of Love change all our Chastisements into Oblations of piety But because the Body his mother gave him could not suffer all these deaths their different kinds being incompatible and that one and the same man could not be nailed to the Cross devoured by wilde beasts choaked in the waters consumed by the flames he was pleased to associate a mystical Body which being compounded of different Members might undergo divers punishments and to satisfie the excess of his Charity might honour his Father by as many sacrifices as there were kindes of death in
to act when this ceaseth to operate For the right understanding of this Truth we must remember that though the Christian and the Man be one and the same person yet have they their oppositions and their differences Man believes himself perfect when he is free and reasonable these two faculties are his principal advantages and the vanity of Philosophy perswades him that as long as he acts according to Reason he cannot fail of attaining felicity To keep himself in this state he is careful that the Senses pervert not his Understanding that the Passions trouble not his Rest and an inordinate Love deprive him of his Liberty But this blinde Opiniator sees not that he carries his enemy in his own bosom that Concupiscence orders all the motions of his soul that Reason is but her slave and that he is never more wedded to himself then when he thinks to hang loose from all things else As the Christian is a new man he acts by other principles for he renounceth Reason to give himself over to Grace he quits the light of his Understanding to submit to the obscurity of Faith and his endeavour is to quench the flames of Self-love that he may burn onely with the fire of Charity He learns in the School of Christianity that Reason is a bad guide because she lets Concupiscence lead her he knows that the Understanding is prevented with a thousand errours and having lost the better part of his light he many times confounds Vertue with Vice He is not ignorant that the Will is the most depraved as it is the most guilty of all his faculties and being engaged in the love of the creatures finds nothing that charms the affection but what is corruptible and perishable Therefore is his greatest care to get assistance against these domestick enemies and wholly to surrender himself to grace that it may be to him for a guide and a defence Thus Faith becomes his Light Hope his Supporter Charity his Love and if we may speak so Grace is made his second Nature To the vain errours of Science he opposeth the solid lights of Faith to the false promises of the world the true promises of Jesus Christ to self-love divine love and to the corruption of Nature the purity of Grace Then is it that soaring above himself he learns by a happy experience that he was never more free then since he became a slave and that Grace is so far from robbing him of his liberty that it hath delivered him from a bondage as cruell as it was ignominious For as Saint Augustine saith Free-will finds its perfection in Charity he that was in darkness becomes enlightned from weakness he passeth to strength from disorder to good government and he that was sullied with the love of the creatures recovers his purity in the love of the Creator But nothing more obliges the Christian to renounce his reason that so he may become the subject of Grace then to know that his last end is supernaturall and that he cannot attain it by forces solely naturall For though man have some knowledge of God though he observe his perfections in the creatures though he judge of his greatness by the beauty of his works and recoiling into himself sees there some shadows of him whose image he is yet he knows very well that God is so great that he cannot be perceived but by his own light Indeed he must shed abroad some rays into our soul that the soul may have some glympse of him he must clarifie and strengthen her that she may look up unto him and mounting above her selfe may render her partaker of that light whereby he is made visible to the blessed in glory Thus though the will have some affection for the Supream Good though she cannot fixe upon any objects that have not some appearance of Goodness in them and that in the midst of her greatest disorders there still remains some inclination towards her Creator yet the Christian knows that God cannot be worthily embrac'd but by that love he works in us that charity must be poured into our hearts and that without the assistance of this Divine gift we can neither love him nor hate our selves as we should The inclination Nature stamped upon us in her purity was too weak to effect this and that which Nature hath left us since her corruption is too inordinate to lead us to it Thus Grace is necessary in both conditions and the actions that proceed not from this Principle are to be suspected because according to the Maximes of Saint Augustine those that flow not from Charity flow most commonly from Concupiscence These two Soveraigns possess the will successively as the first works nothing but good the second is only active in evil and to be disingaged from the tyranny of the one there is no other way but to submit to the lawful dominion of the other Thence it comes to pass that the same Doctor declaring his full judgement in that Epistle he writ to Vitalius informs us that Grace depends upon Gods pure Liberality that 't is due neither to Men nor Infants though it be necessary to all the actions of the former that God who is the Author of it respects neither their works nor their dispositions that men may know when he bestows it 't is an emanation of his mercy and when he denies it 't is an act of his justice He that shall well weigh the sense of these words as profound as the depths he treats of will not have much adoe to acknowledge the indigence of the creature the need he hath of Grace and the Liberty God reserves to himself of dispensing it to whom he will The Third DISCOURSE That the Grace of a Christian ought to be more powerfull then that of Adam IT is strange but withall very true that nothing so much hinders a man from valuing the remedies that cure him as the opinion he hath that he was not very sick This is it that to this day abuseth the greatest part of Christians and lessens the obligation they have to the Grace of Jesus Christ For they are perswaded that the fault of our first Father hath scarce made any devastations in our Nature that the greatest part of our evils spring not so much from our will as from our imagination and that there is little difference between the state of sin and the state of originall righteousness Pride insensibly confirms us in this belief we make our weakness pass for cowardise nor can we be brought to acknowledge that our passions are the punishment of our disobedience From this first Errour is derived a second more troublesome then the former For believing our disease light we think the remedy extream easie and judging Concupiscence not so strong we judge the Grace of Jesus Christ nothing so powerful Indeed those that imagine that mans liberty is yet vigorous enough to resist sin acknowledge only a sufficient grace adding little to that of
disposition it findes her For those that fully div'd into the meaning of S. Augustine have observed that the Grace of Jesus Christ though always effectual is not always victorious and though it never fail to produce some holy desires or good motions in the soul of a sinner yet it surmounts not always the illigitimate pleasure that holds her captive so that its manner of acting differs very much from Physicall predetermination which ever tames the will notwithstanding all the resistance she can make Finally this third opinion takes and leaves something of the second it takes that sweetness that charms the will of man and confesseth all the force of grace to consist in that suavity that accompanies it but it rejects that lazy compliance that subjects grace to liberty making man in some sort the master of his salvation it cannot allow that our consent should more depend upon our selves then upon grace and that acting in the state of sin as if we had acted in the state of innocence we should rather dispose of grace then grace of us To explain therefore the power of this Divine influence according to the most common opinion and most constant with S. Augustine it consists me thinks in a certain sweet elapse shedding it self into the will charming it so agreeably that 't is transported by it doing nothing but by the motion of this suavity which becomes infallibly victorious surmounting the delectation that captivated the will If it produce not always this last effect it fails not to produce some others For if it disingage not the sinners soul it breathes into him some desire of his liberty imprints some motions into him that make him sigh if it breaks not his chains it easeth the weight of them and enables him to form some good designs or conceive some good wishes But whatever man does 't is grace still that makes him doe it it is more the principle of his action then himself and seeing it produceth in him according to the language of the great Apostle both to will and to doe he is obliged to say with the same Apostle that he owes all that he is and all that he doth to Grace and that the glory he expects is rather the reward of grace then of his merits From all this Discourse 't is easie to judge that this last opinion comprehends the two other that it unites force with sweetness in grace that it may prevail upon man without wiolence It respects the Majesty of God because it gives him the absolute disposall of his creature it spares the liberty of man Certum est nos velle cum volumus sed ille facit ut velimus bonum certum est nos facere cum facimus sed ille facit ut faciamus praebendo vires efficacissimas voluntati Aug. because it subjects it only to pleasure which is never more welcome then when forc'd and gives it a share in the work of salvation because it confesseth with Saint Augustine that he acts with the grace that makes him act Ageris ut agas bene agis si à bono agaris There remains one difficulty which I am content to propound without resolving To wit whether Grace always mingle force with sweetnesse to convert a sinner or to guide a just person for it seems there are some souls that God deals roughly with which taste no inward sweetnesse at all and destitute of all delectation act only by the strength and faithfulness of their grace They are continually plunged in grief and sorrow they may bespeak God as Job did in the midst of his afflictions Mutatus es mihi in crudelem and they may boast with the Apostle that all their strength consists in their weakness Tunc potens sum cum infirmor I know very well that Saint Augustine never separates force from sweetness in grace and that where ever he describes it victorious he describes it agreeable But may we not say also that this great Doctor hath spoken of Grace as he had experience of it himself and being disingaged from sinfull pleasures by innocent ones believed all graces sweet and that the particular conduct God had observ'd towards his soul was his generall proceeding with all others In a word Mysticall Divines and Spirituall Guides seem to acknowledge ways wherein God separates light from force and force from sweetness though in both these he faile not to promote souls in piety But because Saint Augustine hath given no notice of them in his works let us hold our selves to his conceptions and say that if there are graces where light and force are more sensible then sweetnesse there are none where sweetness is not mixt with force and light and the sweetness so much more effectuall that being more intimate 't is lesse known to the understanding and more remote from sense The Sixt DISCOURSE That the names Saint Augustine gives Christian Grace bear witness 't is effectuall MAn is so free that he cannot endure any thing that checks his liberty he is more afraid of servitude then of death he had rather die a Free-man then live a Slave and if liberty were not to be found in Heaven I question whether he could find in his heart to be happy 'T is the love he hath to this advantage which serves him for excuse of his greatest crimes If he repine to live in a Monarchy 't is because he conceives the absolute power of Soveraigns inconsistent with the liberty of their subjects If hee cannot submit to Laws 't is because hee is perswaded they intrench upon his will and that they will fetter a creature over whom God will not reign by compulsion If finally Christians cannot suffer effectuall grace if the name be distastfull or suspected and if instead thereof they introduce sufficient grace 't is because they believe it reduceth man to a troublesome bondage excluding merit and prejudicing liberty But because there are unjust pannick fears and evils that more hurt the imagination then the body I design this Discourse to discover the unreasonableness of this apprehension and to let those that are in love with liberty see that 't is not incompatible with effectuall grace because this according to Saint Augustine is a victorious pleasure charming our soul a triumphant love predominant over our will and a powerfull perswasion captivating our understanding Forasmuch as God hath made man free never taking that from him which once he hath bestowed upon him he could not have employed a more gracious nor more effectuall way to gain him then pleasure All creatures are taken with it and the Poet had reason to say There is nothing that is not sweetly master'd by pleasure The Ambitious seek not so much the reputation in honours as the pleasure because they contemn them assoon as they cease to be agreeable The Covetous is not so much provoked with profit as pleasure in the desire of wealth because he spends many times prodigally to procure other things that
more delight him Nay the Lascivious wanton is not so much in love with beauty as with pleasure because he placeth his affection sometimes upon objects that have no appearance of beauty and many times forsakes a handsome woman to court a deformed one Thus pleasure is a powerfull charm that masters all hearts plunders liberties and makes slaves that never complain of their bondage because they are voluntary Lovers that seek the secret of purchasing affection study nothing but complacency being assured they shall produce love in that heart where they have begot pleasure Flatterers never insinuate into the minds of great men but by rendring themselves acceptable nor doe their false Commendations steal in at the ears but because pleasure takes up the place of truth The very Devils though our mortall enemies seduce us not but because they please us and had they not found out the art of mixing pleasure with sin all their temptations would be fruitless But the will of man though never so free hath such an inclination toward pleasure that did she never so strongly barracado her self she could not possibly resist it she holds out against truth because she is blind and sees not the beauties 't is adorned with she secures her self against violence because she is free and naturally opposeth whatever seems to incroach upon her liberty she does not acquiesce in reason because she is deaf nor hears any discourse but such as charms the understanding by convincing it But pleasure hath allurements which she can no wayes withstand she trembles when ever it sets upon her she is afraid to lose her liberty in his presence and knowing the power it hath over her inclinations she cals in sorrow to her succour to guard her against this pleasing enemy If it be true that pleasure reigns absolutely over the will we need not think it strange that grace which is nothing else but a victorious suavity hath such advantage over her for besides that this Heavenly influence surpasseth all the delights in the world that charm us having more allurements then glory and beauty that makes so many Lovers and Martyrs it insinuates much deeper into the will then whatever ravisheth us mortals Tunc enim bonum concupisci incipit cum dulcescere incipit ergo benedictio dulcedinis est gratia Dei qua fit in nobis ut nos delectet cupiamus hoc est amemus quod praecipit nobis Aug. Being in the hands of Jesus Christ whom nothing can resist it glides into the very Center of our heart making impressions there that are never more strong then when they are most agreeable thence it cashieres all pleasures that have unjustly usurpt upon us and knowing all the weaknesses of the place it sets upon we need not wonder if she make her self mistresse Other pleasures enter not into the will but at the gate of the senses they have lost half their strength before they can make their approach and her inclinations being unknown to them they many times cause aversion intending to procure love But grace wooes the heart without the mediation of the senses and more powerfull then pleasures that act not upon all the faculties of the soul carries light into the understanding faithfulnesse into the memory and pleasure into the will so that we need not wonder if the sinner suffer himself to be overcome by a Divine quality that sheds delight into all the powers and faculties of the soul That which Grace effects thus agreeably by pleasure it brings to pass more powerfully by Love For according to the judgement of S. Augustine Amor imperiü babet super omnes animae vires propter hoc quod ejus objectum est bonum Aristo Di. Tho. and when God means to convert a sinner his sole design is to make him his Lover Love is the Master of all hearts There is no impossibility this passion undertakes not Miracles are his sports and all the prodigies Antiquity hath teem'd with are nothing but the effects of this Soveraign Scripture is never more eloquent then when it intends to express the force thereof nothing satisfies it in this design all words seem too weak to express its conceptions and finding no comparisons that answer the dignity of the subject it descends to the Tombes where having considered the Trophies of death is forc'd to confess that his power equals not that of Love it passeth to the very Center of the Earth observes the unrelenting hardness of Hel and comparing the pains of the damned with the anxiety of lovers leaves us in doubt whether Hel or Love be more pitiless But not to aggravate his power by such strange comparisons let it suffice to judg of him by his effects Though he be the son of the Wil yet is he the Master he disposeth so absolutely of his Mother that she hath no motions but what her Son inspires her with she undertakes nothing but by his orders 't is the weight that sets her a going the Loadstone that attracts her the King that governs her and she so absolutely depends upon his power that nothing but another love can dis-engage her she is so fierce or so free that neither violence nor fear can tame her she laughs at tortures preserves her liberty in the midst of fetters and many times torments make her but more wilfull Only Love mollifies her hardness his charmes gain upon her what sorrow cannot and experience teacheth us there is no surer Command then that which is founded upon Love In the mean time Vanity which is almost the inseparable companion of Greatness perswades Kings that 't is a debasement to seek the love of their subjects and seduced by this false Maxime they endeavour to make themselves feared not being able to make themselves beloved But God who hath formed the heart of man and knows how they may be vanquished without being forc'd owes all his Conquests to his Love he never appears more absolute then when he tames a rebellious Will when of an Enemy he makes a Lover and changing his inclinations sweetly compels him to fall in love with him Forinsecus terret per Legem intrinsecus delectat per Amorem Aug. His Power sparkles in his Corrections he astonisheth sinners when he loosens the mountains from their foundations when he makes the earth shake under their feet the thunder rumble over their heads and threatens the world with an universal Deluge or a general Conflagration But all these menaces convert not the Guilty the fear that terrifies them reduceth them not to their duty their heart remains criminal when their mouthes and their hands be innocent and if God inspire not his love into them he punisheth indeed their offence but changeth not their Will This prodigious Metamorphosis is reserved for his love 't is his charity that must triumph over rebels nor is there any thing but his Grace that by its imperious sweetness can oblige a sinner to love him I am not
afraid to injure mans Liberty in using terms so significant because supposing Grace nothing but Love it can do no violence to the Will for of all the things in the world there is none freer then Love A man cannot complain that he is forced when nothing but charms of affection are employed to gain him and if there are some Lovers that have blamed the rigour of their mistresses there is none that have found fault with their love If it be an Evil 't is a voluntary one it hurts none but those that willingly embrace it and of so many punishments that torment us there is none more innocent because none more free Crowns may be snatched from Soveraigns Confidence may be taken from Philosophers Orators may be convinced any man may lose his life but whatever stratagems are made use of whatever violence men practise a Lover cannot be forced nor his love extorted from him Seeing then Grace is nothing but Charity and Charity nothing but a holy Love we must not apprehend violence nor imagine that the assaults of this divine quality can at all injure our Liberty because it does not disengage us from evil but by obliging us to love God If Grace cannot force our Will because it is a victorious love it ought less to constrain it because according to the language of S. Augustine 't is a pleasant perswasion For this great man considering that he was to deal with Free-will on one side and the Power of Grace on the other that he was to maintain the Empire of God and the Liberty of Man he hath always exprest himself so happily that he never prejudic'd either and as indeed Grace never forceth Man but perswades him it holds something of Eloquence or of Reason that triumphs over Liberty without compelling it Rhetorick is an Art that teacheth us to perswade Truth Orators are agreeable Soveraigns that bear rule over the mindes of their Auditors that calm their Passions change their Designes Quid enim inter Pisistratum Periclem interfuit nisi quod ille armatus hic sine armis tyrannidem gessâ—â— Cicer. and gently force their Wills Therefore was it unhandsomely done of that Ancient to compare Pericles with Pisistratus because this Tyrant domineered but over mens Bodies that Orator exercised a dominion over their Souls the one made use of Violence the other employed nothing but Sweetness the one procured the hatred of his Subjects the other the love of his Auditors For no man could complain of Pericles because he used nothing but Eloquence to perswade his Command was founded upon Reason his chief Force consisted in Truth he subjected no Understandings but by clearing them nor changed any mens Wills but in taking them by their interests or their inclinations In a word Eloquence may boast her self a Soveraign that reigns without arms subdues people by her word convinceth Philosophers by her reasons and subjects Monarchs by her power She protects the Innocent comforts the Distressed condemns or absolves the Guilty and as she animates the Advocates or the Judges produceth different miracles in their souls Whether she inchant the Ears by the harmonious cadencies of her Periods whether she excite love and hatred by her gestures her principal designe is to master the Liberty of Man She sets not upon the Understanding but to gain the Will she appears complacent that she may be perswasive nor doth she require the attention or her auditors but that she may get their consent 'T is true never any man complains of her violence because she is sweet and he that hath changed his minde at the hearing of an Orator never accused him of Tyranny 'T is certainly upon this ground that S. Augustine calls Grace a powerful perswasion because imitating Eloquence it clears our Spirits calms our Passions and gains our Consent It hath this advantage over Eloquence that it hath no need of our Ears to win our Hearts it transmits it self by it self into the inmost recesses of the soul findes out Reason in her Throne without employing the Senses carries Light into the Understanding and kindles Love in the Will Thus she perswades what she will to the obstinate subdues rebels without arms makes her Subjects will what she desires they should and when she displays all her forces she works the conversion of a sinner in a moment This certainly was the power Jesus Christ made use of when he laid Saint Paul flat at his feet when he converted that Persecutor into an Apostle changed his heart and his tongue and made him that breathed nothing but murder say Lord what wilt thou have me to do He lost not his Liberty for having lost his Fury he changed not his Nature for having changed his Judgement nor can we say that the perswasion that gained his consent was less free or more violent for being so sudden Grace knows how to be obeyed without making us slaves she can perswade without compelling and more powerful then Eloquence is able to make us love what we hated before That great Orator that guided the Romane Common-wealth with his Tongue and made his opinion so dexterously pass into the soul of his Auditors that gallant man I say hath wrought miracles by his Eloquence which we have much ado to allow the grace of Jesus Christ to effect He could boast that he altered the resolution of Caesar defending the cause of Ligarius that he shook the papers out of the hands and the hatred out of the heart of that Conquerour that he made him recal the sentence he had already pronounced in his soul that he overcame him by his Reasons that fubdued all by his Arms and trampled upon the pride of a Tyrant that had triumphed over the Liberty of Rome In the mean time we have much ado to believe that Grace can work miracles we weaken its Vertue to preserve our own Free-will we are not content that Jesus Christ should be as powerful as an Orator and when we hear of these victorious Graces and of these invincible perswasions we imagine as if there were a designe to oppress the publike Liberty Let us ascribe that to Grace which we grant to Eloquence let us confess that the Son of God knows how to imprint Truth in our spirit and Love in our heart to perswade us infallibly let us acknowledge that he is not to seek by what stratagems to gain our inclinations that his Grace more intimate then Concupiscence is able to become the mistress of our Wills and whatever command she exerciseth over us she never destroys our Liberty because she hath no other designe then to enfranchise it out of servitude The Seventh DISCOURSE That we may judge of the power of Grace over the Christian by that of Concupiscence over the Sinner FOrasmuch as the things of the world never appear with greater lustre then when they are set in opposition against their contraries I conceive in this Discourse I shall not do amiss to confront Concupiscence
and Angels that they resist Grace that they abuse his favours and frustrate his designes This sin is constantly the first Article of their Confession they look upon it as the source of all the rest and these great men that are better acquainted with the motions of Grace then the learnedst Divines never speak thereof without regret for having rejected them I profess this Objection seems one of the strongest can be formed against Effectual Grace because I have taken it for a proof of Grace Sufficient and withal it seems to clash against the Principles of S. Augustine for if Grace always produceth her effect how can we resist it if she make her self mistress of our Will how can she meet with rebellion there and if she manage that faculty with as much force as dexterity how can we oppose her designs or stop the conquests of her that S. Augustine so many times calls victorious I know some Doctors dispatch this difficulty by an Answer that admits of no Reply and say that when the Saints complain of their infidelity towards Grace their meaning is to speak of that which toucheth our Senses or enlightens our Understandings and being so well instructed in the School of S. Augustine they are not ignorant that the true Grace of Jesus Christ infallibly produceth its effect But this Answer never satisfied me and I must acknowledge the language of the Saints seems too strong to be expressed by so weak a grace They speak of their resistance with so much grief that we may judge by their complaints that 't is of the grace of Jesus Christ which they have abused that they intend to speak Some others believe 't is not an actual resistance that they accuse themselves of because that is incompatible with effectual grace but of an habitual resistance that combats the designe of Grace though it hinders not its effect These seem better grounded then the former because 't is true that the greatest Saint in the world hath always an opposition against Grace as long as there is one degree of self-self-love and is contrary to Jesus Christ as long as he is conformable in any thing to the first Adam The inordinate intentions which insensibly fasten him to the things of the world the revolt of the Passions that trouble the repose of his minde and Concupiscence that weakens Charity are so many enemies heaving at Grace and retarding the accomplishment of her designes But for all this we must confess that this Answer resolves not fully the whole difficulty of the Objection for besides that this resistance to speak properly is not a sin because 't is purely habitual nor renders the Saints more culpable then Concupiscence we know very well that it impedes not the effect of Grace and that when God intends to make himself master of the Will he can as well tame bad Habits as bad Inclinations Therefore have I thought it necessary to adde That there are secret oppositions against Grace that are unknown to us That the Will is not so fully possest by Charity but Concupiscence shares with her That there is no inconvenience that she should be inanimated at the same time with two contrary loves though one be victorious over the other seeing S. Augustine hath so often confessed that his heart being divided between two affections he willed at the same time two things utterly opposite Or we must say that Grace though efficacious in the beginning languisheth in the progress that when the motion that carried the Will grows weak Concupiscence awakes and attempts a victory when she findes least resistance Thus Grace is worsted in her retreat self-self-love takes courage when the love of God gives ground and this Grace that was victorious in the onset becomes as all things in the world faint and drooping towards the end If this Answer crosseth the principles of S. Augustine I disavow it and if it resolve not the difficulty propounded I intreat those that shall read this Work to consider that Grace is not less wondersul then Nature and if the vertue of the Loadstone hath left so many Philosophers at a loss we need not wonder if the power of Grace put the Divines in a confusion A Prosecution of the same DISCOURSE Wherein some other Objections against Effectual Grace are answered MAns Understanding since the Fall is of the same condition as the Earth This is fruitful onely in thorns and bears nothing but briars if it be not tilled by the labour of the husbandman and that is fertitle onely in errours and is delivered of nothing but doubts which rather fight against Truth then defend it His Ingeny serves him for no other end but to raise difficulties his light is always mixt with darkness and as if he were of the nature of Spiders that distil flowers into poison he changeth truth into errours and extracts nothing from the fairest Maximes of Religion but doubts and suspitions There is nothing more certain in Christianity then that Grace is the Principle of our Salvation that she supports our Will and gives that faculty strength to stand out against Concupiscence In the mean time this Truth is the mother of Errours our understanding hath drawn more darkness thence then light and the doctrine of Saint Augustine that hath ruined the Pelagians hath produced more scruples then resolutions amongst Divines We cannot speak of the dominion of Grace but we are troubled to secure the liberty of man We are well content God should be the Master because we dare not dispute his Soveraignty Non aliud intelligetis arbitrium laudabiliter liberum nisi quod fuerit Dei Gratia liheratum Aug. but we are loth man should be his slave as if we doubted of his Justice or questioned his Mercy whatever depends not upon our wil casts us into a sealousie if Grace be not in subjection to Free-will we cannot be quiet The example of Adam who was foil'd notwithstanding his Sufficient Grace cannot cure us of this apprehension and the violent desire we have to be absolute in all things makes us seek for our safety in our Independency The Objections that are made against the Doctrine of Saint Augustine are proofs of this passion and the number is so great that one Discourse being not large enough to resolve them we must employ this supplement to the same purpose One of the strongest and most remarkable is that Baptisme is a second Birth where the Christian being regenerated seems to have received a new Nature For in that happy moment wherein his sins are remitted he receives Habitual Grace which uniting him to Jesus Christ as to his Head sets him free from the slavery of Satan and entitles him to the felicity of Angels Forasmuch as this Grace is a second nature she hath her faculties whereby she works Faith is her Light Hope her Strength Charity her Love and these three vertues are supernatural habits that elevate her understanding and her will As God refuseth not his
sinner whose conversion may not be hop'd for she prayes for those that despitefully use her that after the example of Jesus Christ she may make her tormentors her friends In as much as this Discourse draws to an end I must be more briefe in the other definitions of Charity and say succinctly with Saint Augustine that she is the love of the true good because to speak properly she adheres onely to God in consideration of whom she despiseth all other goods which are nothing but lies or illusions The desire and possession whereof she leaves to concupiscence she envies not her false felicity because she knows 't is really but a true misery and by means of those lights that came down from heaven she never troubles her selfe to acquire those Goods which make not the possessours better because they cannot use them well if they be not good before they take them in possession By a necessary Consequence Charity is a love which makes us tender of those goods wee cannot lose against our wills I wonder not that Concupiscence is poore because the preservation of her riches depends not upon her will shee may be rob'd of all that shee loves violence or injustice may spoil her of her treasures calumny may black her reputation grief may damp her pleasures death whose only name brings so much terrour with it may take away her life But Charity who hath this advantage that shee hath chosen the better part is well assured it shall never be taken from her she loves a Good she cannot be plundred of she knows that Fortune hath no Dominion over Grace that the severity of torments and the sweetnesse of pleasures cannot impair her felicity This is it that St Augustine hath so happily express'd in those words which contain the Encomium and the definition of Charity Charitas est amor rerum quas non nisi volentes amittimus 'T is the love of things which we part not with but when we have a mind to it Inasmuch as there is great affinity between the supreme Good and dilection St Augustine hath drawn from one and the same Principle their common advantage for he teacheth us that as Love is not charitable but when it respects a Good which cannot be taken away the Good also is not true but when he that possesseth it cannot lose it but by his own fault Nolite amare praesentia quae possessa onerant amata inquinant amissa cruciant Ber. Solid good saith he is of such a nature that 't is never lost unless a man will The Covetous every day lose their riches with sorrow of heart the Ambitious fall from their dignities with grief of minde and the immodest Wantons testifie by their tears that the deprivation of what they love is no voluntary losse But this Good that inspires us with Goodness can neither be acquired nor lost without our own consent Thence ariseth another Definition of Charity and a second opposition to Concupiscence her Enemy This makes us slaves of what we love finde Servitude where we expect Soveraignty punisheth our Ambition in deceiving it as she imitates the Divel who ruin'd us by his promises she throws us into thraldom by filling us with the hope of Liberty There is no sinner but is sensible of his torment The Covetous are the slaves of their wealth a great Fortune is a glorious servitude and all those that are ingaged in love are intangled in a Captivity Therefore hath Augustine said admirably well Men become vassals of the Creatures when by unjust means they endeavour to make themselves Masters 'T is Charity onely that exalteth us in humbling us and more happy then Concupiscence makes us finde liberty in bondage soveraignty in obedience for submitting to God we soar above all sublunary things by teaching us to obey we learn to command and imposing but one Soveraign over us gives us as many subjects as there are creatures Finally to conclude this Discourse with a Definition which may be called the Panegyrick of Charity we say shee is the Love of eternall Goods as Concupisence is of perishable ones This vertue is so generous that after the example of Eagles which look only upon the Sun shee considers only God when shee expresseth any affection to men or Angels she riseth as high as the Creator she would conceive her self unjust did she love any thing but for God and making her glory of that Maxime she bespeaks God by the mouth of one of his Lovers with these excellent words Minus te amat qui tecum aliquid amat non propter te Aug. He loves thee not at all who loves any thing with thee which he loves not for thy sake Concupiscence on the contrary is wedded to the creatures runs along unhappily with them finds sorrow where shee looks for content and seeing those objects perish which were the Fuell to her flames is forced to wast away in sad lamentations and to begin those complaints here which will last for ever in the dominions of Hell The Sixth DISCOURSE Of the Properties and Effects of Charity IF the Learned Tertullian had reason to call the Devil Gods Ape me thinks I may stile Concupiscence the Ape of Charity because she endeavours to copy her thereby to obscure her promising her slaves the same advantages Charity makes her subjects hope for she takes the same course continues the same designs and in her opposition is so perfect a Transcript of this excellent Original that the most part of Philosophers confound them together Their ends are rather contrary then different but the means they make use of to come thither are altogether alike Their Principles are opposite but their Conclusions run parallel Their thoughts clash but their language agrees so that to compleat the Portraicture of Charity I must draw the Picture of Concupiscence and make use of the same colours to paint them both Concupiscence or self-self-love is active the greater it is in the source the more violent is it in the effects nothing can stop its fury and all the disorders we see in the world are the works of this irregular passion she changeth her name according to the objects she fixeth upon and adhering to Glory or Profit or Pleasure she is styled Ambition Lust or Avarice But in all these different conditions she is ever active and by no means sits still Sometimes she beats an Alarum to war to increase her reputation in enlarging her Empire Sometimes she passeth the Seas to get riches and driven by want which never forsakes her feeds her wolfe supposing to allay his appetite Sometimes she sets upon Chastity and making use of a thousand subtilties to corrupt it troubles whole Nature to purchase her satisfaction Therefore is it that Saint Augustine who was so well acquainted with the humour of Concupiscence says that no love was idle that 't was active assoon as born that the oppositions made against it double its fury and judging its strength by
its violence finds nothing impossible Thence is it that the ambitious conceive so many designs that surpass humane power and hardning themselves against all difficulties had rather break then bow Thence comes it to passe that the covetous undergoe so many miseries to fill their coffers and are exposed to the fury of all the elements to comply with that passion that tyrannizeth over them These attempts are the images of those Charity effects which is yet more active then Concupiscence For as her hope is founded upon God and the greatness of her Conquests heightens her courage whereby she travels for Eternity she believes there is no pain she ought not to suffer nor difficulties she must not overcome Nothing seems hard when it may serve her turn and measuring her force by her affection imagines nothing ought to check her enterprises Nihil difficile videtur amanti amor enim nomeÌ„ difficultatis erubescit Bern. She chides her laziness when she deliberates she is afraid her weaknesse should be objected to her when she parlies for composition and she is so used to overcome that she looks upon difficulties not so much as a true excuse as a shamefull pretence Thus the Martyrs have traversed the flames to find Jesus Christ The Virgins have provoked wild Beasts that they might be the sooner with their Beloved The Anchorites have contested with grief that they might carry Heaven by violence Finally Charity is of the nature of fire she cannot lie still she sets upon her body when she finds no other enemy and that she may not be unprofitable seeks for occasions of suffering when she wants those of acting And this is the second resemblance between these two Loves For Concupiscence hath her Martyrs as well as Charity she suffers for what she loves and as doing and suffering are mutually in the world she gives proof of her courage in these two different conditions From the evils she undergoes she extracts vanity she makes them her happinesse when they are past and lest they should slip out of her memory she ruminates upon them in her solitudes and entertains her self with them in companies she hath some satisfaction in her Martyrdome when she thinks it will be an argument of her Constancy or of her Fidelity nor is she troubled to be made the prey of Flames or of Lions provided she may evidence her Courage and her Affection Charity thrives better in this design then Concupiscence she hath made many more Martyrs then vain-glory hath as she takes her birth from the Crosse so is she never more vigorous nor content then when she swims in her own bloud she is witty to invent occasions of suffering and becomes her own tormentor when she can meet with no other The absence of her Beloved is the greatest part of her punishment and conceiving that torments may shorten her banishment she is inquisitive after them as the remedies of her languishing Therefore doe these Divine Lovers suffer always upon Earth the peace of the Church frees not them from persecution and though the Princes that govern them are Christians they meet with Tyrants that persecute them Every failing is their torture every moment makes them languish and they die a thousand times in a day because they will not die at last Indeed their Love which is as witty as cruel learns them innocent murders they commit Parricides without a Crime they kill Adam in their person that Jesus Christ may live there they take vengeance of this Father that made them guilty and destroying whatever they received from him of every one of their inclinations they make a reasonable sacrifice But the Master-piece of Love is that it makes that present which we love and in despight of absence unites us with it Remoteness is certainly one of the greatest torments of Love he shuns it as his mortallest enemy and employs all his stratagems to be secured from it he hath recourse to Presents knowing very well that they are the remembrancers of the absent and that 't is very hard to forget a person to whom we are beholding he entertains himself by the commerce of Letters he writes to those he cannot speak to he beguiles his Passion with a picture and not being able to see his friend he is satisfied with beholding his portraicture But when all these inventions content not he reflects upon himself and making use of his thoughts and desires he goes upon the quest and retrives him whose absence caused his punishment For the Understanding is an imperious faculty which by a Natural Magick renders absent things present excelling the Imagery of Painters because her Idea's can speak and the same spirit that gives them life infuses motion into them and speech If Love be not satisfied with this invention he obligeth the Will to enquire out what she affecteth and to quit the body and the soul to be united to the object of her sorrow To obey her Soveraign she commands her desires to bestir themselves to prevent the diligence of the windes and passeth Sea and Land to seek the Subject of her vexation to the worlds end She pursues the Posts she hath dispatched imitates the agility of Angels and like those spirits finding themselves wherever they operate clings in spight of absence to what she loveth In these admirable courses she arrives at her journeys end without passing any middle distance she traverseth Kingdoms in a moment and disengaging her self from the body she informs findes her self miraculously in the subject she loves Concupiscence works the same Miracles every day she makes use of the Understanding and of the Will for her satisfaction she employs these two faculties to content her Passion and when the ears or the eyes can tell her no news of the remote objects that torment her she hath recourse to her thoughts and desire to bring them to her presence But we must confess that Charity acts this part much better for though that which she loves be in heaven she journeys thither without weariness she goes to seek him whom the Angels enjoy Iter tuum ad caelum voluntas tua gradus tui affecius tui ambulas affectibus non pedibus accedis ad Deum amando recedis negâ—igendo stans in terra in caelo es si diligas Deum Aug. and leaving the Sun and Stars belowe her is swallowed up in that Abyss of Glory whose elongation caused her torment For S. Augustine excellently informs me our Affections are our Wings and our Will is our Guide to conduct us to heaven You think perhaps you must build a tower to ascend thither that the Angels must be invited down to assist you or that the wings of a dove must be borrowed to convey you thither but your Love is your Pole-star by your Desires you scale those heavenly regions by your negligence you stand at distance from them and loving God upon the earth you may boast your selves already in heaven For it is not with the
receives is digested by the Stomack and is turned to Blood in the Liver thence it is conveyed by the Veins into all the parts of the body which assimilating it into their substance gives it as many forms as they themselves have There by a strange prodigie the same aliment is softned into Flesh hardned into Bones stiffned into Sinews extended into Cartilages its superfluities are not useless and if we be-believe Physitians they serve to nourish our Hair and our Nails whereof the first is the ornament of the Head the second the defence of the Hand Who will not acknowledge that Man is very dear to God since he works so many Miracles to feed him and produceth so many several Meats to entertain a life common to him with beasts But inasmuch as that of the Soul is much more noble the nourishment whereby it is preserved is exceedingly more excellent and if in the order of Nature God hath made so many prodigies to nourish Man he works many more in the order of Grace to entertain the Christian For the body of his oncly Son is the food of the Faithful they live upon that Blood which begat them on the Cross that the same Principle which gave them their life may preserve it This Body is formed upon our Altars by the Word of Jesus Christ himself the Priests are onely the Ministers or Interpreters they repeat what he delivered in the Supper they do that in the Church that he did at Jerusalem and offering up this Sacrifice to the Eternal Father make provision to nourish the Faithful Thus in Nature and in Grace 't is the Word of God that makes us live and we may truely say Non in solo pane vivit homo sed in omni verbo quod procedit ex ore Dei But this Bread that nourisheth our souls is not of the same quality with that that nourisheth our Bodies For the Corn whereof this is made owes its Life to its Death nor can increase till it be corrupted but that which is exhibited to us upon our Altars felt corruption onely on the Cross where dying to procure us life he himself boasted that he was the Grain of Corn whose fruitfulness proceeds from its corruption Si mortuum fuerit multum fructum affert But now it is incorruptible in our Tabernacles death can no more injure it the Glory that invests it secures it from our fury as well as our wrongs We must acknowledge nevertheless that its presence depends upon the species that cover it it ceaseth to be with us when the heat hath digested them or time consumed them and though he remain by his Grace his body is absent which is tied to accidents as to chains his love hath forged for it He never dispenseth with this bondage the treachery of Judas could not make him violate the laws he had prescribed the blinde fury of Hereticks cannot compel him out of this prison and the impiety of Sinners hath not been able to force him to quit their hearts till the species that preserved him there be consumed by the natural heat He is as faithful to observe his promises as to obey the will of his Father and as the blasphemies of the Jews could not make him descend from the Cross to give them proofs of his Innocence and of his Divinity the sacriledges of prophane Christians cannot make him desert the Hoast where his love and fidelity hold him prisoner Though he be subject to all these humiliations to become our nourishment he is not liable for all that to all the conditions of Nutriment For he passeth not into our substance he is not changed into those that receive him and in his debasement he reserves himself the power to convert them into him His being our Food hinders him not from being our God he acts upon those that feed upon him he makes an impression of his Divine qualities in their souls and if he changeth not their Nature at least he makes them change their Condition and their Life Neither ought this to seem strange to those that consider that Natural meats communicate their qualities to us and by a mutual Metamorphosis we are changed into them when they are assimilated into us 'T is believed that Nero was therefore cruel because he suckt the milk of a cruel Nurse and that Achilles was therefore valiant because his Master nourished him with the marrow of Lions Experience it self teacheth us that people draw their humours from the earth that bears them and the heaven that covers them Those that are bred among Rocks are savage those that live in the fertile Plains are more tractable Therefore we need not wonder if the Christians feeding upon a Divine meat do so easily change their inclinations Auâ—ite officaciam communionem corporis sanguinu Domini nos Jesu Christo Jesus Christus nobis in unitate foederatur inenarrabili sicut ipse dicit Qui manducat carnem meum in me manet ego in eo Bern. because more powerful and successful then ordinary food it hath the vertue of conveying its own qualities and of changing the guests into it self And from this Principle do the Fathers draw the obligation the Christians have to be gods upon earth because they receive a God in the Eucharist who acting according to the extent of his power would transform them into himself were not his Divine operations hindered by the weakness or malice of the recipient But that which is begun upon Earth is happily perfected in Heaven where Divinity being the food of the Blessed raiseth them to a condition where leaving off to be Mortals they commence Gods Indeed the holy Scripture teacheth us that the Beatifical state is a Feast where God communicating his Essence to Angels and Men makes them in one dish taste all imaginable delights For though there be diversity of conditions among the Blessed though the degrees of Glory answer the degrees of Love and those who have been most affectionate are those that God most honours yet all Theology confesseth that the Divine Essence is the only object of their felicity that every one enjoys all without division that though common to all 't is notwithstanding proper to each particular that being wholly communicated to one it takes nothing from the rest and more excellent then the light which enlightens one man as perfectly as the whole world it is as fully communicated to the lowest Angel as to the highest Seraphim God is divided upon the Earth without interessing his simplicity he communicates himself to the faithful but in part and handling every one according to their Merit and his Grate is not always the same to one that he is to another He hath manifested his Wisdome in Solomon his Clemency in David his Patience in Job his Love in Saint Peter his Zeal in Saint Paul his Purity in Saint John and his other perfections in the rest of the Faithful But at the end of the world God
Gideon that won so many victories was but the Type of this For this mighty man entring the Camp of the Madianites and hearing one of their soldiers tell his fellow that in his sleep he saw a Cake fall from Heaven which routed their army he perswaded himself contrary to all appearance Sicut verbum Dei cibus est gladius ita corpus ejus Ber. that this Cake was his Sword and taking advantage from this dream set upon his enemies and defeated them Non est hoc aliud nisi gladius Gideonis But 't is very true that the Bread of Jesus Christ is the Sword of the Christians the same meat that nourisheth them defends them and the same remedy that cures their maladies subdues their enemies It s strength no way hinders its sweetness and like Manna there are charms in it that make it pleasing to every palate For the holy Scripture assures us that this Heavenly food was fitted to the appetite of the Israelites that never changing the fashion it altered the savour and following their inclinations complied with their tasts to satisfie their longing I know Saint Augustine is of opinion that this miracle was wrought onely in favour of the righteous and that the guilty were deprived of a Grace which in stead of heightning their devotion did only whet their stomack But the Scripture declares this miracle and the words thereof which are as true as Oracles inform us that Manna besides its natural taste had other rellishes according to the several appetites of those that gathered it If the Figure were thus advantageous for the body the Substance is much more beneficial for the soul For inasmuch as this Sacrament contains the source of Grace there is none but may from thence be communicated unto us though its principal effect be to maintain life it fails not to produce all Vertues and to satisfie the inclinations of all those that receive it It inspires Lovers with Charity weak persons with Courage Virgins with Purity Penitents with Sorrow and becoming all things to all upon Earth as well as in Heaven perfectly fulfils all the desires of the Faithful By its abundance it supplies all other Sacraments It gives us Jesus Christ in all his different relations and comprehending as well his Mysteries as their Graces makes us enjoy him living and dying humble and glorified acting and suffering For whether Eternity which in one indivisible moment includes all the differences of time recollect here all the Mysteries of Jesus Christ or whether this Sacrament comprehend all that it exhibits and being the Figure and Truth both together presents us the Death and Resurrection of the Son of God because it is the Sacrament thereof or finally whether Jesus Christ upon the Altars to comfort the Faithful who saw him not upon the Earth will by a miraculous way for their sakes accord the present with the past and let himself be enjoyed after his Death as he was seen before his Birth he gives himselfe wholly to them in this Mystery and fully communicates all that he is all that he hath done and all that he hath suffered for their salvation so that simple souls may consider him there as a child Hermites as solitary the Evangelists as a Divine Preacher the Martyrs as a Sacrifice the Prelates as a Pastor In hoc Sacramento judex advocatus sacerdos victima Leo Agnus Pastor Pascua Ber. and every one following his own piety may behold him in the condition which most affects him with pleasure or pain It was perhaps for this cause that the Moserabs in their Liturgy divided the Body of the Son of God into nine portions upon which they imposed the names of his chiefest Mysteries to teach us that he repeated them upon our Altars to content our piety and accomplishing the Figure of Manna exhibited himself in all these different estates thereby to accommodate himself to all our inclinations The Fourth DISCOURSE That this Nourishment gives the Christian whatever the Devil promised Innocent Man if he did eat of the Forbidden Fruit. THe Divine Providence is never more wonderful then when it employs the same means to save us the malice of the Devil had made use of to destroy us Thus let us magnifie his Oeconomy when we see our salvation somewhat resemble our fall and the same things that involved us in transgression deliver us out of it A Devil jealous of our happiness began our misery a Woman too easily listened to his words a man over-lightly complacent suffered himself to be cajoled by her and the beauty of the forbidden fruit charming his eyes seduced his mind and corrupted his will The Divine Wisdome imitating our fall in the work of our salvation made use of an Angel the Interpreter of his designs of a Virgin true to his Promises of a Man-God that satisfied his Justice and of a fruit not forbidden but commanded which really exhibits to the Christian all those advantages man was made to hope for in his Innocence For the Devil considering the just inclinations Nature and Grace had imprinted in the soul of man to seduce him promised him that if he would disobey God he should find his happiness in his rebellion and that the use of the fruit he was forbidden to meddle with should make him Immortal knowing Good and Evil and Christian Religion teacheth us that the Body of the Son of God received in the Sacrament with piety due to so great love produceth in us these effects and making us Men-Gods makes us Knowing and Immortal Let us examine these Promises and see what we ought to expect from the God of Truth and the Father of Lyes If the fear of death and the desire of life be not the most ancient passions of man we may affirm them the most natural and most violent He hath an apprehension of death before he knows what it is he desires Immortality before he believes it and whatever he does here below is only by defending himself from a dissolution to live for ever Every one seeks after the same end though by different mediums and he that would put the question to each particular would learn by their answers that they labour only to become Immortal Fathers mary not so much for the pleasure of the bed as for the desire they have to survive in their posterity and in spight of death gain a perpetuity to their Being as well as their Name Philosophers are not so much in love with Knowledge and Vanity as with Life whilst they spend whole nights in their books and leave the productions of their brain to posterity For they think to cozen death by this stratagem they believe their reputation will pierce the Generations to come and that living in the memory of men they shall in some sort enjoy Immortality Monarchs whose minde and body are equally barren leaving neither Children nor Vertues behinde them whereby they may be known to their Successors raise
the Eucharist the Consummation hereof we have engaged our word when we were admitted into the Church and receiving the character of our servitude we have given bond for our Faithfulness But in the Mystery of the Eucharist he deals with our souls as with his Spouse we become flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone he enters into our bosome and we into his his body and ours are animated with the same Spirit and partaking in all the qualities of our Beloved we have right to his most glorious priviledges But so noble an Alliance requires a great affection and much fidelity This Lover is jealous he will raign alone in the hearts that he possesseth as he cannot endure a Competitor in his State so neither can he a Rival in his Love he will have nothing loved but for his sake and because our adhesion to the Creature is not without imperfections he never beholds it without grief nor leaves it without punishment Whatever is prejudicial to Fidelity displeaseth he never breaks his word and therefore cannot endure we should fail of our duty He will keep what he hath once gotten and seeing his Power is equal to his Love he is as severe in his Revenge as he is liberal in his Favours When I consider the obligations we have to his Goodness I never wonder that his Justice corrects us but I am ashamed there should be any souls so negligently careless as to provoke him and that after so many favours any should be so wretched as to betray their duty and abandon Jesus Christ Nevertheless this crime is so common among Christians that those who will not break their word with an Enemy take no care to be true to the Son of God basely desert his party lodge the devil in the same Throne where they had seated their Soveraign and take an Adulterer into the bed from whence they have driven their lawful Husband If the remembrance of his favours cannot produce love in our souls the terrour of punishments must beget Fear For if he be our Beloved in the Eucharist he is also our Judge and having fruitlesly exhibited testimonies of his Goodness Qui enim manducat bibit indigne judicium fibi manducat hibit non dijudicans corpus Domini 1 Cor. 11. will sensibly inflict marks of his indignation The great Apostle of the Gentiles tells us that he that receiveth unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself that the Devil being the Minister of the Divine Justice takes visible possession of the soul of that Delinquent that he erects an Altar in his heart and of his slave making his victime engageth him in despair having engaged him in Sacriledge Et post buccellū introivit in cum Satanas Joan. 13. Thus dealt he with Judas when he had communicated unworthily The Evangelist observes that he entred into his soul urged him to execute his abominable design for a light interest obliterated out of his mind the remembrance of all the favours he had received from his Master and tumbling him from one precipice to another from Covetousnesse tempted him to Treachery from Treason to Sacriledge Diabolus intravit in cor ut traderet eum Judas quomodo intravit in cor nisi immittendo iniquas persuasiones cogitatienibus iniquorum Aug. de Consen Evang from Sacriledge to Parricide and from Parricide to Desperation For when the wicked spirit that possessed him had counselled him to betray the Son of God he counselled him to hang himself and setting him against himself made him make use of his own hands to inflict a just and cruel death upon himself Finally there is no mystery wherein the Son of God manifests more love or more severity where he obligeth more dearly or punisheth more strictly or pardons more rarely and because the crimes committed here are the greatest it seems the vengeance inflicted upon them is most memorable The first of all sinners is a great Saint in Heaven The man that was our Father and our Parricide both together De illo quidem primo homine patre generis humani quod eum in inferno solverit Christus Ecclesia fere tot a consentit quod eam non inaniter credidisse credendum est Aug. Epist 99. ad Enod The Criminal who is accessory to all the transgressions of the world The Father that engageth all his posterity in his offences and his punishment The Rebel who makes an Insurrection of all his Descendants against their lawful Soveraign That unfortunate Chief who lives yet after his death sins still in his members and by a dreadful prodigy being happy in his person is miserable and guilty in his posterity That old man who is new born in every sinner and in one word That Adam who committed a fault whole nature bewails to this day found his pard on in his repentance and whiles he sees Hel pepled with his off-spring enjoys glory with the Angels in Heaven That great King whom God raised to the Throne against all humane probability That Stripling who without arms gave a Gyant battle That Shepheard whose Crook was turned into a Scepter who reckoned his victories by his combats and boasted that the Lord of Hosts had trained him up in the Discipline of War This Prince who forgetting all these favours joyned Murder to Adultery and made an Innocent dye to cloak the dishonour of a debauched woman This glorious Criminal who saw all the Vials of Heaven poured down upon his Head his Kingdome divided his subjects revolted and his own children in the head of an Army against him This famous Delinquent reigns in glory with the Son of God his tears have washed away his iniquities and his grief more powerful then his offence opened him the gate of Heaven That Apostle who having received so many testimonies of affection from his Master forsook him so shamefully in the Garden of Gethsemane denyed him so openly in the house of Caiaphas is as great in Heaven as he was upon Earth The Church to this day reverenceth his Injunctions the Popes boast themselves his Successours and all the faithful glory in being his children That young man full of zeal and and fury who intended to strangle Christianity in the very Cradle who was the boutefew of the first persecution against the Disciples of Jesus who stoned Saint Stephen by their hands whose cloaths he kept De caelo vocavi una voce percussi alia erexi elegi tertia implevi misi quarta liberavi coronavi Aug. hath found his salvation in his sin He was converted when he went about to plunge himself in the bloud of the first believers he received Grace when he was upon the very point of encreasing the number of Parricides in one moment he became a Preacher of the Gospel an Apostle of the Son of God and the Master of the Gentiles But the first that ever profaned the Body of Jesus Christ and committed a Sacriledge in approaching the Altar
in that of Isaac it was obliged to separate the Priest from the Victime and to arm the hands of the Father to immolate his only Son In the mean time Jesus Christ unites them in his person and in this adorable Sacrifice which he offers to his Father whether on the Cross or on the Altar he is both the Priest that consecrateth and the Victime that is immolated Inasmuch as Jesus Christ saith Saint Augustine is our God and our Temple he is also our Sacrifice and our Priest He is the Priest that reconciles us he is the Sacrifice whereby we are reconciled and the same Doctor admiring the novelties of the sacrifice of the Cross expresseth his wonder by these words The Altar of the Sacrifice is new because the Immolation is new and admirable For he that is the Sacrifice is the Priest the Sacrifice according to the Flesh the Priest according to the Spirit and both according to his Humanity He that offereth and he that is offered is one and the same person and these qualities which have so little analogy are found united in the sacrifice of the Cross Inasmuch as the Christian is the Image of Jesus Christ and this glorious title obligeth him to transcribe his original he ought to sacrifice himself as he did and to be both the Priest and the Oblation together Indeed if we descend into the Mysteries of our Religion and consider with the eye of Faith what we are not able to discover with the light of reason we shall find that we are immolated upon the Altar with the Son of God and that after his example we are both the sacrificers and the sacrifice For Jesus Christ is not offered all alone in our Temples he is immolated by the hands of the Priests and at the same time that he offers his natural body to his Father he offers also his mystical body so that offering himself to his Father by his Church and offering his Church together with himself he teacheth all the Faithful to joyn the quality of Priests with that of Victimes This is it that Saint Augustine informs us of in his Book De Civitate Dei Per hoc sacerdos est ipse offerens ipse oblatio cujus rei Sacramentum quotidianū esse voluit Ecclesiae sacrificiū quae cum ipsius capitis corpus sit seipsam per ipsū discit offerre Aug. lib. 10. de Civit. ca. 6. where searching into our mysteries he finds that the Church offers her self with her Beloved upon our Altars and that in the same sacrifice she is both Priestess and Oblation His words are too elegant to be omitted neither must it be a less Doctor then he that must appear that Protector of so important a Verity 'T is particularly saith he in unity that the sacrifice of Christians consists where being many in number we make up but one body with Jesus Christ this is it that the Church daily does in this Sacrament which is so well known to the Faithfull wherein is demonstrated that in the Oblation she offers she her self is offered that after the example of her Beloved she may be in the same sacrifice Priestess and Victime From this passage may easily be inferred that the Faithful are offered with Christ upon the Altar that the Host that contains him is large enough to contain all his members and that his mysticall body being immolated with his natural body he obligeth all Christians to associate as he doth the quality of Victime with that of a Priest But if leaving the Altar we consider the Faithful in the course of their life we shall see there is none but ought to sacrifice himself and who either in his body or in his soul may not find Victimes to offer to God There is no more need of providing Buls or Goats with the Jews to lay upon our Altars The time of the Mosaical Law is past truths have succeeded figures and if we rightly understand the secret of our mysteries Noli extrinsecus thura comparare sed dic In me sunt Deus vota tua noli extrinsecus pecus quod mactes inquirere habes in te quod occidas Aug. in Psal 51. it becomes us to offer those things these Animals represent We have whereof to sacrifice within our selves there is not any passion in our soul nor part in our body whereof we may not make an innocent Victime Indeed Christian Religion converting the sinner into a sacrifice obligeth him to immolate to God all that he is He is deficient in the lawfullest of his duties if his whole life be not a sacrifice and being compounded of soul and body he ought to sacrifice both that he may have the honour to be a perfect Holocaust The vertues are auxiliaries which facilitate these means and it seems these glorious habits are given us for no other end then to teach us to sacrifice to God all the faculties of our soul Inasmuch as the will is the noblest and this Soveraign being once perfectly gained over to God gives him an absolute dominion over all the rest there are some vertues which have no other employment but to be made victimes Sorrow which discovers to man the excess of his crime labours to convert him it bruiseth his heart by the violence of a holy contrition and if it cannot draw bloud from this sacrifice it draws tears which are more acceptable to God then the bloud of beasts This made David say that the spirit broken and afflicted was a true sacrifice and that he who sometimes refuseth Goats and Lambs never despiseth a heart that Repentance and Humility offers up unto him Sacrificium Deo spiritus contribulatus Obedience comes in to the succour of grief this beats down the pride of the will masters that imperious faculty and changing her triumph into a sacrifice obligeth her to die to her own inclinations that she may live to those of the Grace of Jesus Christ But love happily finisheth this design he burns the victime with his flames to render it an Holocaust and finding the means to put to death an immortall power teacheth us that a pure spirit may offer sacrifices to God For there is no lover but knows that love imitates death that he commits innocent murders and by stratagems which himself is only privy to makes sin die in us that Grace may live If the will become a Victim by means of Charity the understanding is offered up to God by the intervening of faith This vertue subjects it to her Empire perswades truths she explicates not she obligeth a man to suspend his judgement to renounce his reason and to give his senses the lye she engageth him to offer as many sacrifices as she propounds mysteries and by a power which would seem tyrannical were it not legitimate forbids him the use of reasoning in matters of religion The memory after the example of the understanding is immolated to God by remembrance and forgetfulness These two
Son of God he ought to breath only after his honour to act for his service to speak for his glory and as a Criminal whom the Prince hath pardoned remains a living monument of his clemency so a Christian whom Jesus Christ hath redeemed is an inanimated picture of his mercy nor ought to have any other design then by the lustre of his actions to manifest the goodnesse of his Divine Redeemer The Second DISCOURSE That the Christian is a Priest and a Sacrifice LOve hath made the Son of God so liberal that he possesseth no qualities which he communicates not to the Christians If he be God by his Essence we are by his Grace if he be the Son of God by Nature we are by Adoption if he produce the holy Spirit from all Eternity we produce him in Time if he confer Grace in the state of his Father we confer it in his if he be Priest and Victim in his Sacrifice we partake these two qualities with him and the Church bears no Christians in her womb who may not boast that in some sort they are both Priests and Victims Gens sancta regale sacerdodotium 1. Pet. 2. The Scripture gives them this honourable title by the mouth of S. Peter the Saints glory in the Apocalypse that the Grace of Baptism hath made them Priests and Kings Fecisti nos regnum sacerdotes Deo Patri so that we cannot question this title as not belonging to the Christian unlesse we question the Authority of the Scripture nor can we doubt that the Son of God hath honoured them with this Character but we must withall doubt of his love or of his power Indeed the Fathers of the Church have professed that the Christians were Priests that their Baptism was their Priesthood Sacerdotium Laico um Baptisma Hieron and that in this Sacrament which separates them from the world they were consecrated to Jesus Christ Therefore doth the great Saint Hierome writing against the Luciferians honour the Laity with this title and cals their Baptism their Priesthood Saint Augustine is of the same mind and though he was not ignorant of the difference between the Laity and the Clergy he forbears not to style all Christian Priests because their Name denotes their Unction and their Grace makes them the members of the High Priest Jesus Christ And certainly he that shall consider the employments of Priests will find that they are common to the Laity and though they have neither their character nor their power they are with them admitted into the dispensation of the Sacraments They may administer Baptism in case of necessity communicate the Grace they have received and bring forth children to Jesus Christ Though they are not raised to that pitch of dignity which makes the Priests Judges in the Tribunal of Repentance and have not any Authority from the Son of God to remit sins neverthelesse it hath sometimes fallen out that the Faithful being not able to meet with a Priest have confessed themselves to Laicks and the Laicks have endeavoured to obtain Grace for them by means of Prayer which in some sort supplies the vertue of Absolution Saint Thomas authoriseth this custome and exhorts Soldiers that enter into the field Mariners that are surprised with a storm not to neglect this remedy and to fly to this kind of confession when they want the ordinary one He confirms the use thereof by his reasons and tels us that the sorrow and the humility Christians epxresse in this occasion is not unprofitable to draw down upon them the Divine mercie The Laity in some sense may be said to sacrifice daily in our Churches If they pronounce not the Sacramental words with the Priests they joyn themselves with their intentions and accompanying them with their vows have a share in the producing of Jesus Christ on our Altars For the Priests representing the whole Church in this Sacrament they are the Syndics or Proctors of the Faithful acting in their name they require their assistance and conjure them to joyn with them in an action which equally concerns them all All the words of the Masse confirm this truth The confession which is common to Priest and people testifies that the sacrifice is common The oblation of the Host wherein the Priest requires the attention and consent of the people is an evident proof of the part they bear in it the very Canon wherein the Priest treats in secret with God where he interposeth the credit of the Saints that reign in Heaven authoriseth this belief For he speaks in the name of the Faithful and even then when he offers this sacrifice in their behalf testifies that he offers it with them and that he is at the same time the Minister of Jesus Christ and of his Church Finally Christians are Priests as we have said because they are ordained daily to offer up sacrifices Perum Sacrificium est omne opus quod agitur ut sancta societate haereamus Deo Aug. and according to the language of Saint Augustine all vertuous actions are so many holy oblations which they present to the Eternal Father He that sings with the Priest offers the sacrifice of praise he that gives Alms to the poor makes a sacrifice of his goods he that is sorrowful for his sins offers a sacrifice of his heart and he that endeavours to wash them away by his tears offers a sacrifice of his eyes But not to reckon up all the actions of the Faithful it is enough to say with the same Saint Augustine that their whole life is a sacrifice and that they begin to be Priests assoon as they begin to be Victims These two qualities were inseparable in the person of Jesus Christ he bare them from the very first moment of his Incarnation and assoon as ever he held the language of a Priest A Domino Deo missus Christus sacerdos noster assumpsit à nobis quod offerret Domino ipsas primitias carnis ex utero virginis Aug. he had the dispositions of a Victim He began his sacrifice with his life he offered himself to his Father in the chast womb of his Mother and having received that Divine Unction which constituted him High Priest he protested that he would be a publick Victim He finished upon the Crosse what he had projected before his Birth and joyning these two qualities in his Death taught us that we should not separte them during our life Therefore are all Christians obliged to be Victims and after the example of Jesus Christ they ought to find in their person the subject of their sacrifice They have no remainders of Adam which may not happily be subservient to this design Whatever they hold of this wretched Father ought to be consumed by the flames of Justice or those of Charity Purgatory will burn that which the fire hath not and Heaven finishing what these two had begun wâ—â— reduce the Victim to an estate where nothing will appear in
it which is displeasing to God But in expectation of this happy houre they must begin their sacrifice here and by little and little destroying what is contrary to Grace make Holocausts of all their inordinate inclinations For we learn from Origen that though we are no longer under the Law of Moses we are not dispensed with for sacrificing but as the Law of Grace is the accomplishment of the other we ought to immolate all those passions that were represented to us by the Beasts they slaughtered at the foot of the Altar We satisfie this duty when we set upon our criminal affections and full of zeal and courage we endeavour to stifle them We immolate a Bull when we tame our pride and labour to kill this sin that gives life to all others we sacrifice a Goat when we quench the lustful flames of impurity and by a divine fire mortifie this infernal one which devours all vertues we slay a Ram when we subdue our anger disarm this seditious passion calm this raging sea and manacle this fury which troubles the tranquillity of our mind we offer Pigeons and Turtles when we banish those volatile inordinations which divert us from piety and engage our minds in the affairs of the world But if we have subjected our passions to the dominion of reason and by a happy barrenness the Earth of our Intellectual part breeds no monsters which we may offer up to God we must seek into our body and of our members make innocent sacrifices For the great Apostle of the Gentiles teacheth us that we are obliged to offer our bodies a lively sacrifice and to pacifie the anger of Heaven by a holy oblation acceptable to him Vt exhibeatis corpora vestra hostiam viventem as if he would say that we ought to die to sin that we may live to Grace and the members which have served heretofore to the tyranny of Concupiscence may now become serviceable to the lawful power of Charity or he would advertise us that if in the Old Testament only dead Victims were offered up to God in the New we must offer up living ones and that mortification working in the Christian what death did in the Beasts we must joyn the two sacrifices together and accord death with life to satisfie the Divine Justice Thus the whole exercise of a Christian is to make war upon their bodies and to gain victories over themselves they vanquish their enemies in facrificing their members and they may boast that in offering sacrifices to God they erect trophies to themselves In consideration of these Truths me thinks we may say with Origen that all the faithfull are Victims and that in the difference of their conditions they agree in this common quality If any thing distinguish them 't is the degree of their love and the perfection of their Sacrifice The Apostles saith He were the first Victims because they forsook all to follow their Master and having given him their heart by Charity their spirit by Faith their goods by Poverty they moreover consecrated their bodies by the Repentance of their life and by the cruelty of their death The Martyrs immediately succeed them because having a long time laboured by Grief at last they have perfected their sacrifice by Martyrdom The Virgins hold the Third place because they triumph over their bodies tame a hundred severall ways this domestick Enemy and not content to consecrate him by purity borrow the assistance of pennance to mortifie him by contrition The Continent and the Married follow these close and if in their sacrifice they destroy not the Victim they put it at least in a condition that it no more rebels against the Sacrificers and where it expects with patience for death Castitas viduitas de bonis carnis Deo adolentur Tertul. to finish that which Continence hath begun Tertullian was much of this opinion when he said That our bodies furnished us with Victims as well as vertues and that Fasting Silence and Chastity were fruits of this Tree which might be gathered to make an offering for Jesus Christ For though the Body be the least part of man 't is not the most unprofitable its imperfections are advantageous to us its rebellions serve us for Tryals and Grace which is ingenious turns the most part of its miseries into remedies The infirmities which trouble its health help our Sacrifice and the diseased person that suffers his afflictions patiently is a victim who though not innocent is notwithstanding well-pleasing to Jesus Christ Poverty which strips us of superfluities or of necessaries which reduceth us to the condition our Birth found us in and whither Death will bring us is a sacrifice which gains us as much merit as it procures us inconvenience Nay Death it self which seems the eldest daughter of sin who shews all the horrours of her father upon her countenance is not so much the destruction as the sacrifice of our Body she imitates the severity of fire and sword she she alone does what the knife and the pile of wood somtimes did and reduceth the victim to ashes having deprived it of life she serves for the Divine Justice and Mercy together Deficit homo ad Gloriam moritur a◠vitam perit ad salutē mors per Christum commendatio facta est Charitatis Chrysost she prepares the body for Immortality nor despoils it of corruption but to apparell it with Glory This is it that imprints so violent a desire of Death in the hearts of the faithful which makes them in the midst of their prosperity call her in to their assistance and wish that comming to end their life she may come to perfect their sacrifice For it seems she hath changed Nature since Jesus Christ consecrated her in his person she is like those waters that take the taste and colour of those Minerals through which they pass she hath lost all her gastliness and hath some secret beauties which beget love in the soul of all Saints She that led us to the gates of hell lifts us up to heaven she that was the mother of shame and sadness is now the mother of joy and glory she that filled us with despair buoys us up with hope she that established the Empire of sin destroys it in a word she that was the Chastisement of our Crime is now the Sacrifice of our Love For this end have all the greatest Saints made the Panegyrick of death they have rendered thanks to the Divine Justice that inflicts a punishment upon us which shortens our misery and advanceth our happiness which separates us from the world and unites us to Jesus Christ and under a false appearance of rigour delivers us from the dangers that threaten us the griefs that torment us and the sins that tyrannize over us This made that famous Penitent say He was just that expected death but he was holy that desired it Finally this drew that Elogie out of the mouth of S. Paul
for considering the advantages which he promised himself by death how that it would unite him to Jesus Christ he called it by a new name his Gains and his Riches it enters into his minde as the recompence of his travels an indempnity for his losses and the most assured purchase he could make in this world Mihi vivere Christus est mori lucrum Thus every Christian may easily become a Victim because death is a favourable occasion and being well managed may serve to expiate our sins to satisfie the Divine Justice and to imitate the charity of Jesus But the misfortune is that Love is wanting in this Sacrifice and holding a language far different from that of Isaac we are obliged to say We finde the Sacrifice but there is neither knife nor fire to consume it Indeed all men die but few Christians make good use of their death and there are none but the Elect who turning it into a Holocaust know so well how to use it that it opens them the gate of heaven The Third DISCOURSE That the Christian is a Souldier and a Conqueror THe God whom we adore takes his Glory as well from War as from Rest and if he be called in Scripture the God of peace he is as often called the Lord of hosts His Angels are the souldiers that wait upon him to the Battel who avenge him of his enemies Numquid est numerus militum ejus the Stars which keep watch as Sentinels about his Palace bear the name of the Militia in the language of the Prophets Militia coelorum and all those that serve him for Ministers in his Embassies serve him for Combatants in his Conquests Therefore did the Angels who gave notice to the Shepherds of the birth of Jesus Christ take their name from their principal employment and called themselves the heavenly Host Multitudo Militiae coelstis and when the Son of God was taken in the garden of Olives and blamed Saint Peter who would have hindered the work of our Salvation he told his disciples that it was easie for him to ask of his Father legions of Angels to defend him from his enemies Men are considered under this quality upon earth the holy Scripture calls them Souldiers and if we believe the testimony of Job their whole life is a continual warfare They have as many Enemies as Subjects Rebellion is spread over every corner of their State the parts whereof they are composed are revolted and which way soever they turn themselves they finde occasions of Fighting Christians are yet more obliged to War then Men the Sacrament that enables them withal engageth them into the combat Labora sicut bonus miles Christi 2 Tim. 2. Nemo coronabitur nifi vicerit neque vincet n si certaverit quis autem certet nisi inimicū habeat Ex Sent. Prosp The Earth is the Field where they try the Mastery and these terms of a List a Crown a Souldier which S. Paul so often useth in his Epistles are so many proofs of so known a Truth The Church it self is an Army the Christians whereof it is formed are the Souldiers and the Scripture describes her in arms in these words Terribilis ut Castrorum acies ordinata Wherein it seems we may behold the difference between a Camp and a City Both of them are Bodies which have their Head and Members their Laws and Policie their designes and employments But in Cities we observe a pleasing variety of conditions equally contributing to their advantage and beauty There we see Priests who chant forth the praises of God in his Temple who load his Altars with offerings and mixing their tears with the blood of the Victims endeavour to appease his just indignation There are Magistrates which end Controversies maintain Peace among the People and make Justice raign in Families There are Merchants which traffick with strangers who by their Commerce occasion Plenty and by their diligence supply all necessities But difference of condition seems to be banished from Armies as all fight so all are souldiers those that command and those that obey bear this quality and both of them place their glory in their valour Therefore the Church being an Army those it consists of must necessarily fight the most feeble must be courageous the women must be Amazones and all Christians forgetting the difference of their conditions must take upon them the quality of Souldiers Enemies will not be wanting to exercise their courage because the World the Flesh and the Devil hold intelligence to set upon them For the Christians war is at home whatever he hath received from Adam is an occasion of exercising him and for a punishment of his sin he is obliged to fight with himself The Flesh is never at agreement with the Spirit these two parties have always some difference to compose and though linkt together by natural chains and common interests cease not continually to make war upon one another They are two friends that usually fall out and two enemies that caress each other two friends that shake hands and two enemies that make mutual visits two friends that cannot endure one another and two enemies that can never be asunder This division is the first punishment of our sin and when we began to be upon ill terms with God we ceased to have any good correspondence with our selves But that which seems most troublesom is that one Combat furnisheth us with many enemies for as S. Augustine saith we daily fight in our heart in such a little room we finde whole armies and sometimes we grapple with Avarice sometimes with Pride sometimes with Impurity so that 't is very hard being set upon by so many enemies if we receive not some wound This Combat is obstinately disputed if there be some Truce there is no real Peace it lasts till death and if soul and body be not separated it is impossible to make them friends The Senses bring us false reports the Passions raise storms our Inclinations set up a party and to defend us from so many enemies we are obliged to borrow the assistance of Vertue Every Age hath its exercise Infancy is oppressed with Errour and Ignorance Youth is baited with Ambition and Wantonness Old-age is clogged with Anger and Peevishness so that there is no condition but hath need of Grace to defend it from those enemies that set upon it The Devil takes part with the Body to destroy us employs his wiles or his force to terrifie or seduce us he mingles himself with our Humours disorders our Passions troubles our Temper and as if he were the Soveraign of Man as well as the Prince of the World he deboists our Subjects to disquiet our Rest Sometimes he takes upon him the shape of a Lion and sometimes that of a Serpent that using subtilty and violence he may gain some advantage upon us He studies our inclinations to destroy us suits himself with our humours to surprise us and regulating his promises
only from his hands who sees her thoughts and knows her courage But the highest advantage of the Christian above the Martyr is that this mans trial endures but a few days Nature is so good a mother that she hath provided remedies for her children against the violent irruption of discontents she hath made the chains that unite the soul to the body so brittle that the least torments are able to break them tortures quickly end or we end with them and experience teacheth us that a punishment cannot be long when violent and extream Criminals must be husbanded if you will have them endure they must have respite if we intend to torture them for any long time their weaknes will rid them of their Exeeutioners and death stepping in to the succour of these wretches delivers them from their persecutors Therefore is the punishment inflicted upon Martyrs short many times one day saw both its beginning and its end and when Grace wrought no miracle for their preservation Nature used her endeavours to succour them But the Martyrdom of Christians lasts the best part of an age Repentance that afflicts them imitates the Divine Justice it makes an agreement between life and death lengthens that to prolong their misery and draws out the thred of their sorrows to prove them more durably miserable For mortification which constitutes the chiefest exercise of penitents is it not a long and cruell death which Disciplines the body afflicts the spirits nor gives any intermission to the disconsolate Penitentiary but to heighten his austerity This made S. Bernard say that the mortification of the flesh was a kind of punishment not so cruel indeed but much more irksome then that of Martyrs and recompensing the sweetnesse by the duration makes the penitent languish as long as he lives But after all these differences we must confesse that the Martyrs having been Christians as well as others have suffered a double punishment and living in penance were prepared for Martyrdom For as Tertullian observes the course of their life was a severe probation wherein they disposed themselves to grief by austerity to the prison by solitude to a short death by a long mortification Therefore tortures never startled these men who provided for them by a witty cruelty and in so happy an age the Church had no children who were not the Martyrs of Penance when they could not be of Persecution The Seventh DISCOURSE That the Christian is a Lover THere is none but knows that the Son of God is a new Man that he is prodigious in his Constitution assembling Heaven with Earth Time with Eternity That he hath a God for his Principle and a Virgin for his Mother that he is the Son and the Father of his Spouse that he gave her life upon the Cross and receives life from her upon the Altar That he is the Priest and the Victim of his sacrifice the Judge and the Advocate of his parties and by a strange prodigy the Brother and the God of his Subjects As he is New in his composition he is New in his Councels and his Commandements Ille qui ven't vetustatem nostram sua novitate solvere mandato novo fecit hominem novum Aug. Serm. 39. de Temp. He will have his Disciples mutually love one another and Love to be the Fundamental Law of his State It seems he would alter nothing neither in Policy nor in Morality and leaving men in the Light Reason and Faith had already inspired them with was content to bequeath them a New Love His intendment is that all his Disciples be Lovers that all their Qualities be included in this and that the Christian find his full perfection in sole Charity 'T is in effect the only vertue recommended to us and when Jesus Christ lays the foundations of his Empire Charitas omnia suffert omnia credit omnia sperat animo sustiuet 1 Cor. 13. he requires nothing but Love from his subjects S. Paul confounds all the vertues with Charity and teacheth us that he that Loves is endued with Faith with Hope with Fortitude S. Augustin his faithfull Interpreter acknowledgeth but one vertue and if he gives it different names it is to express its divers effects or different qualities All the rest are reduced to this one and as the Passions are nothing but the motions of love we may say that the vertues are nothing but the Ministers of Charity The morality of a Christian is easie and succinct he is not bound to exercise himself in Patience to be established in Justice to be instructed in Prudence Charity gives him an interest in all these glorious Qualities and being a Lover he may boast himself Couragious Just Prudent Assoon as he knows how to Love he is able to guide himself his Light encreaseth with his Heat and without consulting the mysteries of the Politicks he becomes a Statesman assoon as ever he falls in love with Jesus Christ As pleasures cannot corrupt him grief cannot astonish him His Love inspires him with Magnanimity and Temperance and being united to God by Charity neither the Promises nor the Threats of the world are able to separate him he is incapable of committing an injustice as long as he keeps his affection and rendring his Soveraign his due learns at the same time to carry himself fairly towards his Equals and Inferiours If Love constitute the Christians vertue it constitutes his difference also For as Reason distinguisheth Man from Beasts makes him equall with the Angels and in Nature is accounted his principal advantage we may say that Charity divides the Christian from the sinner and being his richest ornament is also his noblest difference All the Faithful are clarified with the Light of Faith they receive in Baptism a Character which time cannot deface they flatter themselves with a hope which though unjust is notwithstanding sometimes true The Church which comes short of the Knowledge of her Beloved admits them to the Participation of her Mysteries and being unable to read their hearts suffers sacrilegious persons because she cannot tell how to hinder them Nay Jesus Christ himself honours them many times with his choicest favours discovers the secrets of Futurity to his enemies gives them an absolute power in his State and suffers those that offend him to drive away Devils and to cure the sick But Charity is the priviledge of his Friends 't is the glorious mark distinguishing them from Reprobates and the only vertue that is inconsistent with sin A man may be burnt in the flames and give testimony of his Courage in the midst of torments though he be not at all acceptable to God a man may dive into all the Mysteries of Religion and not be affected with them may give his goods to the poor and have his soul full of vain-glory But a man cannot have Charity and be upon ill terms with Jesus Christ those that love him are his Beloved and if he indulge some favours to those that fear
or serve him he cannot refuse Heaven to those that die in love with him Thence it comes to pass that Christians who know that all their advantage consists in Charity make this vertue their principal employment they despise not others for they possess all in this one But being fully perswaded it must be their felicity in heaven they make it their business whilst they are upon the earth These Divine Lovers can do nothing but love they imitate the Seraphims whose Essence and Exercise is Love they burn with the same Fire that makes them live they swim in flames and as if they had forgotten all the vertues to learn one they spend their whole life in this amorous entertainment If they fear 't is to offend him whom their soul loveth if they hope 't is to possess him if they rejoyce 't is for being united to him if they are afflicted 't is for being separated from him When they have to do with their Neighbour 't is upon this wheel that they move they look onely upon God in his Creatures and upon Jesus Christ in his Members if they sometimes adhere unto them out of a natural inclination Divine Love furnisheth them with wings to soar above them and with strength to be disentangled from them Finally Love so well manageth the whole course of their life that leaving Respect to Domesticks Hope to Mercenaries Fear to Slaves Light to the Learned they reserve onely Charity for themselves and are of the humour of that faithful Lover who being confined to solitude had no other diversion but her Love In consideration whereof Dei unicum opus est se intueri se amare Plato I finde their condition very glorious because they treat with God as God doth with himself for his whole happiness consists in knowing and loving Himself and should he intermit this employment he would cease to be happie He sees the Creatures in seeing himself he loves Them in loving Himself and without going forth of his own Nature he findes his felicity in his Knowledge and in his Love The Christian by an admirable priviledge is advanced to this high degree of glory Solus est Amor ex omnibus animae motibus in quo poteâ— Creatura respondere Creatori de simili mutuam rependere viâ—eÌ„ Bernard he enters into society with God treats with him as with his Peer and it seems being no longer his Slave becomes his Equal in becoming his Friend Greatness is so opposite to Love that Kings are fain in a manner to depose themselves when they have a minde to love their Subjects That Majestie wherewith they are encircled is fitter to strike Fear and Consternation then Confidence If they descend not from their Throne lay not by their Crown and Scepter they can have no Friends because no Equals Therefore hath Aristotle observed that Subjects could not contract Alliance with their Soveraigns that the disparity of their Conditions permitted not those privacies which maintain Friendship among men and as long as Kings remain in their Grandeur Subjects must continue in their Respect In the mean time Charity findes out an Expedient to unite the Christian with God exalteth the One without debasing the Other equals in some sort their conditions and as it obliged God to make himself Man hath given Man a power to make himself God Nor must we think it strange that this Vertue is the original of our Happiness because it is the source of our Merit and nothing makes us more commendable then Love Though every thing have its estimate in the Church Order banisheth Confusion and in this vast Body every part hath its priviledge and employments nevertheless the whole perfection consists in Charity he that knows best how to love is most accomplisht and without respecting his actions or his sufferings we consider onely the measure of his Love The Son of God would not have our merit fastned to those conditions which depend not upon our selves nor that Greatness or Riches should difference his Subjects He would not place Perfection in Alms because the Rich onely can dispense them he would not tye it to Preaching because that Gift is reserved for his Ministers he would not limit it to Austerity because that requires a strong Constitution he would not fix it in Martyrdom because that depends upon Persecution with which the Church is not always afflicted But he hath established it in Charity where nothing is easier then this Vertue The Ignorant and the Learned are equally admitted to it Kings are not more capable of it then their Subjects and if Martyrs pretend some advantage above the rest of the Faithful they have a greater obligation to their Love then to their Torments The greatest Saint is not he that hath Suffered most or Done most but he that hath Loved most All his Merit consists in Charity if occasions be wanting he hath recourse to his desires and he may boast that being a Lover he is Liberal in Poverty Learned in Ignorance a Martyr in the Serenity of conversation Though all these advantages oblige us to Love that which God witnesseth to us is the greatest endearment of affection for there are conditions in his Indulgencies which cannot be found in our Expressions and his love is so powerful and so noble that 't is easie to judge it cannot proceed but from an abyss of Goodness It is Eternal and before all worlds God expects not till we subsist to shew his kindness towards us his love makes inquisition after us in the confused heap of Nothing as well as his power he cherisheth us in what he is pleased to put into us and separating us from all those Creatures which shall never see the light makes us the objects of his Liberality Our Crimes stop not the current of his Love he loves us in our Delinquency and that which ought to provoke his Justice to punish us provokes his Mercy to deliver us In Non-entity he loves Ignorant Creatures in Sin he loves ungrateful ones to the former he gives Being to the later he gives Grace and to both of them he makes it appear that his Love is Eternal and Fruitful Men Love nothing but what is lovely either really or in shew they discover in their friends those qualities they plant not there and whatever height of greatness fortune shall advance them to they can bestow upon them only riches or honour if their favorites have any blemish in soul or body they cannot mend it and unhappy in their affections they are constrained either to hate the man for his imperfection or to love the imperfection for the man But God whose love is equally powerful and pregnant makes that amiable which he pleaseth to set his love upon he himself forms his own object he puts that in his friends which he means to esteem and by a prodigy which surpasseth all wonder Meretricem invenit virginem fecit faedam amavit ne faeda remaneret Au. he
gives purity to the Immodest and innocence to the Criminals This Love hath no bounds neither in relation to its extent nor excess 't is immense and infinite both together and when God loves us he loves us in all places and in all his perfections men are so miserable that they change manners when they change Countries and Climats the Elements make some impression upon their wills and being no longer what they were they cease to love what they doated on before should they be more constant they would be alwayes lyable to this misfortune that being unable to be but in one place they could not stretch their love every where they borrow tongues to express their passion Like earthly Kings who being not in a capacity to fill their whole State are obliged to have Leiutenants which represent them these also are forc'd to seeke out interpreters to declare their love and supply their impotency But Gods Love is immense place confines it not he loves whereever he is his charity is as extensive as his essence in Heaven he cherisheth the blessed and preserving his love in all the corners of his State is affectionate to Christians in the very heart of their enemies If it be immense 't is Infinite and when God loves a person 't is with the full extent of his perfections As men are made up of soul and body the faculties of that and the members of this have their several uses and employments The Understanding conceives thoughts the Memory preserves the species and onely the will formes acts of Love The holiest Lover hath this dissatisfaction that he knows he loves God but with one faculty of the soul he is afflicted and not without reason that self-love shares with charity and notwithstanding all his endeavour he never loves God as much as he can or ought to love him He is not more happy in his body then in his minde for every member hath its different functions his hands act according as there is occasion his eyes discern colours his ears judge of sounds his tongue formes words and his heart onely is capable of affection he reproacheth Nature and complaines that this Step dame having given to him two hands to act two eyes to see two ears to hear she hath given him but one heart to love in the extasies of his soul he wisheth with David that his whole body were heart and tongue to love and magnifie him with all his power who is so infinitely lovely Nevertheless after all his vain desires he is obliged to confess that there is nothing but the will in the soul and the heart in his body which is sensible of the endeerments of affection But inasmuch as God is a simple being suffering neither composition nor division he loves men where ever he is he hath not any perfection but contributes to the love he bears them His Justice which takes vengeance of his enemies his Majesty which makes him respected of his subjects his holiness which separates him from his works are happily confounded with charity and as he acts with all his power when he produceth some effects he loves with his whole being when he expresseth his affection to his friends Therefore the Christians who know very well that love is paid onely with love never limit this passion they endeavour to love God with all their power nor do they wish for death but because they are of opinion that delivering them from self-self-love they shall be perfect lovers in glory The Eight DISCOURSE That the Christian is an Exile and a Pilgrim THe advantages we have received from Jesus Christ deliver us not from the misfortunes we drew from Adam our being the children of God frees us not from being his slaves though associated to his Empire we are still obnoxious to the persecution of the creature and though the objects of his love feel notwithstanding the severity of his Justice Thence it comes to pass that being Pilgrims we are Exiles and these two qualities which clash in other men agree exceeding well in Christians For Pilgrims are honorable Piety invites them out of their Country they seek Heaven in the Temple they visit and honouring the relicks of Saints oblige the Angels to assist them in their journeys Peregrinum facit Pietas Exulem paena peregrini sumus qui cives peccatorum Exulcs vero quia peceatores Chryso But the banished are criminals Justice drives them from their home she it is that cuts them off from the body of the State like corrupt members least they should infect the the rest In the mean time Christians are Pilgrims and Exiles if they draw the former qualities from Grace they derive the latter fom sin To clear this conceit we must remember that of all the punishments in the world banishment is the most shameful and most cruell It hath served as a punishment for the greatest crimes and the most notorious offendors have groand under this pressure Our first father was driven out of Paradise after he was condemned to death That Parricide who steep'd his hands in his Brothers blood heard this sentence pronounced against him by the mouth of the Living God Eris vagus et profugus super terram he desired that his punishment might be commuted and judging death more gentle them banishment he begged for an end of his life that he might finde a period of his torment Therefore is it that Philo approving the opinion of Cain said that death was the end of our evils banishment the beginning and that if a man going out of the world were worthy of envy he that departed out of his Country deserv'd pitty Thence certainly it comes to pass that Christians are dealt with as exiles that the severity of their chastisement may make them accknowledge the hainousness of their sin Indeed those wretches are civilly dead they have no more commerce with the world the use of the Elements is interdicted them and if the judges give them leave to live 't is to make them die more cruelly Thus it is with man since his transgression he hath no more intercourse with the Angels he was driven out from Paradise and the Earth being cursed he must water it either with his sweat or with his tears if he intend to have it fruitful Banished persons possess nothing they lose their substance in losing their Country they can neither make will nor inherite and they learn to their cost that want is the inseparable companion of banishment there must be some edict of the Prince to mitigate the rigour of the sentence and without his express permission their very kindred dare not relive them in their misery If Christians be not so cruelly dealt with 't is from their obligation to the merits of of Jesus Christ For being banished they are fallen from all their rights losing the supreme good they have forfeited all together with him and what they possess'd heretofore escheating to their soveraign by their felony they can dispose
his Content and having given him life by his power must give him Beatitude by his Goodness It is a question in Divinity whether man being a reasonable creature can have any other end then his Creator and whether the Angels who are his superiours in Nature and in Grace can be the objects of his felicity But not to engage in the decision of a thing which depends absolutely upon the will of God I may safely answer with Saint Augustine In rebus à Deo factis tam magnum bonum est natura rationalis ut nullum fit bonum quo beata sit nisi Deus Aug. de Nat. bon cap. 7. That man in the state he is now in can have no other end but God He is too noble saith that great Doctor to find his felicity in a creature he is destined for the supream good hath inclinations towards it which cannot be blotted out He would be wretched had he not some hope of possessing it his desires would become his torment were he not assured there was a possibility of satisfying them and whatever should be offered him in exchange of the good they would deprive him of would minister nothing but want and vexation of spirit But if this were an injustice to man it would be an injury to God For he hath two qualities whereof he is equally jealous The first is that of Creator which he communicates to none He cals neither Men nor Angels to his aid when he creates any thing the distance of Entity from Non-Entity is so great that it cannot be surmounted but by an infinite power and the creature is too weak to be raised to so high a degree S. Augustine believes 't is to violate the respect due to God to imagine that the Angels can become Creators and God himself who makes use of the Sun to preserve his works would not make use of it to create them lest men should ascribe an honour to it which he reserves for himself Gen. 1. Indeed we observe in Scripture that the fruits and flowers the trees and plants which owe their preservation to the beauties of the Sun were created two days before this glorious Luminary that all nature might learn that if it were their Preserver it never was their Creator The second Quality which God by no means communicates is that of the last end He is so jealous that he will not have us stay at the creature 't is a fault in our Religion to be in love with them Our love that it may be innocent must aim directly at God and whatever action a Christian does he sins if he propounds himself any other end then his Principle All the sins of the world are derived from this disorder men become not Criminals but because they close with the creature and of means designed them by God to arrive unto him make their last end and their supream felicity The cause or occasion of this Errour comes from this that the perfections of God are shed abroad in his creatures For he delineates himself in them when they are produced and hath been pleased to make them his Pourtraitures or his Images The Sun is an effusion of his Light The Heaven which encloseth the Universe is an image of Immensity The Earth which is centred upon its own weight represents us his Constancy the fields laden with fruits and adorned with flowers are the marks of his beauty and all the perfections that are dispersed in the several works of his hands are the rivulets of this Ocean or the rayes of this Sun Thence it comes to pass that sinners preserving in the root of their inclinations an appetite for the supream good fasten upon every thing that represents it and preferring the Copies before the Original court the creature and keep at distance from the Creator But if their blindness make them wander their misery reclaims them and they learn by woful experience that God only can cure them of their maladies Mans desires arise either from his weakness or from his want he covets what he stands in need of nor hath he ever recourse to wishes but when the things that he hath a mind to are out of his power Both these appetites cannot be satisfied with the possession of the Creature If the beauty that sparkles upon a face please our eyes it cannot charm our ears if riches protect us from poverty they cannot secure us from grief if glory have a powet to draw an ambitious man out of infamy or contempt it cannot deliver him from obloquy or envy and if Crowns and Scepters exempt Kings from servitude they cannot guard them from death Thus in whatever condition men find themselves they are obliged to ascend above the creatures to seek for him who being the Fountain of all good is also the remedy against all evil and with David to beg of him their cure and deliverance De necessitatibus meis erue me Being the supream Power he can free them from all their infirmities being a Light without the least shadow he can dispel all darkness being the the Prime Verity Jam non novimus bonum nisi promereri Deum ad illa produci quae promisit nec fâ—icitas hujus saeculi facit nos Beatos nec adverfitas miseros Aug. in Psal 128. he can disingage them from Errour and Falshood being Fountain of Life he can draw them out of the bosome of death and to conclude all in one word being the supream Felicity he is able to deliver them from all their miseries When they hope for him they are couragious when they desire him they are reasonable when they possesse him they are happy The sight of his Divine Essence satisfies all their wants remedies all their evils and contents all their desires the belief they have by faith the expectation they conceive by hope begins their felicity here below It is true that as the supream Good cannot be fully known upon Earth neither can happiness be perfect here and being never entirely possest in the region of mortality there are always miseries to be undergone and languishings to be endured The Second DISCOURSE That the perfect Felicity of a Christian cannot be found in this world HE was not much mistaken who considering that the Earth stood between Heaven and Hel said it held something of both these extreams Indeed Pleasure is here mixt with Grief Light confounded with Darkness Plenty attended with Want and men are happy and miserable both together But certainly we must confess that since the Earth was cursed for the sin of man it partakes more of the qualities of Hel then of Heaven For besides that all things here are in a confusion that the seasons are irregular that the Elements bid us battail that the wild Beasts either persecute us or despise us it is certain that Felicity is not to be met with here below and that man is exceedingly more miserable then happy All the world confesseth that Beatitude
us more happie They promise pleasures to the Wanton Inflant animos divitiae superbiam pariunt invidiam contrahunt luxui serviunt Sen. and conspire with him to corrupt Chastity they furnish Arms and Seconds to the Furious to take vengeance on their enemies they raise the Ambitious to offices and employments and complying with all Passions engage men in all kinde of impiety Therefore he judged aright who said that to give a sinful man Riches was to put a Sword into a mad mans hand or present poyson to a Desperado because not being under the command of Grace he will make use of them only to satisfie his ambition or to content his brutality So that the Philosophers preventing the Divines rightly discovered that Poverty was more Innocent then Plenty and that it was easier for men to preserve their liberty in the leanness of want then in the affluence of riches For besides that they wed us to the earth Multis parasse divitias non finis miseriaruÌ„ fuit sed mutatio Senec. Epist 17. they expose us to a thousand accidents which can neither be foreseen nor avoided and give fortune game at our person Therefore is it that Seneca said Those that will be happy must either be poor or like those that are so they must possesse their goods without being possessed by them and use them as Stewards rather then Proprietaries and they ought to be alwayes ready to part with them because they have them but in trust Religion out-bids Philosophy and requires farre other dispositions from her Children then this does from her Disciples For she will have them acknowledg that in Adam all is lost that they are fallen from their rights by his sin and being guilty are become miserable Perswaded of this Truth they live in the world as in a strange Country they possesse riches upon Loan and since their Goods were confifcated to their soveraign they enjoy them meerly from his mercy Though Jesus Christ re-instate them in their goods and being made Co-heirs with him may dispose of heaven and earth as their Inheritance yet are they obliged to regulate themselves by his Example and not to make use of their rights till after the generall Resurrection He carried himself thus during his life though Heire to his Father he disposed not of his estate a Cratch received him at his birth and a Cross served him for a Death-bed he lodged in a borrowed house and was buried in a strangers Sepulchre If he wrought some miracles for the Glory of his Father he did none for his own Interest when he created a piece of money in the mouth of a Fish it was to pay Tribute and when he commanded his Disciples to take the Asse which served to carry him in his triumph it was with the consent of the Owner Paupertate Christi non additur pecunia sed justitia Divitiae verae immortalitas ubi enim vera copia ibi nulla indigentiâ—â— Aug. He put not his absolute power in execution till after his Resurrection nor did he enjoy the priviledges due to his Birth till he was entred into Heaven The Christians tredding in his steps pretend nothing in this world but reserve the fruition of their right for the next They are content with the promises of Jesus Christ and living here upon hope expect the effects thereof in glory During this time they look upon Poverty as an innocent Usury which gives a value to what they give or part with here for the Son of God for they know saith S. Bernard That Jesus Christ who is a New Man is come down here below to teach us new things and that those that obey him finde rest in labour liberty in servitude and abundance in Poverty Their Goods are multiplyed in being distributed and as the husbandman casting his seed into the earth promiseth himself a hapgy harvest the Christian in communicating his goods to the Poor expects a great recompence at the generall Resurrection Till then he comforts himself with the advantages Poverty bestows upon him for he perceives that if riches have their good use they have also their bad They acknowledge the Custody of them troublesome the love of them contagious the losse of them sensible and if there be pain to get them there is more to keep them This made some Philosophers rid themselves of such attendants and gave comfort to others whom injustice or fortune had made bankrupt for as Seneca sayes excellently well We gain much in losing our riches if with them we lose our covetousness and we fail not continually to gain something even when we lose it not because the subject that entertained it being taken away there is some ground to hope either that it will dye for want of nourishment or at least do no hurt for want of power The Poverty of Christians is happier in this point then that of Philosophers for being inanimated with Grace they lose the desire of evil with the meanes of doing it nor are they innocent only out of impotency but out of deliberation They make their Poverty meritorious in making it voluntary if they choose it not they endevour to accept it and a misfortune or a chastisement they husband into a vertue The losse of their Goods causeth the assurance of their salvation and the rest of their souls they cease to fear assoon as they cease to love and they draw this advantage from their poverty that being no longer engaged to the Earth by their affection they are no more troubled with fear nor abused with hope But their greatest happiness is that they learn from Scripture that their condition is a holy Asylum and that heaven hath promised a particular protection to the Poor Evangelizare pauperibus misit me Luc. 4. They know that Christ came down from heaven to instruct them that his care of teaching them is a proof of his Missions that he hath pronounced them happy in his Sermons chose them for his Disciples hath designed them his favours made them the objects of his love and hath so particular an affection towards them that a man must be poor in deed or in desire to be taken notice of in his State Let us love Poverty then and despise riches seek Felicity in want and if Nature hath not brought us poor into the world let us become like those that are poor either by unbottoming our selves of our Goods or distributing them that raking part in the reproaches of Christ upon Earth We may be partakers of glory in heaven The sixth DISCOURSE That the Happinesse of a Christian upon Earth consists in Humility rather then in Glory THe Ambitious will hardly agree as concerning this Maxime and it will pass into their minde as an Errour rather then a Paradox Merces virtutis gloria honos alit artes omnesque incenduntur ad studia gloriâ For they believe that Honour is the nourishment of Vertue that she droops and languisheth when deprived of
yet extinguished and the greatest Saints if they manage not their intentions well rob God of all the Love they indulge themselves Finally it is almost ever interessed Quicquid creatura sui amori concedit hoc amori Dei eripit Bern. we love not God so purely as not to seek our own pleasure with when his glory and we are more earnest with him for riches or honours then for graces we make it appear that Concupiscence bears a greater part in our prayers then Charity But the Blessed have not one of these imperfections in their Love It is not blind because they love him whom they see and the brightness of glory that enlightens them is a ray dispelling all darkness of their understanding It languisheth not as ours doth nor spends it self in its own longings because they possesse what they love and being intimately united to God are eternally inseparable from him It is not divided because self-love enters not into Heaven but is quenched by the flames of Charity or purified when the souls of the Blessed quit the Prison of their body Finally it is not interessed because the honour of God is the end of their desires and in felicity it self they seek not so much their own happiness as his glory From this Knowledge and this Love is derived the resemblance the Blessed have with God which is the accomplishment of their desires and the perfection of their Beatitude For though the Faithful be humble aspire not to the vain pomps of the world and being conscious of his misery knows very well that Nothingness is his Original and sin his work yet ceaseth he not to wish by the motions of Grace what he sometimes coveted by the impulses of pride He would have the same thing that Adam would like the Angel he pretends to be like God but he desires that with Justice which the two others did with Insolence The holy Scripture authoriseth his appetite and the promises of Jesus Christ make his hopes lawful He knows very well that the Happiness of a reasonable creature consists particularly in this point and that being the Image of God in Nature and in Grace he ought to resemble him in Glory The beloved disciple comforts us in the expectation of this happiness and speaks so confidently of it to all the Faithful that he seems rather to have received the Earnest then the Promise of his Master Scimus quoniam cùm apparuerit similes ei erimus Though this similitude constitute our principal happiness yet is it easier to hope for it then to describe it and being an expression of the felicity of God himself is as much unknown to us as his Nevertheless we may say it is an effusion of his Essence into the soul of the Blessed an emanation of his Divinity communicating all his perfections lifting them above themselves and transforming them into him without destroying them makes as many Gods as there are Saints in Glory The Fire which imprints all its qualities in the Iron it makes red-hot the Sun that communicates all his light to the Crystal he penetrates and the Persume which sheds its fragrant odour thorow all the rooms it embalms are but faint comparisons to express the intimate communication of the Divine Essence to the Blessed It is enough to believe in the simplicity of Faith that all our desires shall be fully compleated that our happiness shall surpass our hopes and raised to a higher condition then that the devil promised our father in Paradise we shall be Men and Gods both together Though we are not idle in so happie a condition S. Augustine teacheth us that the knowledge and love of God shall be our sole employment Tantum gandebunt Beati quantum amabunt tantum amabunt quantum cognoscent Deum Aug. lib. Medit. we shall finde all our contentment in this one exercise and as we shall possess All Goods in the Supreme Good so shall we taste all Felicity in this one diversion The good works we have been conversant in upon earth shall be banished from Glory and Mercy shall be useless in a state whither Misery cannot approach we shall have no need to visit the Sick where Immortality provides for the Health of the Blessed There will be no burying of the Dead in the land of the Living Hospitality will not be practised where there are no Pilgrims We shall not clothe the Naked because the light of Glory will be the garment of the Saints We shall not be troubled to reconcile Enemies because Peace shall raign there eternally We shall be no longer obliged to instruct the Simple because the Beatifical Vision will eliminate all Ignorance If the works of Mercy be useless all actions wherein Necessity engageth us will then be superfluous The miseries of life compel men to till the earth for their nourishment to build houses to defend them from the injury of the weather to make clothes to protect them from shame and cold But all these employments shall have an end in a Kingdom where he that governs is both the Nourishment the Cloathing and the Habitation of his Subjects His Goodness which penetrates them is their Aliment his Glory that invirons them is their Apparel and his Essence which includes them is their Lodging They need fear nothing in a condition where the possession of All Good necessarily produceth the exclusion of All Evil. We shall have no apprehension then saith S. Augustine that Hunger or Thirst shall persecute us because we shall lodge in the house of a Lord where there is plenty of all things where we may bathe our elves in the River of his Innocent Pleasures Nor Heat nor Cold shall once dare to annoy us because by a strange wonder the same Sun that shall shelter us with his shadow shall warm us with his heat Weariness shall not weaken us because God shall be our strength we shall not be forced to sleep because Labour shall never need repose nor shall the night ever draw a curtain over the day There shall be no Commerce because we shall possess All in God there shall be no Servitude because all the Subjects of this Kingdom shall be Soveraigns If you ask me saith S. Augustine what we shall do then in a place whence pain and travel are banished I will answer with the Prophet that the whole enployment of the Blessed is to think of God and to rejoyce in his glory Vacate videte quoniam ego sum Deus This meditation shall altogether take them up it shall produce all pleasures and constitute all their vertues Every Beatified person shall imitate Mary Magdalene and as with her they shall have but one Object they shall make use but of one Vertue Porro unum est necessarium The calamities of the Earth oblige us to employ successively all the Vertues sometimes we borrow aid from Prudence to dissipate the darkness wherewith we are blinded or to scatter the dangers that threaten us sometimes we call in
Continence to our relief to defend us from pleasures that tickle us sometimes we demand help of Fortitude to combat griefs that assault us sometimes we throw our selves into the arms of Justice to deliver us from enemies that oppress us But in Heaven all these Vertues are idle onely Charity is active and yet rests in acting her action is to love what she sees her rest to possess what she loves and her felicity to know that she shall never lose what she enjoys If you cannot suffer saith S. Augustine that the Vertues to which we owe Heaven be banished thence imagine them there more for your ornament then defence never conceive that they fight but perswade your selves that they triumph and having vanquished all their enemies enjoy a Peace which shall endure for all Eternity The Ninth DISCOURSE That the Christians Soul and Body shall finde their Perfection in Beatitude MAn is such a hidden Creature that he cannot well be known without Faith He is mistaken as often as he intends to pass judgement upon himself and the errours that have appeared in his own definition have given us occasion to conclude that he was ignorant of his own essence when he consulted his Sense he believed he was nothing but a Body and if there were a spirit that informed him it was perishable and mortal when he consulted his Pride he conceited himself a pure Spirit which either for his penalty or for his trial was included in a Body as in a prison from which he should be delivered by death These two errours produced two grand disorders in the world The first engaged Man in the love of his Body and the oblivion of his Soul he made no account but of sensual Pleasures and knowing no life but the present never troubled himself about the future He was of opinion that Death was the end of his Being and that nothing remaining of him after his dissolution he need fear neither any Punishment nor expect any Recompence The second errour made him so mightily undervalue his Body that he repined at it as a Slave and handled it as a Rebel he had recourse many times to Death that being delivered from this enemy he might mix with pure Intelligences and raign with Gods or Devils Faith which corrects our errours obligeth us to believe that Man is neither an Angel nor a Beast that he is compounded of a Body and a Soul and if he have the First common with Beasts he hath the Second common with Angels The same Faith perswades him that Death deprives him of his body but for a time onely that at the General Resurrection it shall be re-united to the soul to partake of its good or bad fortune Therefore treating here of the felicity of Christians I am necessarily to speak of the two parts that compose them and of the different happiness the Divine Justice prepares for them respectively Inasmuch as the soul is the noblest she is also most happily provided for and her Beatitude infinitely surpasseth that of the body Tunc nec falli nec peccare homines possunt veritate illuminati in bono confirmati Aug. When she quits her prison and is purified of all her imperfections by the grace of Jesus Christ she enters into Glory and receives all the advantages which are due to her dignity and condition Ignorance which is a brand of sin is quite defaced by the brightness that enlightens her her weakness is fortified by a supply which being much more powerful then that of Grace raiseth her to a condition wherein she cannot desert the good nor embrace the evil and where as Saint Augustine saith she is in a happy impotency to wander from her duty and estrange her self from the Supream good Assurance succeeds in the place of fear rest in stead of conflicts triumphs after victories she is no longer constrained to resist the motions of the flesh because this rebell is become obedient and losing in the Resurrection whatever he drew from Adam at his Birth hath now none but just and holy inclinations The Spirit is no longer busied to maintain a war against sin because this Monster cannot enter Heaven he groans not now under the revolt of the passions and as all the vertues are peaceable they finde neither enemies to subdue nor rebels to tame Her knowledge is no longer accompanied with doubts and darkness she learnes without labour is not afraid to forget and drawing light and wisdom from the very Fountain knows all things in their Principles In this happy condition there remains nothing for the Christian to wish for his soul is penetrated by the Divine Essence his understanding clarified with the light of glory his will inflamed with the love of God and all his powers and faculties finding their particular perfection in one object he confesseth that the promises of God exceed his hopes Though his body have been polluted by his birth and corrupted by death it findes life in the Resurrection and Purity in Glory For assoon as the Trumpet of the Angel shall have declared the will of God every soul shal reassume her own body reuniting her self with it shall give it a part in her happiness The greatness of this wonder hath found no belief in the mindes of Philosophers though they were perswaded of the Immortality of the soul they would not consent to the Resurrection of the body and having seen it made a prey to wilde Beasts or fuel for the flames they judged there was no power in the world could restore it again The spirit of man hath favoured this errour and believing his eyes rather then his light could not finde in his heart to place that part of man in heaven which he saw committed to the grave he was afraid to weary the power of the Almighty if he should oblige him to so many miracles and not comprehending how a body reduc'd to powder or smoak could take its primitive form chose rather to leave it in the Earth then draw it thence with so much violence But had he thought of the Creation he had never doubted of the Resurrection and Reason her self had perswaded him that seeing God was able to finde the body in Non-Entity where it was not he might very well finde it in the waters or in the slames where there was yet some remainder thereof If Nothing were not rebellious to him Nature cerrainly will not be disobedient and if he could make that which was not he may as easily repair what now is not Nothing perisheth in respect of the Creator the dead are not less his subjects then those that never were born and if he could make Non-Entity hear him he may well make death obey him The miracle of Resurrection is perhaps attended with more pomp then that of the Creation but there is less difficulty in it and he that could vanquish the distance between Entity and Non-Entity will have no great matter to do to master the opposition