the Pulpit against it that you may think it thunder-struck many years ago but let me tell you that if you cherish not good thoughts of God in your mind all your Religion will degenerate into this spurious and base-born devotion In stead of that free and friendly converse that ought to be maintained between God and his creatures you will only flatter him in a servile manner and bribe him not to be your enemy Do not imagine that I abuse this word Superstition or that you are in no danger to fall into it for there are none more guilty of it than they that seem to be most abhorrent from it Did you never observe what a terrible image of God there is erected in most mens minds and how frightful their apprehensions are when they look upon it Never was there any Devil more cruel or sought more to devour then they have painted him in their souls How is it possible then they should address themselves with any considence and pleasure to him How can they entertain any chearful and friendly society with a Being which appears in a dress so horrible to them And yet worship him they must for fear of incurring his displeasure and lest their neglects of him should rouze up his anger against them Now between this necessity of coming to him and that fearfulness to approach him what can there be begotten but a forced and constrained devotion which because they do not love they would willingly leave did not the dread and horrour they have in their souls of him drag them to his Altars And what are they wont to do there Truly nothing but make faces and whine and cry and look as if they were going to execution till they can flatter themselves into some hopes that he is moved by these pittiful noises and forced submissions to lay aside his frowns and cast a better aspect upon them But then his nature remains the same still and they fancy that he delights in the blood of men though for that time he was pleased to smile a little upon them And therefore they are constrained to renew these slavish devotions and to fawn again upon him that they may purchase another gracious look from him In this circle do these poor wretches spend their dayes and advance not one step toward Jerusalem For as there can be little comfort to them I should think in such grim smiles So you cannot imagine that it can be acceptable to God to see men croutch in this fashion to him and out of meer fear afford him their unwilling prostrations No this if any thing in the world is that which ought properly to wear the name of Superstition A devotion which hath no inward spring in the heart no life nor spirit in it and by consequence is void of all savour and tast to them that perform it It is sottishness to think that God will be contented with that which hath no better original than outward compulsion and in its own nature is dead and heartless dry and insipid and yet no better service will you present him withal unless you frame a lovely fair image of him in your mind and alwayes represent him to your self as most gracious kind and tender-hearted to his creatures Let this therefore be your first care not only to form such a beautiful Idaea of him but also to settle and fix it so firmly in your heart that nothing may be able to pull it out Then will you be prepared to follow all my other counsels and most chearfully also resign your self to the obedience of the hardest commands This will make you absolutely give up your self to the Divine Will and to embrace it freely also as most to be chosen and that for it self and its own innate goodness You will think that nothing but good can come from this good God and therefore you will submit to his Laws as loving commands and not as imperious tyrannical Impositions You will deny your self in any thing that he would have you that you may be made better than your self by becoming like to him But otherwise I must tell you and it is no new observation neither that if your conceptions of him be not such as make you heartily love him as you will serve him only with a forced obedience so you will obey him with a sordid and niggardly affection You will be very scanty and sparing in those duties which are of greatest moment and most pleasing to him and studdy only to express your liberality in things of lighter concernment and such are most pleasing to your self Nay things of your own devising you will be more ready to heap upon him as so many courtesies whereby you shall oblige him than to render him those services that are appointed by himself which will be the less grateful because they are his will whom you cannot love This is ever the fruit of hard and penurious thoughts of God that they shrivel up mens hearts too and make them needy and penurious in the expressions of their love and obedience to him and more forward to give him any thing than that which he most desires But I think I might have left you to deduce these things your self who have a capacity I see for greater matters and therefore I shall shorten the rest of these kind of counsels and forbear all long Discourses and Comments upon them Secondly Then it must be your care when your mind hath recovered right thoughts of God to purifie your intentions throughly and to see that they be clear and unspotted in his sight Spread your very heart before him and desire him that you may have his love and that he would deal with you as you sincerely aim at nothing but only to become what he would have you Tell him that you mean in the greatest simplicity of your soul to do his will Protest to him a thousand times that you desire above all things to know what that good that perfect and acceptable will of his is Let him know that you are so passionately bent to please him that you would not stick to purchase the understanding of his pleasure at the rate of the whole world if it was in your disposal This will prepare you in the third place to throw out the sluggish humour which is in all our natures and to dispose your will with true fervour to attend this business of searching out the will of God Ingage your self as solemnly as you can to be very diligent in finding out the truth Perswade your mind not to rest contented with that which first offers it self to your hands but to examine and prove all things and then to hold fast that which is good It is a fault too common that men take things upon the credit of others by whom they are brought to them and not upon their own credibility The reason of which is no other but this that in the one way we make a purchase of them at a
makes us part of such a whole whereof the Son of God is the other part There needs nothing to keep it fast but to keep us in our wits And therefore since a will distinct from his will makes us two again we shall alwayes comprimise with his will that we may continue one I believe now you think you shall make a mighty purchase if you can but procure this Companion to go along with you It is apparent to you that this Charity will help and inable you to do all that is commanded you though it be never so much and hard to be otherwise effected And do you not think that it will make all things easie also to be done Alas it knows no difference between doing and suffering but only this that it chuses the latter many times as a noble testimony to its sincerity and truth Nothing will seem absurd nothing will be thought mis-becoming nothing will appear difficult when once you are in Love It is well compared to an Artificial Glass which when we look thorow an enemy seems a friend disgrace is rendred an honour and hardships look like a pleasure The Love of Christ you know caused him to make himself of no reputation It preserved his Majesty and made it seem no disparagement to be so low as a servant and to court his Vassals It hath this priviledge that it cannot be defamed And it hath this generosity that it cannot learn to deny Ask any thing of it and it will make no difficulty to give it Nay ask a Coat and it will give the Cloak also Ask it to go a mile with you and it will go two Ask it to forgive one injury and it will forgive an hundred Ask it to render you a service and it will serve you with its whole self So that I think one of the ancient Guides of the Church had reason who said Love and do what thou wilt Take thine own course so that thou dost but heartily Love This is a thing so powerful that it withstands our temperament and resists our most natural inclinations It claps a new Biass upon our hearts it carries us against the stream and tide of sensitive desires it breaks the chains of custom it roots up inveterate habits it is of such vast force that it makes us vanquish our selves and obliges us to destroy our own pleasures that we may please another It is strangely bountiful and liberal with all thinking it can never do enough to make it self known to those whom it loves From whence it is that whereas they who live only in a fear and dread of God have starv'd and half dead affections to him which makes them do but little and that with a pensiveness and sadness as if they desired to be excused They whose hearts burn with Love to him have all their powers excited thereby to do their best for him and they strain themselves with the greatest gladness to execute his pleasure in all things And to say the truth there is no passion of the soul but Love hath it at its full command They all owe their Original to Love and would have no being at all if it were not in the soul before them If there were no Love implanted by God in our natures there would be no desire no hatred no grief no joy no fear no despair for all these grow upon this single root or rather are but Love shooting forth in divers shapes They are I say but several motions which Love causes the different figures which it assumes according as the object and occasion requires It is Love which desires when the thing is absent which hates that which would spoil its injoyments which grieves for the loss or fears the departure which despairs of the coming or joyes in the presence of a beloved good What therefore should that be which Love cannot do seeing it carries all these along with it and leads the whole soul thither whither it goes it self It is an active and busie affection having as much Vivacity as it hath strength It s life consists in motion and like to the Heart it ceases to live when it ceases to stir It is painted you know with wings and will make you fly rather then go to Jerusalem It is like to Fire which is both a greedy and a fierce Element A very covetous affection I mean that thinks it never hath enough of that which it desires and so earnest and vehement that it never rests till it hath spent it self upon its beloved It is like the holy fire which God sent from Heaven which was found unextinguished at the return from Babylon as the Hebrews say in the bottom of a Well all covered with mudd and dirt Much water from without cannot quench it and the dulness and heaviness of our own temper cannot repress it But as fire elevates the matter to which it takes though it be never so gross and ponderous So doth Love raise the hearts wherein it makes an impression and stirs them up to actions far surmounting their Age their breeding and condition There is a certain chearfulness also in this affection like to the shining and brightness of Fire which contributes much to the augmenting of its activity It diffuseth a secret joy through the whole soul which cannot be dissembled but casts a splendor into the countenance of those in whom it resides Though Melancholy indeed is sometimes the companion of other Love yet it cannot find so easie access to Divine Charity For that which the one wants the other hath and that which the one doubts of the other necessarily supposes Is not this the common cause of such sadness that Love meets with no return from an heart to which it hath given its own or is in despair of overcoming all the obstacles of its satisfaction But these are things that cannot find a place in this heaven-born affection which is nothing else but a return of our Love to God who hath loved us first and thereby given us assurance that he is desirous to be injoyed by us All the heaviness then of pious souls is when they cannot make such returns as they wish not when they feel this flame within them for then they are strangely pleased and ravished with joy both because it is an effect of the Love of God to them and because hereby they do actually injoy him Now as Melancholy and sadness do oppress the spirits and make us lazy and unwilling to stir so this chearfulness and lightsomeness of mind which Love infuses do set them free and render us active and vigorous in our motion Melancholy is a Lethargick humour and binds up all the powers because its frozen disposition imagines all things impossible to be either done or avoided but chearfulness by its heat and warmth gives us some degree of confidence that things are not so hard to be undertaken and it thaws melts and loosens our saculties into freedom and liberty whereby we become of
on fire with these words and at last found means to vent himself and burst out in such expressions as these O Sir what have you done I feel the Love of Jesus burn so vehemently in my breast that I shall be devoured by it if it last a moment longer in this force I have scarce any breath left to tell you that you have made me love your self also with a violent passion I have no power no more then desire to resist this Almighty Lover of Souls I render my self his prisoner and wish to be eternally held in his chains You have linkt me to your self too so fast that I am at once become his slave and your servant I would go to the worlds end to seek these two Companions Humility and Charity if they were not already become my guests by your means You have given me a greater treasure then I thought to find in those few words which I received from you and methinks I feel already that I am nought and I have nought and I desire nought but Jesus and Jerusalem If it be not absurd to speak in such terms I am in love with this Love which you have described I see methinks Humility and all things else in its armes I embrace them both with all my soul I welcome them with my best affections into my heart And if I had more hearts then one I would offer them all to the Humble Love of my sweetest Saviour Go on Sir as long as you please if you have not taught me all my lesson in teaching me to Love You have tyed my ears to your tongue and they cannot but listen to your speech Nor shall I ever feel any weariness in hearing of you for you have made me in Love with your discourse by breathing the Love of my Lord into my heart Here he making a little rest the Guide had leave to resume his office though he was so fill'd with joy to see the good effects of what he had said that it was not easie on a sudden to find room for any other thoughts The desire also that he felt of speaking something extraordinary on this occasion had like to have imposed silence on him and denyed a passage to his words But his Prudence telling him how necessary it was to keep himself now from such transports he soon reduced himself to his usual temper and thus began to renew his discourse It is no wonder to find that Jesus captivates hearts and that the Love of a dying Saviour is so powerful as to inthral them to his service All that surprises me is no more then this that such feeble words as mine should so sensibly touch your inclinations to him and with such speed excite so high a degree of Love in your heart It gives me great incouragement to continue my instructions and affords no less incouragement to your self to continue your attention For if you are already under the power of Love by what hath been now delivered I shall make you love unmeasurably before I have finished this discourse You have seen but half of the riches of that golden sentence and there are greater secrets still behind in those two pretious words which are at the conclusion of it For I pray you satisfie me in this demand Have you well considered what Jerusalem is to which you now direct your face I will not stay for your answer but proceed to tell you that I am now going to give you such an Idaea of it that if you keep it fresh in your mind you cannot imagine how it will snatch you from the world and heighten your love unto your Saviour and lift you quite out of your own will if you had a mind to fall into it back again And truly I cannot think that you should have any great list to travel long or that you should not soon feel a weariness to invade your members if you go you know not whither and carry not along with you a true information of the happy repose you are like to meet withall at your journies end Let Jerusalem then be the subject of our next discourse and suffer your eyes to be drawn to that blessed place which I believe you have often heard commended as the Perfection of Beauty and the Joy of the whole earth CAP. XIII A Description of the City Jerusalem and of the happiness be should there meet withall I Have no faculty it must be confessed of making good descriptions of those places which I have seen and therefore it must not be expected that I paint you exactly a place which I know but by report It is sufficient that I tell you nothing but the truth and do not imitate them who fill their Maps with Chimaera's of their own brain though I do not compleatly delineate every part of it but leave many spaces void to be filled up by your self when you shall have the happiness to arrive there Know then that as to the scituation of this City it is agreed by all to be incomparably sweet beyond the fairest place that this world of ours doth afford For it is seated on a very high mountain loftier then Olympus it self which yet is said to lift its head above the clouds and to be obnoxious to none of our storms and tempests and to be deprived of the Sun beams by nothing else but only the night it self It is advanced I say far above the highest part of this heavy earth and foggy air aspiring into the purer sky where the Sun never withdraws its rayes and where there is not the least shaddow of mist or vapour either to obscure its light or to offend the most delicate sense that can be conceived There are nothing but pure and fragrant odors which perfume that happy climate there is a perpetual calm and quiet which reigns in that noble region there is no noise but that which infinitely delights and charms the soul into still and quiet meditations But that which is of greatest remark and most to be remembred is the glorious Prospect which a place of this advantage yields All the world here presents it self before ones eyes and makes them the center in which the beauty and glory of it conspires to meet I would not have you think I mean a world so small as that which we inhabit upon this Globe of Earth but one which comprehends the Sun and Moon and all the other adjoyning orbs which are there beheld to move in comely measures about that Prince of lights Those balls of Fire also which you see fixed in the firmament so remote from you will fall into your better view who though they seem here but like blinking candles and sickly flames will there appear most noble lights designed for some greater end then to lend us a feeble comfort in the night It will be infinitely contenting to see the beauty and fair proportions of every part of this vast frame the fitness usefulness and correspondence of it
where you thought there was nothing but horrid deserts salvage souls and barbarous customs they may produce you many worthy minds whose renowned acts it will give you an infinite joy to have rehearsed But there is nothing I believe will touch you with a greater inclination to their converse than the knowledge of the singular love and friendship that is between all the Inhabitants of that City provided you be already touched with any sense of the pleasure of that noble passion They are a people I told you of the most excellent nature and the sweetest disposition in the world They are void of all deceit and guile of all hatred and envy of all covetousness and self-love of all anger and peevishness with whatsoever other things there are that disturb our peace and spoil our converse here below So that they make the most agreeable society that ever was and interchange to each others such pleasures as my tongue hath not expressions powerful enough to paint them forth There is no strangeness at all among them You can meet no body there but they will entertain you with as much kindness and sincerity as if they had known you many years And when many come together in one place there is no danger of their jarring by reason of their different sentiments but they bring a great addition of pleasure and make the most delicious harmony that ever moved the heart of man There they entwine in the dearest embraces There they open to each other their very hearts There they study to increase not to diminish their mutual happiness There they think all that another injoyes is as if they did injoy it themselves And what they have of their own it is not for themselves alone but for every body else There you shall meet with no pale fears no anxious cares no fruitless wishes no tormenting jealousies and no amorous sighs neither for every one will love others as much as they desire and wish for no return again but only Love If there be any particular Friendships there they do not at all spoil the universal kindness of the place Others will not be loved the worse for them but rather loved better because they will teach those united hearts the greatest Love They may be esteemed also one of the beauteous spectacles of the place and be reckoned among the grateful varieties which will entertain us When after the pleasures of a more general and large conversation every one may retire to the company of those he loveth most There you will be met with such great and shining lights as St. Paul who set all the world on fire with the flames of their love You will fall into the company of those burning hearts who were martyr'd first by their own Love and then by their Persecutors fury for the good of the world And do you think they have put off their affections when they laid aside their rags of flesh Did all their fire go out when they suffered a dissolution of their house of earth Or shall we imagine that this generous passion is the off-spring of our body and ows its being birth and strength to this corporeal nature We may not so defame and asperse the Love of our Lord who no doubt hath a more tender heart in the heavens then he had upon the earth We may expect to find there more Love in the breasts of these holy Lovers who followed him then here they were owners of though they had then so much that it was large enough to embrace the whole world They have not left their nature but only its imperfections They have not changed their affections but only heightned and improv'd them And therefore judge how happy you will be in the acquaintance of such persons and how much more happy in their excellent friendship Your Love will be raised to a strange pitch when you approach such intense and vastly increased flames Your heart will be all Fire when you come near to such huge furnaces the heat of whose Love in this cold region was so strong that it would have forced a sensible soul to expire with them And is the joy think you conceivable which you will feel when you find your self in the arms of those mighty Lovers For my part I can imagine nothing but an Ecstasie when we shall be placed in such great Hearts which are nothing else but Love and Joy to see us at Jerusalem I cannot propound to my desires a pleasure more charming then this unless it be to joyn both heart and voice with the whole number of those glorious friends to chaunt the praises of our Creator and Redeemer And indeed it is beyond the measure of my poor skill to invent any words that can tolerably describe the Melodies which will then be made when the glorious company of the Apostles the goodly fellowship of the Prophets the noble Army of the Martyrs the glittering Troops of Confessors and the innumerable Hosts of triumphant Souls shall compose but one Quire to sing their Anthems and Hallelujahs to the God of Love But yet I am apt to think that their Musick will receive no small part of its graces from hence that there will be no discord in their hearts nor jarring in their affections but that Love will exactly tune them to a perfect harmony Nay this seems to be the sum of what we can say of the happiness of that estate that it consists in a rapturous Love of God and a most passionate Love of one another And truly this is a thing so inviting and I have such a particular affection to this Vnity of Spirit among Brethren that I should be tempted here to speak a little of that Charity which you ought to have to your neighbour as I have already instructed you about that you owe to God but that I have assigned another time and place for that discourse CAP. XIV The manner of their life who live at Jerusalem and that all things concur to make it the most pleasant of all other YOU have great incouragement then to make haste to Jerusalem for you see they pass their time there more delightfully then in any other place and lead a life so much to their content that one may truly say their imployment is to please themselves and to do according to their desires The most vigorous Soul that this earth affords is but a drone in compare with the sprightly air of them that inhabit those Caelestial Regions You would say the most pleasant dayes that here we lead and study to prolong to an hundred years are but like a sleep and a dream a meer image and shaddow of life if you could but be raised for one minute to the strength and activity of those happy people and receive but the sleightest taste of those lively and essential delights which force the whole soul to attend unto them The briskness and chearfulness of our youthful time doth not so much excell the flat and
of your exact Justice your unfeigned Charity your Self-denyal your Patience your Peaceableness and above all your Meekness Humility and Modesty of Spirit that if they had a mind they may not have the face to say you have but the semblance and Apish imitation of Piety And to say the truth there is nothing will certainly evince it to your self but only this that you feel in your heart a constant powerful and prevailing inclination to all good works 1 Joh 4.13 Hereby we know that we dwell in him and he in us because he hath given us of his Spirit If we know that he is righteous we know that every one that doth Righteousness is born of him Cap. 2.19 Let no man deceive you he that doth Righteousness is righteous even as he is righteous He that committeth sin is of the Devil Cap. 3.8 9 c. Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin for his seed remaineth in him and he cannot sin because he is born of God In this the Children of God are manifest and the children of the Devil whosoever doth not Righteousness is not of God neither he that loveth not his Brother And indeed by this one mark last named you shall detect the Artifice of those seeming people who notwithstanding all their fair speeches whereby they deceive the hearts of the simple are never found to have a true and hearty Love to those that follow not the Sect which they have embraced It is a great while ago since a very eminent person told the world that he noted but two small wants in that sort of men viz. of Knowledge and of Love He might have bated them one of the two and yet their condition had been bad enough though if he had lived till now he would have seen their Poverty increased and that they want Humility as much as either of the other They are indeed but small wants in their account especially the two last of the three and they can be very well content without them if God will be so too They esteem themselves Rich enough in other invisible treasures nay they have one Jewel of such inestimable value viz. their Faith that it will compensate for a thousand wants that are no greater than these But either I have lost all my labour or else I have made you sensible that there is nothing more imports you than to see that you be not deficient in these two Charity and Humility I may safely I suppose refer you to your own memory for to be satisfied in their necessity and so only say this concerning the former of them That all your Faith is worth nothing which worketh not by Love and that he is a Lyer who saith he Loveth God and loveth not his Brother also That you may secure your self therefore the better from this and all other illusions what other counsel should I give you than to ponder that sentence much which I wisht you to carry along with you and to let your thoughts run as little as may be upon any other thing save Jesus only and Jerusalem Draw your mind from the things which you see in this outward world and make it to retire within unto your self that there you may talk with Jesus and behold Jerusalem and see that Glory where he is Which when you have practised a competent time as every thing will be unwelcome and painful to you which is not related to them So you will entertain every thing as very acceptable which brings you into their familiarity Not as if I would have you to neglect any business to which you are obliged in the world for whatsoever it be which either Necessity or Charity requires whether it be for your self friends or Christian Brethren I must charge you to apply your self to the doing of it with all care and exactness Jesus is not out of your eye as I shall tell you further when you are so imployed for this is the thing by which he was known above all other that he went about doing good But if it be a business of no necessity or if it be one wherein your particular person is not concerned and your neighbour challenges not your assistance let it alone and trouble not your thoughts about it And if it offer it self to you and press upon you and would make you a medler in other mens matters as most of our vain Believers are tell it you have something else to do and repeat still those words I HAVE NOUGHT AND NOUGHT DO I DESIRE BUT TO BE IN PEACE WITH JESUS AT JERUSALEM CAP. XXI Of the indeavours of his Enemies to keep him from doing good to his Brethren under a pretence of Love to God And of the Excellency of that Brotherly Charity AND here it seems very seasonable to remember you of another common subtilty whereby your Adversaries will study to deceive you and put a great stop to your progress in the way you are about to enter Which is to detain you in the amusements of contemplation and to busie your head only with Meditations and Conferences with Jesus They know that this will keep you too much at home as well as any thing else and that you will travel in your mind and thoughts only but not with your whole man to Jerusalem And therefore they will labour to perswade you of this at least that there is not half so much Piety can be exercised abroad as in your Closet and that the good we do our Brethren is nothing comparable to the Meditations we have of God and our Saviour and the Affections we express unto them This will very much hinder your proficiency and put a greater rub than you imagine in your way if you lend any belief unto it It will keep you very much behind under the pretence and colour of putting you forward and it will depress and thrust you down below others while you seem to be mounting up on high and soaring to a pitch far above them For your Enemies understand very well that God accounts all that as done to himself which is done to your Brethren for his sake He hath made over all those benefits to them which are owing to him because he is in no need of them They are become his Receivers and he hath devolved the right which he hath to our returns of Love to him upon our Brethren Be not you ignorant of this then but understand it as well as your Enemies that you never serve God better nor so well neither as when you are doing any service to your poor Neighbours You are bound you think to express such Love to God as he hath expressed to you Only you find that he is not capable to receive such effects of it as you experiment in your self from his affections to you But will you imagine now that he will lose the right he hath to your thankful retributions because he is in want of nothing No such matter he
received a Kingdom and Glory from the Father that he hath power to raise up you to sit with him in his Throne that he will infallibly take you up to himself that you may be there where he is and behold the Glory which God hath given him and then tell me if ever you felt any thing touch your heart with such a pleasure as the bare contemplation of those divine enjoyments The very fancy of them is delightful Such a dream if a man was in it he would not lose for all that he sees here He would be troubled to be awaked and shut his eyes again wishing that it may know no end And therefore the assurance of these things to be a certain truth which the Holy Ghost coming down from Jesus hath given to us must needs give us a far greater satisfaction A satisfaction as much beyond that of fancy as a sensible enjoyment is beyond a dream And what the contentment will be if we suffer these truths to go down to our hearts to ravish our wills to breathe into us the Love of Jesus and to bring all those Blessed Vertues into our esteem and affection I have not power enough to express But as you love your soul do not deny it your best endeavour that before this day be at an end you may have a real feeling of it And now it may be fit for your fuller conviction in this particular to bid you turn your eyes to the condition of other men who are ingaged in a quite contrary course and you will soon see that to be a pleasant path wherein I conduct you by the misery and confusion which you will discern in their lives It will not be long before you be satisfied that they are not in a state of Nature They will presently discover to you that they are not as they should be Nay that they would be something else than what they are and that long use and custom hath rendred contradictions familiar to them There is not one of them but he loves that which he hates and pursues that which he flyes and praises that which he cannot but also discommend There are strange seditions and clashings in their desires and they are tossed about with I know not how many contrary winds They all desire to be rich and yet this very desire will not let them be so They fear nothing more than need and yet they are ever in great want and cannot be filled For they alwayes think that which they have to be less than that which they have not and they take that which is present to be so little that it is not worth their notice in compare of what they expect in time to come And is there is any greater consistency in their desires of pleasure Alas they pursue mirth but they ever pull upon their heads a great deal of sorrow They would have nothing at all but sweetness and the more greedy they are of it the greater is their bitterness When they think to heighten their delights they quite destroy them and take them away When they would leave no place empty they are so full that they cannot feel them Do you not see all this verified in drunken fools Where is their pleasure after their Understanding is once blasted with the fumes of Wine A Spunge is as good a Judge as they of pleasures which without any difference sucks in the best and the worst of liquors And as for Death Which of them is there that doth not fear it and yet they take no care at all to live They dread diseases and yet they will not abstain from noxious and unwholesome things When any trouble falls upon them then they wish they were out of the world and bless those that are dead and yet when death comes though they are never so ill they wish it would stay a little longer They hate many times to live and yet they are afraid to dye They think them happy who are in the other world but yet they are loath to come among them They cry out of the evils which they suffer and yet they would fain spin out the most miserable life to the greatest length But there is another thing that is stranger than this For you have often heard them complain I believe of the great scarcity of time and yet which of them is there that is not so prodigal of it as if he had half a Age to spare They say that it runs away very swiftly from us and yet they spur on their hours and would have them flye away faster than they do as if they had too many of them There are but a few seasons they say in time and yet they let those opportunities grow old in their hands and suffer them to be bald before they mind to apprehend them And did you ever mark how they deal one with another Each man suspects his fellow because he deserves to be suspected himself Every one is afraid to be deceived and labours all he can to deceive He hath a great mind to be revenged and yet he would not have Justice it self take any vengeance of him He hates Tyranny and yet he would fain be the Tyrant He would have all men subject to those Laws which he hath no mind to observe He accuses many things as base but will not stick to do them And on the contrary he holds good fortune in great estimation but cares not a rush for vertue which yet he acknowledges deserves only to be fortunate Max. Tyr. dissert 20. Philosophers themselves have been ashamed to see how they all behave themselves in every condition like unconstant fools They abhor War but cannot tell how to live in Peace They are miserably dejected if they be made slaves but are so insolent in liberty that they draw servitude upon them They desire children and when they have them take no care about them They would leave them estates but no vertue to use them well and to preserve them They desire to have their family alway flourish but breed them so as if they meant it should dye with the next Generation Nay God himself is not better used by them For they pray to him as if he was able to do them good and yet they affront him as if it was not in his power to do them hurt At other times they fear him as if he could severely punish and yet forswear themselves as if he had no Being but only when they pleased But that I may not run into infinite particulars let us once for all take a view of those who would attain to great honours and see by what low mean and servile practices they labour to ascend unto them There is nothing which their heart abhors more than subjection to others and yet they are forced to the basest prostrations They stoop to the very feet of those upon whose heads they would tread They kiss those hands which they wish a thousand times were
command himself never so much And so they sacrifice their own ease to the popular opinions They vainly employ their time to satisfie other men rather than themselves They consider more what will be said of them if they be not in such or such an estate than they do their own quiet and repose And is it possible can we think that a man should be well-pleased who refusing to comply with reason alone desires to give content to that famous Chimaera called Opinion It cannot be especially since it is the Opinion of others and not his own only which he follows and this is a thing so infinite and withall so mutable and uncertain that it will never give him any rest who is led by it But then after all this let us consider what it is that makes men desirous to content the World in order to content themselves Is it not their Pride and desire to be esteemed Is it not a vain study to be admired and to have a great Name in the World Let us be Humble then and we shall be contented Let us have a mean esteem of our selves and we shall not be troubled that other mens thoughts are conformable to our own Let us think we have more than we deserve and we shall at the most but study to be worthy still to have it Let us thus endeavour to make our selves happy and we shall not care whether other men think us happy or no. And then for Charity or the Love of God it hath this particular Charm that it renders all conditions alike agreeable unto us because we never consider any thing therein but only him alone When we are so full of him as to love him with all our heart and all our soul and all our strength there can be but little room for any thing else Some troublesome thoughts may intrude themselves but they cannot dwell in us because the love of him will thrust them out Besides the love of him is very powerful to beget in our souls a perswasion that he loveth us Our Love is but the product of his and there is nothing more comfortable then to think that we are beloved of so great a Good And then again Love is apt to make us well pleased with all that they do whom we entirely love We can take nothing ill at their hands but alwayes perswade our selves that they mean well It pleases us much that they should please themselves And therefore if we love God it will produce the same satisfaction in all his Providences we shall love them every one because we are in love with him Especially since we are satisfied by this love of his good affection to us it will not let us suspect him of any unkindness We shall alwayes rest assured of his good will and so have no more to say but only this Thy will O Love be done And I may add also that the Love of God being just opposite to our self-love which is the root of all our troubles must needs be the foundation and root of all our contentment For what is Contentment but the stability as it were of the Soul whereby it stands in one unmoveable temper It is a kind of indifferency an unconcernedness in all things but only God And how is that to be purchased but only by such a strong affection to him as destroyes the inordinate love of our selves and all other things As long as that love of our selves reigns it carries us headlong to every thing that pleases our carnal appetites It make us range up and down the World after every trifle that we have a fancy unto It makes us vex if we be crossed in the least of our desires It sets us in a restless motion without any possibility of ever fixing our selves It makes us as passionately concern our selves for a toy as if it touched our very life And therefore till this be destroyed we are not likely to find the contentment which we seek Now the Love of God that is just contrary to it and cannot stand together with it That concenters and unites all our thoughts and affections in one Good which we may alwayes have and in which we may alwayes have satisfaction That settles our souls in one place out of which we need not stir to seek our happiness That carries our hearts continually above and sets us out of the reach of these worldly things It raises us beyond our selves and makes us feel him who is infinitely better who also we know rules and disposes all things in the world according to that excellent goodness which we feel in him Let us love him therefore now as much as we can and in this let us place our happiness So shall we never fail to be well pleased because every thing will make us more to love him I thank you most heartily said the Pilgrim for the seasonable remembrance you have given me of that excellent lesson It hath done me so much good that I cannot see how any thing should trouble me unless it be this to see so little Love of God in the world and that I can do no more good upon men whom I love for Gods sake It is very well replyed the Father if you have no more to trouble you then this for it is only the fruit of a great Love which sometime is wont to make us sick if it meet with unkind entertainment in those on whom it is bestowed And besides let me tell you this for your better satisfaction that you must content your self to see the world so imperfect as it is You will never have any quiet if you vex your self because you cannot bring mankind to that exact Idaea of things which you have formed in your mind You desire I perceive above all things that there might be peace on earth and that Christian people might live in a sweet agreement together But be not Ignorant I pray you of this that you do but trouble your self and the world too if you think to attain this happiness by making all so perfect as your self As it is too commonly seen that Good men hinder peace by insisting over vehemently upon lesser truths which might well stand aside to make way for unity in greater things so an unseasonable and violent indeavour to correct some faults and root out some abuses and to take away some imperfect institutions hath too frequently driven peace away from the Church of God All which proceeds from want of prudence and discreet consideration of things with which an honest and well meaning zeal had need to be tempered We must well weigh the nature and moment of things When it is impossible to have all we honestly desire we must take what we can rather then want the chiefest thing that is in our desires We do not live in a world that is composed of complete Christians All is weak all is sick and distempered in the Societies of men They are in a state of
a lively forward and ready disposition Love therefore being of this pleasant and chearful nature you see must needs both quicken your spirit and facilitate your work Nay it is apt to excite and inspire others who come near us and therefore much more our selves Chearfulness and the love from whence it springs makes our countenance smooth and clear and invites others into our Society When this passion stirs in the heart the face is all over touched with the sweetness of it which both intices and inlivens those that approach us How is it possible then that we should not feel these effects of it our selves that are so sensible to others or what heart is there so cold and indifferent that would not be possessed with this affection which is as useful as delightful and whose benefits redound to our neighbours and stay not in our selves It will not let us be a terrour to our own souls nor appear with such a dismal aspect that we should scare and affright others It will not drive others from Piety while it carries us unto it It will not suffer us to put Religion on the rack that we may look severe And it is far from making us appear so as though we imagined we could not be saved unless we make an ugly face What shall I say more need I tell you that Love is full of imitation and forces us to conform our selves to the humour and disposition of him whom we Love There is a stranger property by far then this which will make you open your heart to it and that is a singular Sagacity which it is Master of whereby it knows what is fit to be done without any teaching If you were fully in the power of it it would go near to render me of no use being it self instead of twenty Masters It knows what will please before it be told and sees what is acceptable without a director It hath eyes of its own to find out its way and by its innate wisdome would lead you streight to Jerusalem It is very skilfull to spy out its duty and hath a quick perception of what is befitting in every passage of life In so much that when a man begins to Love he begins to know how to guide himself His Love will suggest unto him many things which he ought to do and be instead of a thousand Monitors to put him upon the doing of them It will make a man descry the least faults in himself though it hide them in others It notes an undecency with as much severity as another marks a gross impurity It labours to overcome the smallest infirmity and weeps more for a mote in its eye then others do for a beam Nay it is afflicted for those things which no body sees save only it self It blushes more for a vain thought then the rest of the world do for a monstrous act It hath a curiosity about those little circumstances which all men are wont to oversee or neglect It s niceness and delicacy is so great that it abhors the very shadow of all evil And it every way strives to adorn it self with such accuracy that there may not be the least speck to render it less fair and beautiful in the eyes of God Love therefore I beseech you Love as much as ever you are able if you mean to be happy Make your heart ready as an Altar for this Fire from above to descend upon it Prepare your self as a Sacrifice to be offered up in this Holy flame to the Lord of Love Let all the world know that you are a consecrated thing tell it that you cannot entertain its sute nor unhallow the place where heaven is pleased to dwell Yield your self a captive to this mighty Conquerour whereby you will be inabled to conquer all things else Subject your self to the power of that which will bring the Devil the World and the Flesh under your feet Let it take away your liberty of doing what you please that it may make you free to do as you ought Possess it of your soul intirely and suffer it to inspire all your desires and to order all your motions and it will not fail to possess you of that blessed place to which you wish to be conducted And is this any difficult thing that I require of you I should rather think that we are highly obliged to God for making the way to Jerusalem so easie and our arriving there so certain as it is For Love is the most natural and pleasant thing in the world which will certainly bring us thither and God being so lovely and having loved us so much one would think it should be an easie thing to beget it in our hearts Do you not mark how a Dog loves you if you do but throw him a bone or some such thing which to you is of no use or worth at all For this he fawns upon you for this he stayes in your house and keeps your door and defends your goods this makes him follow you at the heels if you please to travel with you long journies to forsake all other Masters for your service and many times to dye with you though it be a poor thing which you know not what to do withall unless you cast it unto him How can you chuse then but love Jesus and be at his command and follow his steps and leave all others for his sake and even give your life to him who hath given you not a thing of no value not that which cost him nothing or that which he could not tell what to do withall but himself his holy blood his pretious promises which it cost an infinite deal of pain to seal and ratifie unto you Are you still insensible of his favours when you think of this Are you still to learn to Love when such a weight of Love as this doth press your heart If such a thought could enter my mind I would send you to the brutes to be their Scholler I would call your Spaniel and bid him teach you I would cease to be your instructer any longer and put you there to learn the affection you owe to your dearest Lord and Master But your blushes bid me spare this language and seem to assure me both that you are ashamed to owe your vertue to such examples and that you feel already this flame inkindled in your heart Feed it I beseech you continually and let it increase unto greater ardors of Love as it will infallibly if you do but consider what great things your Saviour hath done for you and that he is still busie in procuring your good and in short that there is not an hour not a moment wherein you do not stand indebted to him for eternal blessings or for the means of them or for the grace to help you to attain them And indeed the poor Pilgrims heart did beat at such a rate that it seemed to knock against his ribs He was set all
to all the rest of its neighbouring parts together with the exact and admirable order of the Whole And can you imagine into what transports it will cast your soul to hear the praises of the Creator sung by all his Works of wonder And yet that is another priviledge of this blessed place by the advantage of whose holy silence you will receive the chearful hymns wherewith every creature you behold doth celebrate the wisdom power and goodness of him that made it You have heard no doubt of the Musick of the Sphaeres which they say would ravish souls from these mortal bodies should it but strongly touch their ears and therefore is almost drown'd by the noise and clatter of this lower world This is it which I am now commending to you that sweet concent which all creatures make among themselves that rare harmony which there is in the motion of all the heavenly Orbs which strikes the mind so agreeably that one cannot chuse but dance for joy together with them But it is the proper entertainment of those who dwell in that still Region in which alone it can be distinctly heard and where an everlasting song to the Creator of all doth melt their hearts to joyn in consort with that Universal harmony But yet the place is nothing so considerable as the Persons that inhabit it nor will it be so useful to draw their pictures curiously as to describe their life and manners Enquire not therefore of the vastness of this place the stateliness of its buildings the riches of their furniture and such like things but know that it is the City of the Great King the seat of the Imperial Majesty of Heaven and Earth the place where the Lord and Governour of the whole world whose Dominion is an everlasting Dominion and who reigns through all Generations keeps his Court. Do you not think it will be a pleasingly amazing sight to behold the Majesty of his Glory Or What greater happiness can you wish if you were to be the disposer of your own fortune than alway to stand before the Soveraign of the World as one of his Ministers and Attendants and to live in his blessed presence as one whom he highly favours To behold the wisdom of his Government the righteousness and goodness of his Laws the admirable contrivance of all his Works the universal care which he takes of all his Creatures the infinite extent of his Providence and the power of his Authority whereby he doth whatsoever he pleases in Heaven and Earth and Sea and all deep places To see how he brings those things together which were removed far asunder and dissolves the combinations and confederacies of those things which were closely united To contemplate how he hereby makes those designs abortive which were just bringing forth how he disappoints the devises of the crafty and confounds all the subtilty of the world and catches it in its own snares It will strangely transport you to see the beauty of his Holiness the splendor and brightness of his Understanding the largeness of his Love his uncorrupted Justice his unexhausted Goodness his immoveable Truth his uncontroulable Power his vast Dominions which yet he fills with his presence and administers their affairs with ease and is magnified and praised in them by the throng of all his creatures These things I will leave to your own private thoughts that I may have time to speak of the rest of the caelestial Inhabitants but especially of the Kings Son who is a principal ornament if I may speak in so low a phrase and a great glory to this place And of him I shall need to tell you no more than this that in his person there is to be seen at once the most illustrious Lover and Warriour that ever was His Conquests have been innumerable His Victories no History but one of his own inspiring is able to recount He hath trodden down the most potent and giantly enemies He hath triumphed over the Powers of Earth and Air. He hath trailed the greatest Tyrant that ever was seen at his Chariot-wheels And there is one universal triumph of his over all things still behind wherein there will be special marks of honour set on all the Citizens of Jerusalem who are to bear a part in it which will astonish and ravish all their hearts with Admiration Love and Joy This will be the most splendid shew the most illustrious appearance that ever the Sun saw for all Angels and all Men all that ever have been are or shall be will there be summoned to attend in some sort or other upon the Pomp of that great day Then all the Citizens of Jerusalem will be seen with Crowns of Gold on their heads which this great Prince will bestow upon them then they will appear on the Theatre of the world as so many Kings raigning together with him and then all the Heavens will ring with shouts of joy and praise to him that redeemed them as they march along in his train thorow the Air to Jerusalem For as I told you he is the most glorious Lover that ever was and the greatness of his valour and courage doth not at all extinguish his nobler flames He is owner of the most tender heart that ever was in any breast and hath rendred himself redoubtable to his greatest enemies by nothing more than this that he hath won so many hearts and triumphed over so many brave souls who were vanquished by nothing else but the power of his mighty Love Such a generous Lover he was that though he was rich he became poor that they on whom he had set his heart might be made rich He laid aside the Robes of his Glory that they might be invested with them He took upon him the shape of a servant that he might prefer them to be the Sons of God and Heirs of a Kingdom And at last he voluntarily and without any compulsion but that of his Love dyed upon a Cross to save the lives of those who were so far from having any resentments of Love to him that they had the hearts of most desperate enemies against him For you must know that he is such a Lord of Love that the hatred and malignity of men could not extinguish the fervours of his passion All the discourtesies they could do him were not able to prevail with him to lay aside his thoughts of kindness toward them The innumerable affronts which he received could not make him go back to Heaven and forsake this ill-natur'd world till he had expressed all the Love conceiveable unto it No he dyed for those who took away his life His bowels earned toward those who were ready to rake into them with their bloody hands His heart burnt with affection to those wretches that cruelly pierced it and thrust it thorow with a spear And therefore I cannot but think you would have a mind to take a journey to Jerusalem and judge your pains and travel well
Supplicants that stood still to hear the cryes of blind Beggars that would not refuse a work of Charity because of its vileness and in one word that stooped so low as to wash his Disciples feet which was the meanest office of a servant I need not tell you sure for what purpose he did this seeing he himself hath saved me the labour by that speech of his to those whom he had so washed Joh. 13 2â— I have given you an example that you should do as I have done to you Let me say to you therefore as he doth presently after to those persons If you know these things Vers 17. happy are you if you do them You must lay your self as low as the dust you tread upon in the way to Jerusalem You must not study Fame so much as Virtue You must acknowledge God in all and magnifie your self in nothing You must raise a name to him and not seek your own renown When you are praised you must be the same that you are when men discommend you You must think it dangerous to aspire to honours and hunt after promotions Let them find you as unwilling to receive them as others are to forbear their Courtship towards them Condescend to men of low estate and sort your self familiarly with those who are below you Let the poor never be the object of your scorn but think that pride doth render you poorer and more despicable than them Remember to stoop to the meanest offices of Love whereby you may serve your Brethren and when you have done them think that they are to be done again when their needs require them And that I may not seem to impose any heavy burden upon you do but look at Jerusalem and see how Jesus is advanced by humbling himself and you will not need any exhortation to this Virtue which before I so much praised and now again commend to your affection Many of the Angels they say made it their study to raise themselves higher than they were but miscarried in the enterprise and were not able to effect it They tryed their wings and began to soar alost but they failed them sadly and let them suffer a shameful fall But Jesus on the contrary studied to be a great deal lower than he was not only lower than the Angels but inferiour to men even the vilest of men The issue of which was that you see him exalted at Gods right hand and he hath raised himself thereby not only to the places from whence those Angels fell but to such a dignity that he is higher than all principalities and powers and hath the noblest creatures put in subjection under his feet Be a follower of Jesus therefore in his Humility depressing your self as low as you can in your own thoughts for that is the way to raise your self to the highest pitch of Glory and to be made equal to the Angels of God who have kept their station and alwaies had their dwelling at Jerusalem And it may not be amiss the more effectually to excite you if you consider how those noble persons have preserved their first habitation and remained so long in the Caelestial Court. Was it not by humbling themselves to the meanest imployments to which the Soveraign of all orders and ranks of being in the world was pleased to assign them Are they not content to come and wait upon the poorest of us and to serve as a Guard to the most abject of the Sons of Men Let us not refuse then to submit to any condition of life wherein our wise Governour thinks good to place us nor imagine any office below us in which we may be useful and serviceable to our neighbours If we had no greater example than the Angels it might well be expected that we should not disdain to appear in the meanest dress but since the Lord of them all is pleased to become our pattern and to abase himself far lower than they it should make us love to be all over covered with this Humility and to esteem it the most glorious Robe that we can wear And truly if our hearts were touched with such a Charity to others as He was indued withall we should not stick to bow our selves though we were never so high to the vilest services for the succour and help of those whose miseries implored our assistance Let me propose to you therefore the blessed Jesus in the next place as a person that was very full of love tenderness and bowels of compassion towards those that deserved nothing nay towards those that deserved ill at his hands He was so disposed to do good that they could not miss of his kindness who neither desired it nor were willing when it was offered to receive it He did not only pitty the weakness and infirmity of his Disciples but had a feeling of the sufferings of those who were strangers neither was he only kind and benigne towards Supplicants but his heart was tender to the perverse untoward and ungrateful people There was nothing of roughness sowreness and uncivility in his manners but they were smooth sweet and full of Courtesie His heart was not at all pinched and narrowed by the Love of himself but it was inlarged into such an universal Charity that he seemed to forget his own concerns the better to provide for the good of others The Instances of his benignity and good nature are so many that to reckon them all would be as long as to tell a story of his whole life for he went about doing good It was his work and imployment to do benefits to the world He was the Sun of Righteousness that run a long race for no other prize but only to have the honour of spending his beams He rejoyced to spread his healing wings over every place It was his pleasure to shed his influences and to make all that saw him sensible of his flames The Patients that solicited his healing-power were innumerable and the Cures which he wrought were not fewer than they He lived all his time in a kind of Hospital being thronged with sick men with Lazers and other diseased folks And though it were turned sometimes to a Bedlam by the company of Daemoniacks and phrenetical people yet he never complained of the burden but chearfully entertained the occasion of putting them in possession of their wits again Never did he send any man away without satisfaction to his desires but he cast out Devils cleansed their Leprosies cured their Palsies untied the tongue of the dumb opened the eyes of the blind restored feet to the lame and besides relieved their necessities had compassion on their hunger and fed their bodies and their souls both together The whole Country seemed to be his family and if he had been the Father of them all he could not have been more tender or yearned with greater bowels of mercy towards them The opposition and contradiction of brutish men did not alter the sweetness of
changes upon them or other such like adulterate Ware which would fain pass for wit and elegance Next to the love of Gibberish and of canting phrases there is no greater dotage than this of courting the diseases corruptions and the rotten carkase of eloquence and sleighting the life and spirit of it One would wonder that reasonable souls should delight in toying and playing with letters and syllables There is nothing more strange unless it be this that there are a company of men to be found who are at a great deal of pains to trim themselves with these tinsel ornaments and with much curiosity study to speak absurdly It is not their negligence but they take a care to trifle They do not slip unawares into childish expressions but they fall into them by design But if you would be wise and good you must open your ears to plain words and strong sense to proper and significant language which brings along with it powerful and convincing arguments to that which strikes and penetrates into the soul and doth not meerly glide smoothly over the surface of it You must not come to be tickled but to be taught not to be pleased but to be made better not that a man may speak to your gust but to your necessities You must not think you have spent your time well when the Truth peeps into your soul but stops at the door or when your will is sleightly moved and then stands still but when the light pierces into your mind and makes a broad day there when a secret fire creeps into your veins and continues to burn in your heart when all your affections are carried away and remain in the possession of Truth And for this purpose you must read the Holy Scriptures themselves not to store your mind with high notions or to replenish it with a large furniture and matter of discourse or to find support for some of your opinions but to get a stock of efficacious reasons for well doing and to over-power your heart by the force of them to consent unto it And let this be your Rule also in reading other pious Books For there are too many who regard only the lightest things in any discourse the fringes the lace and other ornaments more than they do the body it self They note the pretty stories the apt similitudes and here and there a small sentence which smites their fancy but mind not the clear reasons the nervous arguments and much less the whole scope and design of the treatise which they read Much like some Writers we have seen who reporting the History of their times take notice of little more than of Justings and Tornaments of Bear-baitings and lanching of Ships and such like frivolous matters which are of no moment Or like those Beggars who travelling many Countries behold a great number of fair buildings but know nothing either of the persons or the furniture or the order and regular form which is to be observed in them I think it is not amiss to add that this likewise is the end you ought to propound to your self in all your conferences with wise and pious souls who may give you great assistance in your journey to Jerusalem Not to breed in your self an opinion that you are Religious because you frequent their company but to receive greater illumination of mind from their Torches and to have your heart warmed with a greater love to God at their holy Fires And here it will be seasonable at the conclusion of this discourse to admonish you of a thing which may do you very much service and save you abundance of trouble which else may arise in your mind There are many things as you see that will further you in well doing viz. Prayer Reading and Hearing the Word of God Meditation Conference with good men and such like some of these you must understand will serve your purpose at one time and some at another according as you are disposed and they shall be found efficacious for the end to which they are designed There is a great variety also in these of which you may make an advantage if you chuse that use and practice of them which you shall find to have most power in it at the present to withdraw your mind from worldly vanities to mortifie your passions and to establish your will in the Love of Jesus As for instance sometimes it will be fit for you to Meditate and sometimes to Pray and sometimes to Converse with your friends and it is not so much to be askt which of these you shall chuse as which of them will best at that instant advance you in your way and move your will with the greatest force to virtuous actions And then in Meditation there is the Life of Christ and his Death his Resurrection and his Glory his Coming again to Judgment and the Life of the World to come the long Experience you have had of his Goodness the Instances which he daily gives of his Providence the Example of all his Saints and an hundred things besides to exercise your thoughts and have a great virtue in them to make you do your duty toward God and Man In like manner there are sundry Books in the reading of which you may imploy your time though I would rather have you chuse the best than a multitude and several waies of praying and addressing your Petitions to God which may every one of them have their places and seasons according as you shall be disposed to serve your soul of them And therefore if you perceive that some of them through custom and long use do in time lose their Savour and their Power to increase the Love of God in you and it seems to you there may be more profit in another way take that new course and leave the former without any scruple For that Meditation which will not now affect you at another time will prove more efficacious than any else and that way of opening your soul to God which now you forsake will come about again to be in use Only of this you must take a great care to stir up your self to a continual attendance upon the Publick Service of God For that is a necessary acknowledgment of his Supreme Authority and Dominion in the World and though you feel your self indisposed dull and heavy at certain times in these addresses yet there is this good alwayes done that by your very presence there you have paid part of your homage to him have owned him to be your Lord and Governour and confessed that he is worthy of all Honour and Service But as for the rest though the inclination and resolution of your heart to love Jesus and to be like to him must be unchangeable nevertheless the wayes and means which are to be imployed to the nourishing and strengthning of your resolution may and ought to be changed according as you feel your self disposed and find them to be effectual But especially
hath deputed those who are in need to receive from us that which is due to him and imploy it to their own uses He hath communicated as I may say all his claim to them and bids them demand in his Name that which we cannot give much less forgive to him So that you exercise Justice and Charity both together when you do good to your Neighbour and there is a double Charity in it also one to Him and another to them They have good done them upon his account and he takes it so much as done to himself that he acknowledges an obligation and binds himself to pay us again Nay let me tell you that there is nothing in all the world can render you so divine and heavenly as to do much good This puts us in the place of God to our poor Brethren to whom he sends relief and help by our hands Is not this a very high honour And is not that a very noble quality which so differences us from all others that it makes us like to the Most High The Mechanical Christian will here find himself to be dead and void of God it being nothing but a Spirit of Life and that very Divine too which will carry us out of our selves and fill us with perpetual ardors of Love to others and instigate us to be doing of good to all This is the very Character of the Deity for God is Love and he that loveth dwelleth in God and God in him And therefore if you covet to excel all others study to be indued with the most profitable Gifts as the great Apostle adviseth and yet saith he I shew you a more excellent way and that is Charity For this causes us to make use of all those Gifts for the benefit of Mankind This is the rarest way of excelling others because it makes us excell our selves and likens us to God The Angels you know had the ambition of being like to God in Power and Majesty aspiring as is conceived to the Throne of the Most High Our first Parents were soon infected with the like vanity and they rubbed their Leprosie upon them for they affected to resemble God in wisdom and knowledge But by this means you know that both of them lost what they enjoyed instead of adding more unto it What must we do then who see their falls must we be content not to be like to our Creator Not so neither but we must indeavour to imitate him in Love and Goodness in which there is no danger This admits of no excess as wise men observe but only of error We cannot love too much though we may be imprudent in the communications of it Though Angels and Men suffered so much by the desire of other things in excess yet in Charity there can be none nor shall either of them suffer any damage by it And therefore it was that God sent his Son Jesus into the world that by looking on him we may know how to become Divine All his acts of power were acts of Love All his Miracles were Mercies to men He never imployed his Might but to do benefits To teach us that they are truly great who are little in themselves as he was and great in Charity That they are indued with most power who can do most good and that they are nearest to God and most highly exalted who are nearest to their neighbours and most deeply humbled You know that if a Circle be made and you draw lines from the circumference to the middle point or Center where they all meet the further these lines are in any place one from the other the farther they are from the Center and the nearer they come to that the nearer also and the clofer their approaches are to each other This may be a resemblance if you please of our condition here in this World where we are all in our way to God the Center of our Rest and travelling to Jerusalem where we hope to meet in him We are desirous now to draw as nigh to him as we can and many fancy that their musings meditations and prayers are the chiefest if not the only things that bring them near unto him But as I have told you heretofore so let me now repeat it again That God and our Brethren are so inseperable that we cannot touch the one but we must be joyned to the other also The further any of us is removed from his neighbour as you see in that similitude at the greater distance he is from God He cannot go away from the former but he goes away in the same proportions from the latter too And the nearer and closer he is joyned in the affection of Charity to his neighbour the nearer he is unto God the more doth he approach to his excellencies and to an union with him If you will be a follower of God then as a dear child of his Walk in love You cannot chuse sure to do otherwise when you have so glorious a pattern before you It is an honourable thing now you see to love since God himself is become a Lover You may have imagined perhaps that some offices of Charity are ignoble and disparage a person of honour As most men of condition think it below them to go into a poor mans house to come near the stinking wounds and the dirty beds of the meaner sort and there are very few who do not account it a sneaking quality to put up injuries and pass by affronts But you cannot be of this mind if you look upon God who by loving us hath also taught us how honourable and glorious all these things are They are not below us since they are not below himself There is no man so much our inferiour as we are all beneath Him And yet he condescended to them He comes and dwells in this perishing flesh of ours He despises not our poor cottages he dresses our wounds he takes care of our sores he heals our sicknesses he passes by our transgressions yea he prayes us to be friends and intreats us to be reconciled And that is a thing which men think to be so poor and mean that no great spirit can indure to submit unto it To go to others who have offended us and beseech them to lay aside their enmity is thought to savour of baseness and to be an argument of a low and cowardly mind But God will give us leave to think so no longer He hath shown us that it is the effect of a most generous and noble disposition and so far from being a blemish to us that we should glory in it to be the first in making peace and offering terms of reconciliation Others may think to give proofs of their gallantry by standing in defiance to all those who will not submit themselves and lye at their feet yea by trampling on them who shall in the least offend them but God teaches us by his own example that there is no greater height of
by the help of Heaven instantly to set forth in this way which you have described If I had been born your Son I could not have thought my obligations greater to you than now I feel them Nay I shall take the liberty to say That I stand more indebted to your Piety than I do to Nature For fancy oft-times makes Parents but it is only reason truth and goodness which have tyed my heart to you And therefore since I am the issue of your mind you may justly expect a greater reverence love and obedience to your commands than if I was the issue of your body I have heard your discourse Sir with great attention I have markt every particular passage of it with diligence and care and such a gust hath every word given me which dropt from your mouth that it hath seemed to me not many minutes long It is not to be expressed how your Golden Sentence pleaseth me which you have put into my mouth I am resolved to go along this Journey chaunting it continually with no less delight than the Birds are wont to do their Melodies Nay I cannot forbear and be not weary I beseech you Sir if I hold you longer than I thought but I must here before you renounce my own proper will and protest that I desire nothing but to be what Jesus would have me and to be where Jesus you say will bring me O thou enemy of God! my self-will that hast reigned so long come down from thy Throne I proclaim War against thee and am resolved from this day forward to oppose all thy desires I set my self here in open defiance to thee I will have no peace with thee for one moment because thou-art no friend of God to whom I now deliver my self Let him be pleased to come and reign in my heart for I am absolutely his May it be his will to accept of a poor Slave that devotes all his powers to his service This I will beg of him perpetually that he would vouchsafe to let me know what his will is and that shall be my Guide though my own will be never so desirous to hold a contrary course Let it pain me or let it please me I am resolved to bind my self fast to God that he may carry me not whither I would but whither himself thinks good Say the word O my God and it is enough I am prepared to be conducted by thee Lead me whither thou wilt O thou blessed Providence thou shalt have a faithful follower of thy wise Counsels I am no longer affraid of any dangers Those terrible Monsters Poverty Reproach and all the rest do strike no dread at all into me Farewell offices and honours if you must be the recompence of crimes Farewell my friends if I must be the companion of your sins Farewell all the world if it must be the price of my soul But as for you Sir I am loath to bid you farewell I must be snatched rather than go from your company For you are my Father my Oracle a Messenger sent from God to bring me to him And if you will go to Heaven without me I pray you once more to receive my acknowledgements which testifie that I would thank you if I were able both for your former Directions and for this Patience Truly replyed the Father I think my self rather obliged to thank you most heartily that you would come to me and being come that you would hear me not only with Patience but Acceptance For there is nothing I am so greedy of as to meet with a soul that is sincerely desirous to know the way to Jerusalem neither do I know any pleasure equal to that of pouring out my heart into such thirsty minds unless it be this of seeing them rellish those Waters of Life which flow from Wisdome's lips And that same Jesus who I see hath touched your heart already with his Love and excited you to take this Journey give you his Blessing and send his Spirit the Comforter to accompany you in your travels and assign you to some good Angel of his that may conduct you to that happy place the Heavenly Jerusalem where he lives In the way to which I am so desirous you should enter that I will not be your hinderance by any further discourses but shall be very glad as I told you to find you in safety arrived there where we shall never part more nor have any cause to say this sad word Farewell Must I part then with you said the Pilgrim Here he made a pause and tears spoke the rest of his mind for I could hear never a word he said till after a great many sighs hee thus proceeded Well let it be so It is part of my duty you say to be contented with every thing And therefore I now freely resume my former resolution and say in the words I hope in the Spirit also of Jesus Not my will O Lord but thy Will be done Onely let me again renew my desires that you would accompany me ever with your good Prayers for I hope it is not too great a gratification of my self to be pleased in your friendship and in the belief that you remember me Nor will it be accounted a crime that I am not willing to be left out of your thoughts especially when they are addressed in devout supplications to Jesus I have been long perswaded that I use to prosper the better in all my designes for the good wishes of pious persons and it hath been some support to me also when I have had no great store of good desires in my own heart or been but cold in those I had to think that the concerns of my soul were presented to God by some Friend or other in their more fervent Devotions And therefore it will be at the most but a pardonable error if I do with some Passion beg the prayers of such a person as you are and if I comfort my self sometimes with the interess I have in you and them Especially since I see by your charitable instructions and the patience you have used towards me that you have an heart so full of Love and Goodness that it will neither suffer you to remember me coldly nor to be weary in recommending me to the Grace of God The Father would not make any long reply to these words for fear they should never break off but be alwayes linkt together by the chains of this pleasing conversation and the delight which he perceived began to spring up in him by the interchanging so many expressions of their mutual Love But after he had assured him by a solemn promise that he would never fail to commend him to the love and care of Jesus they took their leave one of the other not without a great many embraces and hearty wishes to see each other again in peace at Jerusalem You may be sure the Pilgrim could not but often reflect with a sad heart upon this
him then the open World and all the bravery which it hangs out to us But he told him also that he was to be blamed for thinking himself less pleasing to God in what he was a doing because he was less pleasing to himself For do you not know said he that God hath bidden us serve our neighbour as much as we can and that it is an idle pretence to say we love God whom we never saw if we love not our Brother whom we see continually And hath he not placed us in a Body which must be fed and that cannot be nourished with Thoughts and live upon Meditations nor be supported without the labour of its own hands Why then do you complain that it cannot be filled with a Prayer and have its hunger satisfied with an Hymn Perhaps it may so fall out that a great many things shall require our service at one and the same time and though we call not for them all together yet they call on us and bid us mind them or else they say that they will be gone and not wait upon our leisure Is there any reason now to turn those things away that will not come again or shall we trouble our selves that we have not the disposal of other mens wills and cannot make them come to us only when we please to call them why may we not be contented to let all necessary affairs take as much of our time as they ask seeing God will have us so imployed Contented I say for I did never yet forbid you to desire more time wherein to recollect your self and retire unto God but would rather have you to wish for that while you are forced to serve other things He is not to be commended that is glad of a multitude of businesses and loves as we say to have his hands full of the World but yet he is no wayes deserving of our praise neither who when his Calling thrusts it upon him and he is got into the midst of it is still bewailing himself and troubled at his portion The true way to peace is to set our hands with all diligence to the necessary works of our calling but to set our hearts upon the more immediate service of our Lord. To do our business whatsoever multiplicity there happen to be in it but to long to do something else if that would permit us Yet still I say we must so long after the Higher life that our desires do not breed in us any disgust or impatience in the Lower which will both make our business longer and unfit us for our spiritual employments You remember I make no doubt the story of Jacob how much he was inamoured of fair Rachel but that though he served several years for her yet he was put off with the embraces of Leah and forced to endure another apprenticeship for his most beloved And the reason of it you know is there rendred because it was not the fashion of that Country to dispose of the Younger before the Elder Sister I have sometimes thought that this may not unfitly be accommodated to represent unto us the estate and condition of Pious souls while they are like Jacob in this Pilgrimage far from their Fathers house They are extreamly desirous to be wholly wedded to the fair and amiable life of Contemplation Prayer and constant passions of love of God This they court and woe above all other things hoping in a little time to obtain their suit and spend their dayes in such happy enjoyments But so it is that they must be employed a long while other wayes before they can reasonably expect to arrive at the felicity of being wholly sequestred unto that Life And such is the necessity of this World that when we imagine we shall now be at perfect leisure for it some thing or other still thrusts us into a different way of living Nay the manner of this Country is such that we must be contented to serve first in these baser employments before we can be permitted to come to those nobler retirements With this Worldly life we all begin and it is the Elder of the two Nay most of us are forced by many years labour in providing for the lower man to procure to our selves a liberty of being more vacant to the service of our souls And it it is very well I assure you if after more years then Jacob served God shall be pleased to bless us with such a proportion of these Worldly goods that we may repose our selves with greater quietness in the bosome of a more contemplative life Then we may be allowed in compare with this beautiful Rachel to hate Leah and all her earthly business yea it will be expected at our hands when we are furnished as Jacob was with flocks and herds and can say We have enough that we quit the world and retreat from our secular affairs and betake our selves more intirely to the Higher life And this favour perhaps our Lord may indulge us when we are grown a little older and shall be more ripe for it but till that time let us be patient as the Patriarch was and in hope at last to injoy this sweet this beloved life not suffer the other to seem at all a tedious state unto us This discourse did not a little gratifie our young Traveller who now fancied himself another Jacob wishing for nothing so much as to have the fair Damsel we spoke of given him to be his wife And so much he had impressed his mind with the Idea of that more excellent conversation that had it not been for the last words his Friend spake and that he considered also it is wont to remain like Rachel a great while more barren then the other he had faln into reproaches of this Blear-eyed life which makes us such strangers to Diviner objects that when we behold them our eyes smart and grow sore by reason of their splendor It is too little to say that he loved it for he burnt with desire after it When he was employed about the affairs of this life the time seemed like the cold frosty nights wherein Jacob kept the flocks of Laban in the field Then were his Sunshine dayes and his Heart all in an ardor of Love and Joy when he was within doors secluded from the herd of the World and shut up with God in his Soul If there was any heat and eagerness in the dispatch of his ordinary business it was by a reflection from these greater flames which excited him to pursue that with the more agility that he might the sooner quit his hands of it and be free for God And thus having placed his affections I need not tell you how oft he used to steal a glance of those Heavenly objects even when he was in the midst of some of his worldly occasions This I alwayes observed that when it was left to his own choice what part he would take to manage he would ever lay hold
I should ever have had an occasion to answer such a question as that you propose for sure you never discerned that I had a mind to be separated from you And truly I never discerned any such thing in my self nor have you given me cause to be less your Friend then heretofore unless it be by this unfriendly jealousie which as I told you a little while ago I thought you would never have entertained And since I see it proceeds rather from an ill opinion of your self then any you have of me I recall that word and pray you to believe that you are as dear unto me as ever that is my friend And what I pray you is the office of a friend if not to relieve the wants of those he loves and to bear those burdens with them which they are not able to carry alone If they themselves therefore by reason of any heaviness of Spirit prove the burden that he must sustain He will not complain of it It is their unhappiness he knows both that they are so heavy and are in danger they think to be a load to him and He will not let them be more unhappy by becoming heavy himself and groaning under that easie weight which they lay upon him Easie I call it because it is a pleasure to do any kindness for our friends and the pleasure encreases proportionably to the pains that we take in doing of it You shall hear the Judgement of a Philospher in this case if you please and of one that loved ease more then any of his fellows Though a wise man he thought might be content with himself yet notwithstanding he granted that his happiness would be greater with a friend Of such a companion he cannot but be desirous if it be for no other end but to exercise his amity and that so great a vertue may not remain without use He doth not chuse a friend saith Epicurus himself to have some to assist him when he is sick or to succour him if he be in prison or such necessities But contrary wise that he may have one whom he may help and comfort in the like distresses For he hath an evil intention that only respects himself when he makes Friendship And so shall he end his friendship as he begun the same He that hath purchased himself a friend to the intent that he may be succoured by him in prison will take his flight as soon as he feels that he is released of his bonds Both the chains shall be knockt off together those of his prison and those of his friendship These are the friendships which we vulgarly call Temporary being made only to serve a turn He that is made a friend for profit sake shall please as long as he may be profitable and so they who are in felicity see themselves inviron'd with a multitude of these followers But where the distressed dwell there is nothing but solitude For such manner of friends alwayes avoid those places where they may be proved It is necessary that the beginning and the end have a correspondence He that hath begun to be a friend because it is expedient he that hath thought there is a gain in friendship beside it self may well be suborn'd against the same by the appearance and offers of a greater gain For what cause then do I entertain a friend To the end I may have one for whom I may dye whom I may accompany in banishment and for whose life and preservation I may expose my self to any danger For the other which only regards profit and makes account of that which may turn to its own commodity it is rather a Traffique then Friendship Certain it is that Friendship hath in some sort a similitude and likeness to the affection of Lovers Whose scope is neither gain nor greatness nor glory but despising all other considerations love it self inkindles in them a desire of the beloved form under hopes of a mutual and reciprocal amity Thus he Unless you will number me then among those Summer friends which he speaks of or think that friendship in me is feebler then it was in Pagans you must not hold me any longer in suspition And indeed if you did but know how great a favour you do me in letting me know your griefs and making me the Witness of your Conscience and relying upon me for advice and thereby giving me an opportunity to serve you the best I can you would presently throw away all these Imaginations which the enemy of Souls and of Friendship would instill into you For my part I did not so lightly and in sport receive you into my conduct as that any difficulty or a multitude of them should make my employment tedious to me Nay how can it be irksome when you your self acknowledge that the labours of Love are all pleasure and carry their own rewards in them You may think perhaps that love grows old as well as all other things and that time works its decay and renders it feeble and weak Thus Attalus was wont to say that it is far more pleasant to make a friend then to have one As it is more agreeable to a Painters fancy to draw his lines then to have finished the picture After he hath painted indeed he possesses the fruit of his Art but he took pleasure in the Art it self when he painted Just as the youth of our children is more fruitful to us but their infancy is more sweet But assure your self I do not live by any of these Maxims Friendship is like Wine the older it is the better It grows more pure by age its spirits are more disingaged and it warms the heart more powerfully then when it was but new and green Nay your friendship is more pleasant too whatsoever you may think now that it is grown then it was in its childhood I enjoy the remembrance of those pleasures and have some new ones besides just as a Painter thinks on his Art when he beholds the piece that he hath brought to perfection I beseech you then if you have any love to me that you will not call in question mine to you And if all this will not satisfie you let me intreat you for the Love of our Lord that you will ask him whether I do not love you I know he is so much a friend to Truth and unto Love too not to say to you and me that he will do me the favour to perswade you that I do And therefore let not the Evil one who loves nothing less then our Friendship sow this jealousie in your heart that I grow weary of you But be confident that as our Lord loves you so he imparts true love to me and that if the armes of these two can do any thing you shall be carried safe to Jerusalem And now since I have told you my very heart let me know I pray what further doubt it is that troubles yours It cannot be so great sure that
their thinking and speaking of it This they lookt upon as a common friend to both that would translate them to those happy regions where friendship is in its Kingdom and raigns over every heart All the favour they would have beg'd if it were wont to grant any petitions was that with one stroke it would arrest them both and carry them thither together And if any body could have made good the Paracelsian promise of spinning out the life of man to a length equal with the clue of time and making our vital oil of the same durable temper with that which feeds the Lamps of Heaven All things were so in common between them that I verily think one of them would not have accepted of such a courtesie on condition to injoy it alone without the other No they rather desired as I said that the one might not see the other expire but that the same hand might cut off both their threds at once and that one moment might put out those Lamps which were not willing to burn asunder All the wishes that our Pilgrim made besides this was only that they might live so long till he could give some remarkable proof of his affection to his Guide For though he knew that he loved him above all things and could contradict even his former wishes by dying for him yet it did sometimes a little discontent him that he was in no capacity to show his tenderness but only by words and protestations Though the wisdom of his Conductor had stood him in so great stead and he could not well spare any of it yet he was so foolish now and then as to think that if he had been less wise he himself had been more happy Because then he might have stood in need to receive those counsels which now he only gave and been requited for those courtesies which now he made him a pure debtor for Many other benefits also that are usually communicated between friends he found himself utterly destitute of all means to confer they being either not in his power or his Guide in no need of them This sometimes raised a small disquiet in his mind and one day I remember he could not contain himself but he began a discourse to this purpose which shall put an end to this present Relation I should think my self said he the happiest man alive was I but able to correspond with you in the duties and offices of friendship and were I not constrain'd to return you only a weak and fruitless passion for that efficacious love which hath done me so many services It troubles me a little to find that my passion is as useless as it is extream and as void of benefit to you as it is violent in it self It is no less barren then I doubt it may be burdensome and hath as little profit as I see it hath brought you much trouble Though the honour be very great you have done me in bestowing such a place upon me in your heart yet I know not sometimes whether I should not complain in the enjoyment of a favour which as it was not in my hands to deserve so I cannot possibly requite True indeed it is that I have given my self to you but that is no more than strict Justice exacts since I have received your self as a gift to me Friendship they say is a commutation of hearts and therefore it is but fit that you should have mine in room of your own And yet alas mine is of such small value that I doubt you will be wholly a loser by the change Is there no means for me to do you service or to rest content with a will to serve you Cannot you either shew me how I may be useful to you or shew your self a disposition to it in that heart which I have given you I should be satisfied I think if you knew my will as well as my self It remains in your power not my own to settle my mind in peace if you will first believe I love you and then set a value upon that Love which you know is the cause of all well-doing and ought not to be blamed for want of power Very true said his Guide who laid hold of that word I think that I have found a treasure in your Love and I will have it pass for currant payment though it cannot express it self in such sensible effects as you would have it It is enough to me that you have such a passionate affection for me though it could never find the means to do any thing but only tell me how hearty it is I am pleased with the intentions and desires which you have to do me any good It is an extraordinary contentment to me to contemplate the imaginations which are in your mind of what you would do for me could power be courted by your will to come and joyn it self unto it They are the Vulgar who call nothing benefits but what they can feel with their fingers It is the portion of gross Souls to be insensible unless your courtesies to come at their hearts pass through their hands The purer and more refined Spirits touch the very Souls of their Friends and feel the kindness which lyes in their breasts They are so subtil as to see a courtesie while it is so young as to be but only in design They touch it before it be cloathed in matter or have passed beyond the confines of thoughts They meet it in the first rudiments and embrace it while it is only in meaning and drawn in the imagination They receive these inward acts of Love as most pure and spiritual being separate from all the terrestrial part which affect the vulgar minds And in one word there is not any thing dearer to them than those motions of the Soul which finding nothing they can do correspondent to their own greatness and force do terminate in themselves They are pleased to see them stay there and go no further because there is nothing fairer than themselves to be met withall wherein to end and rest Do not depretiate your affection therefore nor vilifie it in that manner you are wont as though it were not worthy my acknowledgement Do not tell me any more that it is no valuable Love which doth not serve our Friends for this service depends upon occasions and they depend on an higher Being and are only in the dispose of Providence All that I can be beholden to you for I have received already from you and for the rest if it could be bestowed I must make my acknowledgements to something else Be contented then that you give all that is in your hands and that if it were in them to make occasions you would still let those be wanting which most of all prove a friend Nay let me tell you I am so favourable in my opinion to your affection and so apt to give it the best advantage that I am not yet resolved but there may be
it that our desires think to waft us as fast as they can unto it and growing continually in strength and swiftness by their own motion the gale proves so stiff that our hearts are swelled therewith and leave no room for any other thoughts nor can be at any rest till they be possessed of it Thus would this poor man have taught those who now beheld him though they had never read a word in their own souls for his mind was so impressed with the happiness which he heard dwelt at Jerusalem that he was not able to discharge his soul at any time of those thoughts and desires which lifted him up from the ground and told him they would carry him thither When he did eat or drink Jerusalem would still be in his mouth when he was in company Jerusalem stole away his heart from them nay in his very sleep it would not stay away but he was wont to dream fine things of Jerusalem But that which makes the story of this person the more remarkable is that it was toward the latter end of the year and in the decay of all things when these good thoughts began to spring up in his soul When the earth had removed it self a great way from the Sun when all the gallantry of the fields had resigned its place to Ice and Snow when charity grew cold and Christian virtue seemed to be gone back to its root when the waies were untrod and few or no Travellers upon the road then did these zealous desires begin to bud in the heart of this honest Country-man and he felt such a vehement heat urging and stimulating his breast that he could remain in no quiet for thinking of his journey to that fair place which had been so much commended to his love as the most flourishing and glorious that ever eye beheld CAP. II. The earnest desire of the Pilgrim to be at Jerusalem and what he expected to find there MUch time he spent in consultation with himself about the course which would be best to hold in his travel thither There was no cost spared no study omitted to get acquaintance with the nearest way to it nor did he cease to inquire of those who were reputed the most skilfull guides that he might obtain a true information of every passage in the journey which he seriously resolved to undertake For though the weather was cold the wayes dirty and dangerous and the journy he was told would be long and company little or none could be expected to deceive the tediousness of the Pilgrimage yet so great were the ardors which he felt within himself that he regarded none of these discouragements but only wished that he might be so happy as to find the right way though he went alone thither And that which made his desires the more forward was that he had often heard Jerusalem by interpretation was no meaner place than the VISION OF PEACE A sight that he had been long pursuing in several forms and shapes wherein it had often seemed to present it self before him but could never court it into his embraces O my beloved would he often sigh within himself O my hearts desire O thou joy of the whole earth in what corner of it dost thou hide thy self and lyest concealed from our eyes Where art thou to be found O heavenly good Who will bring me to the clear vision of thy face Art thou company only for the Coelestial spirits Art thou so reserved for the Angels food that we poor mortals may not presume to ask a tast of thy sweetness What would not I part withal to purchase a small acquaintance with thee and to know the place where thou makest thine abode Many a weary step have I taken in a vain chase of thy society The hours are not to be numbred which I have spent in wishing and labouring to lay hold on thee and still thou flyest away from me After all the sweat wherein I have bathed my self I can find nothing but only that thou art not here to be found Thou art retired it seems from this poor world and hast left us only a shaddow of thee for when we think to clasp thee hard in our arms the whole force and weight of our souls doth fall upon Nothing O my heart what ails thee what torments are these which so suddenly seize upon thee Ah cruel pains the remembrance of which prepares a new rack for me The arm of a Gyant would not ake more if with all his might he should strike a feather then my heart now doth but to think of the anguish it endured when all the strength and violence of its desires were met with emptiness and vanity O Jerusalem Jerusalem the only place that can ease us of this misery the place where the beloved of my soul dwelleth the vision of peace the seat of true tranquillity and repose how fain would I have the satisfaction of being in the sure way to thy felicity This is all the peace I wish for in the world No other happiness do I thirst after as every thing can testifie that hath been privy to my thoughts There is never a room in my house but hath been filled with the noise of my sighs and groans after thee O Jerusalem Every tree that grows in my ground hath thy sweet Name ingraven upon it The birds of the air if they can understand are witnesses how incessantly my soul pants and longs to fly unto thee O Jerusalem What charitable hand will guide me in the way to thy pleasures who will bring me into that strong City the retreat of my wearied mind the refuge to recruit my tired spirits the only place of my security my joy my life it self Wilt not thou O God who hast lead me to the knowledge of it who hast filled me with these desires and hast brought me into a disesteem and contempt of all other things O let not these desires prove the greatest torment of all unto me for want of their satisfaction O forsake not this soul that hath forsaken all other delights and taken its leave of every other comfort that it may go and seek for thee at Jerusalem CAP. III. The great trouble that he fell into because of the different wayes which he was told of to that place IN this manner the poor man was wont to sigh out his soul hoping that at last the heavens would please to hear him and favour him with the understanding of that which would make all his groans useless and render him as chearful as now he found himself disconsolate But that which made the fulfilling of his desires more difficult and his hopes to arrive more slow was the many controversies which were in those dayes fiercely agitated and the huge quarrels that men raised about the right way to Jerusalem There were no less than twenty and some say many more very different parties that contended sharply with each other and every one of them confidently
affirmed that they only were the people of Sion and that unless he joyned himself to their company in which alas there was no Peace at all he should never come to that City of God which he sought after The heads of these divisions made the world believe that they were the Torches which must light them through the darkness of errour the Pole-star to regulate their course in the search and discovery of truth and that unless men used their Clue which God knows was most wofully intangled they should never fail to be lost in the Labyrinths and Maeanders of Ignorance and Folly Nay to such a degree did they magnifie themselves as if Truth and they had been born at the same time or at least had come of Age together It seemed to be a secret till they appeared and to have been reserved from the beginning on purpose to discover it self to them in Markets and Camps if not in lewder places The most modest pretension was that Truth was but a stripling or rather went in side-coats till it came to their schools to be ripened into the wisdome of perfect men They spake of the affairs of Heaven as if they were Counsellors of State in that Kingdom and opened the secrets of Jesus Christ as if they were his Confidents St. John who lay in his bosom never delivered any thing with greater peremptoriness than these men did and had it not been that they wanted his charity they might have been thought by most as great Oracles as they thought themselves There seemed no difference between them and Prophets but only that they could not prove their mission else they had the gift of boldness and fell not short in their pretenses to inspiration In this conceit they thrust into the world a great number of books which were called the Word of the Lord and cryed up as the Maps of that heavenly Country and the exact Charts whereby men must steer their course if ever they meant to come safely thither Into huge Volumes these writings sometimes swelled and they were wont to collect and faggot together so many things and so vastly different that a man could not easily avoid to lose his way in this Wood while he was seeking his way to Jerusalem Especially since they never forgot to furnish these bundles with some lusty sticks wherewith to bang their adversaries and beat them down as low as hell For in the midst of such a fearful scuffle there was so great a dust raised that no man could tell where he was nor discern any thing but only this that he was not in the way to the Vision of Peace I need not relate how sorely it grieved the good mans heart to see so many different wayes every one of them laying so high a claim to truth and bitterly reproaching the rest as damnable Heresies He could bend his course to no quarter but he was in danger to be assaulted with some question or other and was put upon his desence against some man of brass who thought himself worthy to be one of the Champions of Truth The spirit of common Barretry did not seem a greater plague to him than these vexatious disputing people The fury of whom likewise was sometimes so violent that he thought he had made a good retreat if he were not bruised and almost beat in pieces by their rude blows whose opinions he adventured to thwart by any strong contradiction Nay they all taking distant paths and not going in streight and parallel lines but in oblique and crooked wayes which crossed each other very frequently they never met together but there was such justling and quarrelling about the road to Jerusalem that no man could be near them but they would ingage him to take the one or the other part in the Bloody conflict So I call it for they thought that they did God good service when they dispatched one of their enemies and that they made him a Sacrifice when they satisfied their own beastly fury And this indeed was the saddest thing of all to his thoughts that their heat and passion they had the confidence to Baptize into the name of holy zeal and that which was but the love of their own opinion they constantly miscalled the love of God and of his Truth Though those dayes as I have already said were very frozen and cold yet they cudgel'd one another so long till they grew not and then they cry'd the weather was very warm and the Sun in his highest elevation Gods enemies they thought they opposed in their own and they fancied themselves ingaged against sin while they were buffeting a contrary opinion There was no heat but they took it for divine though it were of their own kindling and so they were but all on fire they never doubted but it was from heaven For there was no sin in those dayes like Moderation and no vertue comparable to a furious and headlong zeal But yet he received this benefit by those unhappy feuds that they made him sometimes think it was no mean thing in the esteem of others as well as himself for which there was so many and so fiery contenders The Prize he hoped would prove glorious which had drawn into the field so many combatants and which with such zealous sticklings all sides sought to win The affliction also which he felt in his spirit when he beheld them so sharply ingaged had this good effect upon him that it made him more sensibly admire the goodness of God which had preserved him from listing himself in any of those angry parties and entring into those never enough to be lamented broils This put him likewise in some hopes that he would not suffer him likewise in some hopes that he would not suffer him to remain long without the knowledge of the Truth who had so gratiously prevented him from diverting into the paths of falshood This degree of understanding he had already acquired That Sweetness and Love Meekness and Peace were the Harbingers to Divine Knowledg and since they were become his Guests he hoped that would not be far behind But that any man who knows God to be Love should imagine that he will dwell in a mind where there is nothing but hatred to be found seemed a kind of Prodigy unto him And it did quite astonish him to see that so many men did dream that the way to The Vision of Peace lay through the field of strife and war and that we must come to live together in endless love hereafter by living in perpetual frays and brawls in the world where we now are CAP. IV. How he happily heard of a safe Guide unto it with a true Character of him AND he truly who is not wont to frustrate the expectations of such well minded souls did not use much delay before he gave him a sensible demonstration of that which he already believed He found that the God of peace could not make himself long a stranger to
bestowed if it were for nothing else but to see this Illustrious Person especially to behold him in all his glory and his highest exaltation who is the Patron of all good souls the great Protector of all Pilgrims the Guide and Rest too of all noble Travellers and who bears a particular affection to your self who hath suffered so much for you who hath sent you so many messages of his Love who hath endeared himself to you by a thousand favours and was never contented till he brought you to himself that you might be there where he is and behold the glory which his Father hath given to him There he intends to entertain all pious men with an everlasting Supper to make them a never-ceasing Jubilee and treat them with such sumptuous magnificence that there will not be tongues enough among them all to publish his praises and their own thankfulness Only you must remember that the entertainment he will give them is himself and that they will feast eternally upon his blessed face Their happiness will be to see God to behold the glory which is given to our Lord that is to know him and to be filled with his Wisdom Love and Likeness And here lest I should not be understood and you should imagine the happiness of seeing God and his Son to be less than it is let me stop a while to explain this part of my description to you before I pass unto the rest You must not then conceive that the pleasure of Jerusalem is to sit whole Ages and meerly to gaze upon the Divinity or that they who enjoy the repose of that happy place do nothing else but feed their eyes with the beauties of our Saviours face No these are the fancies of low and uninstructed minds who know no higher enjoyments than those of sense To see God will be to have such a knowledge of him as gives our hearts a powerful touch and strikes them with such a lively sense of him that he turns them perfectly into his nature and transforms them into the likeness of his divine excellencies This glorious object doth as I may so speak diffuse and spread it self all over inamour'd souls and by a living heat doth animate them into the same disposition with it self The beauty on which they fix their eyes doth imprint its own form upon their hearts and makes them fair and beautiful with the same lovely qualities which they delight to behold They do not busie themselves there as men imagine in gaping upon the splendor and the many ornaments of that place but they themselves become a part of its glory and are changed into that on which they fasten their eyes They do not spend their time only in looking upon God and curiously prying into him but they receive him into their hearts and he enters into their souls He doth not guild them with his beams but they themselves become Light in the Lord. There is not a glory only cast about them but they receive such rayes of light from his face as dart into their very hearts and shine thorow their whole souls so that they also become luminous and bright They are so ravished with his Goodness that they are made Good They are so affected with his Wisdom that they become Wise The sense they have of his incomparable Purity renders them more Holy and his dear Love so over-masters their souls that they conform in all things to his hearts desire and it seems as if both their hearts had but one and the same motion In short my meaning is that they are not happy at Jerusalem by any external injoyment of God which is all the vulgar conceit doth reach when we speak of seeing his glory but they are inwardly moved by a powerful efflux from him which quickens them into the same thoughts will and desire with himself Their souls are not outwardly painted with him and some colours as it were of his Wisdom living Images of God and really changed into a true resemblance of that which they behold It is not some glory that appears before them which makes them blessed but they are made all glorious within and become themselves God-like creatures They do not behold the Divinity only without themselves but they see God within them and looking into their own souls there they find him and are happy in him And let me add this by the way as I pass to other things that such a knowledge and participation of God you must pursue in this world if you mean to come to Jerusalem You must here be partakers of a Divine Nature and now be transformed by the renewing of your mind proving what is that good and perfect and acceptable will of God But I think it is time to lead you to other Spectacles which are worthy your sight and to tell you that in this City all the glorious Ministers of State to the King of Kings have their Mansion-houses and Noble Palaces All the Heroes of ancient daies do here make their abode Nay all the spirits of just men that are made perfect do here inhabit and have their constant residence And all those glittering Angels and those brave minds that ever flourish in this heavenly Court I believe you will think sufficient of themselues if there were nothing else to render this a very splendid place The Laws indeed of which are such that none can be permitted to live there but Noble men persons of high birth and illustrious descent for they are all called the Sons of God But that which gives them this Nobility and stamps such an honourable title upon them is not such poor things as swell the men of our world into an aiery and imaginary greatness but the height of their minds the purity of their hearts and the excellent qualities wherewith they are endowed which intitle them to the kindred of God Insomuch that the meanest Pilgrim on the earth that is found worthy by reason of his virtuous disposition and generous spirit to be admitted a Citizen of Jerusalem instantly becomes Noble and is inrolled among the Princes of heavenly Progeny Into this blessed society then when once you are received How delightful do you think their company and acquaintance will prove Are you not highly pleased now with a rare History and could you not lend your ears for a whole day to hear the adventures of some one famous person And yet these are nothing to the pleasures that they can entertain you withall There were never such things yet reported as the Inhabitants of Jerusalem will be ready to impart and communicate with you Who can tell you a long story of the Love of God and make a never-ceasing relation an endless history of all the rare passages of his providence throughout the whole world They can present you with a thousand Abrahams and as many Josephs whose adventures were so strange that fiction is not able to invent any thing so surprising Nay out of those Countries
or rather we need not ask at all for he will but present himself before us and force us to love and rejoyce without any measure And seeing it is a place of such full satisfaction you will not question its tranquillity and repose especially since it is as you heard before you came hither the very Vision of Peace The life which they lead there is so full of content that they are not disturbed by any passion nor disquieted by the violence and disorder of any unruly affection A life it is void of all sadness free from all grief quit of all care and rid of all anxiety of mind Where there is no adversary to assault no forbidden fruit to tempt no impetuous desire of the flesh to molest them and no fear neither that ever they shall be haunted with these enemies of their peace and contentment O how happy should we find our selves if we were but come to the top of that high Mountain which will seem the more clear and quiet because so many clouds have here so often overcast us and so many sudden blasts have ruffled and discomposed us There we shall not accuse one another of any injuries because we shall not do the least nor be troubled to pursue our right because we shall not be wronged There we shall live without jealousies and converse as I have told you without suspition and pass Eternity without any difference of opinion or debates and controversies in Religion which now are no small disease and bring no little burden upon our hearts Nay the very actions of Piety many of them will be of a different kind from what they now are unattended with those passions to which we are now moved which make us suffer evil while we do good Here as the forenamed person well observed to me we do good works when we deal our bread to the hungry and receive the distressed stranger and clothe the naked which is a kind of affliction and tribulation which we indure by our sympathy with them to whom we pay our Charity For we find miserable persons on whom to exercise our Mercy and the misery which we see they lye under makes us compassionate that is to suffer with them How much better then shall we be when we shall find no hungry mouth to feed no stranger to entertain no naked body to cast our garments over no sick men to attend no prisoner to visit no tormented person to commiserate no differences to compose no contenders to reconcile but our Love shall be of another sort all joy all pleasure in the good and in the perfect happiness of every one that we behold And if there were nothing else there to entertain us but the comforts of that friendship I told you of and the delights we shall interchange by a constant amity and good will to one another it were sufficient to recommend this life to any wise mans affection and make him willing to forsake this world to go to a place of such endless love and kindness And doth there now need any demonstration that this is a place of great safety and security environ'd on all sides with the power of God against the attempts of all the enemies of our happiness No sure for then we should be in danger of some disturbance If we should conceive indeed any forces could be gathered against it and that it were not impregnable in it self we might easily imagine that so many troops of illustrious friends so many bands of holy Lovers as here inhabit would perform strange things against the most puissant Invaders There is nothing I told you so strong as Love by the force of which in one single person incredible things have been atchieved and therefore much greater would the united power of it appear in so many hosts of noble spirits all inspired with the highest degree of this affection who would do their utmost for the service and safety of one another But yet we need not have recourse to such fancies as these for the assurance of our peace in that blessed place It is impossible that any thing should wound the quiet of such happy souls or make the least breach in any of their enjoyments There cannot be so much interruption given to them as the scratch of a pin among us amounts unto because they are out of the reach of the evil one and placed in such still and calm Regions where nothing breathes but only that love and dear affection for ever Upon which account also it is that there can be no intermission of their injoyments no more than there will be interruption and disturbance It being a full and perfect happiness there will no time pass wherein they will not be happy The dayes there have no nights The life hath no sleep which is but the Image of death There will not be so much diversion there from the proper exercises of that life as meat and drink now creates which are the present support of our infirm bodies Much less will there be any disease or decay of strength or the incumbrance of any of those imployments which ingage so great a part of our time and thoughts Our Love therefore shall never languish or stand in need of any refreshment our charity shall not cool and abate its heat our joy shall not exhaust our spirits and leave us dull by the excess of it as here it sometimes doth But as I said before we shall rather gather strength and grow more apt to receive an increase of joy by the greatness and force of that which we have already received I need but just remember you it being a thing you have heard no doubt an hundred times that this life of theirs is without any death An eternal life as the Holy Books call it where we shall not have so much sadness as the thoughts of its having an end would beget But we shall rejoyce first that we have so much and next of all that we shall never have less and then that we shall still injoy more and above all that what we do enjoy shall live as long as God who is the cause of it that is for ever I believe you are not weary of so delightful a discourse yet lest I should keep you too long from the rest of my Instructions I shall shorten it as much as I can and shut up this description with a meditation of that devoute person who as I told you long ago undertook the Guidance of men to Jerusalem How different saith he is the life of those in that place from that of ours here Here there is falshood there is truth Here is perturbation there is a faithful possession Here is bitterness and hatred there is dilection and eternal love Here is dangerous elation of mind there is secure exultation of spirit Here we are in doubt whether they that love us may not change their thoughts there is perpetual friendship and no possibility of being enemies Here
whatsoever is good we are afraid may perish there whatsoever we receive will be preserved by him that gave it Here there is death and there is nothing but life Here we enjoy what the eye and the ear and our thoughts present unto us but there we shall see what the eye hath not seen and hear what the ear hath never heard and understand what the heart cannot now comprehend And seeing hearing and knowing after that manner we shall rejoyce with joy unspeakable For what kind of joy must that be when thou seest thy self in the company of Angels a partner in the Kingdom of Heaven to raign with the King of the world desiring nothing to possess all things rich without covetousness charitable without mony triumphing without the fear of any barbarous Invaders and living this life without any death O sweet life the more I think of thee the more I love thee the more vehemently I desire thee the more I am pleased in the remembrance of thee I love to speak of thee I love to hear of thee I love to write of thee to confer of thee to read of thee that so I may refresh the pains and the sweat and the dangers of this tedious life by laying my weary head in the bosome of thy secure pleasures For this end I enter into the Garden of the Holy Scriptures I gather there the sweet flowers of Divine Sayings that which I gather I eat that which I eat I chew over again and that which I have tasted I lay up in mine heart that by such sweetness I may allay the bitterness and irksomeness of this miserable life O that my sins were done away O that laying aside the burden of this flesh I might enter into thy ease and quiet To receive the Crown of Life to be associated to the caelestial Singers to behold the face of Christ to see the uncircumscribed light and without fear of death to rejoyce without any end There is the goodly fellowship of the Prophets there are the glorious twelve Apostles there is an innumerable Army of Martyrs there is the holy Company of Pious Confessors there are the Divine Lovers of Solitude and Retirement there are the holy Women that have overcome the infirmities of their sex and the powers of the world there are the brave Youths and Virgins whose holy manners transcended their years there are the Sheep and the Lambs that have escaped the danger of glutting themselves with these earthly pleasures there perfect Charity reigns because God is there All in All. There they see without fear and love without measure and praise without ceasing There loving they praise and praising they love and it is their work to do so alwaies without any interruption But alas Who can tell what a Great Good God is as he proceeds in another place Who can declare how full he is or relate the happiness that he will give us We cannot tell it and yet we cannot hold our peace It is more than can be uttered and yet we cannot chuse but talk of it And if we cannot tell it because of our ignorance and yet cannot hold our tongues because of our joy for what we know in what condition are we which will neither let us speak nor yet be silent What shall we do with our selves if we can neither tell what it is nor yet cease to speak of it I le tell you in two or three words Let us rejoyce Let us praise God Let us keep a perpetual Jubilee here in our hearts thanking him very much that we know so much of this happiness and thanking him more that it is so great that we cannot know it all Here if the Guide had not made a little stop I think the Pilgrim had interrupted him for he had kept his silence thus long with great difficulty and now cryed out with a more than ordinary vehemence Blessed be God that he hath brought me to this place This is none other than the suburbs of Jerusalem this is the Gate of Heaven Happy was the day which let me see your face I heard something of Jerusalem before by the hearing of the ear but now mine eyes see it and I am all inamoured of it You have shown me a sight so glorious that it is beyond our thoughts and beyond our desires I was going to say beyond our Faith and beyond our hope Sure you are one of the Angels of God sent from Jerusalem to fetch me thither You had inflamed me with an high Degree of Love before but now you have put me in a fiery Chariot and methinks I am not upon the earth but ascending up to those heavenly Regions Nay you have transported me to the City of God already Methinks I see the Lord of Glory I behold the Thrones that are erected for all the Noble Travellers to that Holy Land I fancy my self in the dear embraces of those Glorious Lovers And I am apt to embrace you as one of the Seraphims that have fired my soul with the same Love I see the blessed Jesus preparing himself for his appearance and begin to think that I am triumphing with him Or if I am but in a dream of these things yet it is so pleasant that I could wish it might last for ever and that nothing might awake me out of such a delightful slumber Not so said his Guide interrupting his speech I love you better than to let you enjoy such a wish and I would rouze you up to demonstrate their reality if I thought you took these things for charming dreams and painted shadows You shall not make such a mean supposal nor content your self with such aiery pleasures for I will make you know at once both that there is such a blessed place as I have described and discover to you more perfectly the way unto it There is another dear name inclosed in those words which I told you must alwaies be sealed upon your heart and that is the Holy JUSUS On whom I do not intend that you should look only as he sits on his Throne of Glory at Jerusalem but as he walked up and down the world and was a Pilgrim like your self travelling to that place He published the Glory of it He brought life and immortality to light He set open the Gates of Jerusalem to all faithful Travellers He run the Race himself wherein you are to follow and for the joy that was set before him when he should come thither he was not ashamed of a poorer habit than the meanest Pilgrim wears If you take a view therefore of his life and trace his holy steps you cannot miss the Rode which I would have you take nor fail to be convinced that it can carry you to no other place but the City of God For Do you not remember that this person hath stiled himself the WAY There is nothing so necessary than in all that sentence as this one word Jesus to have alwaies in your mind whom
is exceeding hard who shall take a surfet where there is scarce so much victuals as will break ones fast But when we are throng'd with temptations and beset with enemies when there is a battery planted against every gate and not one of our senses is free from assault then it is a business of some labour and it deserves praise to secure our souls and to defend them bravely in such a violent storm To escape drowning when we are upon the Sea when the winds are boisterous the channel dangerous and we are cast among rocks and have shelves and quicksands very near us on the right hand and on the left is a business that calls for an excellent skill and a very even steerage and such an experience as cannot be learned without a great deal of pains and diligence Then Piety will thank us for our Love when we are courted by Vice And we shall seem to have done some honour to Goodness by cleaving to her when we had large offers to become bad So that I cannot see by what merit the Secluse do assume to themselves the title of Religious more then others seeing they give a greater proof of their Vertue who are in the World and the World is not in them then those in whom indeed the World is not but they also are not in the World It is more glorious to beat an enemy then to fly away from him and it requires a greater spirit to maintain a Breach then to hold out within the Walls Not that I discommend Solitude at your first setting out or would have you neglect it at certain seasons through your whole journey for you shall know the use of it better hereafter but it is not fit to design to live alwayes in secret if it be possible to live and be safe in the World This I would have you think is the more perfect life and more like to our Saviours and therefore aspire to it and stay not in the other any longer then only to fit and prepare your self for this And tell me I beseech you do you not think it possible for a man to have his heart in the World when his legs and arms are out of it May it not dwell in his fancy when he sees it not with his eyes May he not please himself in the shaddow and image of his old friend which he sayes is dead and buried May not one leave his soul behind when he withdraws his body from all the World I wish there be not many of such Religious men and women As on the contrary I hope there are not a few whose minds and hearts are shut up from the World though they are with it every day Who have made a Cloyster for their souls while their bodies are at liberty Who bridle their appetites and lay restraints on their desires though they live at large and are under no Vow but that of their Baptism Consider therefore how ridiculous it is to imitate another sort of men who hearing us speak of forsaking the World and renouncing all its Pomps and Vanities imagine that they should throw away their rich garments forbear the civility of a complement or so much as a salutation let their Gardens become wildernesses and their Pictures make fires with abundance of such like follies Alas what have these poor things done that we should revenge our selves upon them what is their guilt that we should be so severe and fierce against them Is this the mortification the Scripture speaks of to execute our anger upon insensible things It would seem more reasonable if when a man reads of crucifying the flesh he should go and pierce his own body and strike nails through his hands and his feet And yet what blame doth it lye under that we should put it to that torment or what is that which we kill by such cruelty No no we must turn the blow another way We must cut off our affections from these worldly enjoyments We must walk in the flesh but not after it We may feel its desires but not follow them We must labour to become poor in the midst of abundance to be humble in high places to be temperate amongst the baits of pleasure to use those things well which custome hath abused to think of our selves in fine clothes just as we did before they came on our backs And in a few words to withdraw our selves from all the inveiglements of the world not in the common way of removing our persons from it but by removing it from our esteem and affections But I am affraid of running into that errour which I purposed to avoid if I should continue to give such a large and punctual account of all that the Good man said in this Argument And therefore I will keep more exactly to my method in what insues and contract the rest of his discourses concerning Jesus You must look upon Jesus proceeded he in the next place as a person that was highly contented and very liberal in the midst of the greatest Poverty It would have been little less then a wonder as the world now goes if I had said that he thought he had enough though all the ground he trod upon had been his own and that he was bountiful though he had been able to pave his way with Silver and Gold But he hath left us an higher pattern and taught us even in our Poverty to be charitable to those who are reduced to greater necessities and in the meanest condition to be better pleased then worldly men are in the greatest superfluities and abundance He had no lands nor yearly revenues and yet the Hospitality was noble which he maintained His incomes were uncertain and yet he never complain'd or troubled his mind because his estate was no better assured His Disciples were men of a small fortune and yet he labours to infuse into them a most liberal disposition He stuck not to spend all the victuals he had upon the hungry multitude He chose to lay out the whole provision of his numerous family in one feast rather then suffer them to faint who were come to hear his Word Though he lived as a Begger himself yet he kept a purse for the Poor Though he was supported by the Charity of others yet he would be no more then their Steward and receive their Alms to give it away Great persons ministred to him but he himself was the Minister of all His Poverty might have inriched himself but he chose by it to inrich others And this truly seems to have been the proper effect of his being dead to the World He felt no need of its Riches and so he did not covet them And he did not let them into his heart when they came to him and so he was not unwilling to part with them He thought the goodness of all these things consisted in their Use and he knew no better imployment for them then to send them to serve those who
a spiritual sense This therefore breeds an absolute necessity of constant holy Meditation and devout Prayers By the one of which our mind being abstracted from and elevated beyond the things of corporeal sense is brought to a converse and familiarity with heavenly notions and by the other our Will is possessed with spiritual inclinations nay ravished into the embraces of a Divine Good Meditation furnishes our Understanding with right opinions and noble thoughts and Prayer carries our Will to the love of them and joyns our affections fast unto them By the one we are tyed in our mind and by the other in our choice to the better World This it is manifest is the natural and true use of these devout exercises to dispose our souls by drawing them away from these inferiour enjoyments to receive communications from above and to be made partakers of a Divine Nature There is no question to be made of it that God loves to impart himself to rational Beings But in what manner I beseech you can he do it unless it be by our Understandings and Wills rightly disposed And what other end therefore can these two have which put us in a fit disposition and capacity for him than to bring us to that true knowledge and love of him whereby we partake of his nature In these you must employ your self and they are to be thought more necessary than any other business but yet you see they are but the means and way to a Divine State and have something beyond themselves which they are to effect and that is the bringing of us to the life of the blessed Jesus If Prayer be not thus designed and do not produce such fruit it is so far from procuring us acceptance with God though it be top full of that Faith which relyes upon Christ that it proves a thing very fulsome and displeasing unto him It is a meer noise and clamour in his ears than which there cannot be any thing more troublesome and offensive He loves not to be disturbed with such sounds as have nothing in them but flattery and nauseous commendations of him He cares not for being extolled by such unhallowed mouths It is a great injury to him to be praised and magnified by evil doers He hates the pretences of their Friendship and loathes the complements which they load him withall He cannot indure to have his Courts filled with these impudent people lest he should be thought such an one as themselves As the Sacrifices of old were esteemed no better than Murders and all the offerings but so many butcheries which were committed when they left themselves behind and brought not their hearts and affections to be offered up to God So are all mens confident Prayers and Devotions now no better than prophanations of his Name and a kind of blasphemy or evil-speaking of him while they are enemies to the Life of God and despisers of good works They do most basely reproach him in the world by taking upon them the title of his greatest Favourites They expose him to scorn by appropriating to themselves the name of his servants There cannot be a greater wrong to him than to make men believe that he is a lover of such filthy Hypocrites You have observed no doubt that the Sacrifices in ancient times were called the Meat of God and the Food or provision that was made for his House And yet in the company of evil works they are said to be an Abomination to him and he professes that he had as lief they had brought him a Dog as offer a Lamb and that a Swine would have been as acceptable as the fattest of their Bullocks He protests that his soul abhorred their New Moons and solemn Assemblies that their Incense was an unsavoury stink and that the Fat and Blood of their Beasts were no better than their Dung and Ordure He bids them bring him no more vain oblations He saith that he was full of them and nauseated the Table that they spread for him And in plain terms he lets them know that it was to no purpose to multiply their Prayers for he could not hear them And so truly may you assure your self that though pious Prayers are now most prevalent and forcible with him yet the grunting of Swine or the howling of Wolves are altogether as welcome as the clamorous petitions of those who sue for his Love without any thorow amendment of their lives He detests those bawling worshippers who intend nothing else but to drown the cry of their sins and to make him deaf to the accusations which their iniquity brings against them Their breath is an unwholesome and infectious vapour which poisons the World and is the Pest of Religion Their meetings and assemblies are so many conspiracies against the Authority and Life of God Their words do but wound his ears and their loud cryes are but so many assaults and batteries against Heaven He hates to see those hands lifted up unto him which will instantly be lifted up against him He cannot indure they should lay hold on him and esteems such rude attempts to be the committing of a rape upon his mercy and an indeavour to force his favour He hath opened no way for such bold access unto him He rever intended to incourage such impudence Their zeal is a strange fire which kindles another in Heaven against them And notwithstanding all their fawnings upon him the Dogs which follow them to the place of their assemblies shall as soon be accepted as themselves And therefore be sure to make your Prayers touch your own heart before you expect they should reach Heaven Let them work upon your self before you assume a considence that they will have the desired effect upon God And now I have little to say concerning the hearing of Sermons reading of the Bible and other good Books which you say there are many think do compose the whole of a Religious life for it is plain enough they can have no other end than to furnish your mind with pious Meditations and dispose your will to Prayer and all other holy duties You cannot well think that these have any other place in the godly life than that of Instruments and Helps whereby to arrive at it And it is very easie to know from what hath been discoursed what Sermons are most to be regarded Not those which give your fancy a pleasure and tickle your imagination but those which powerfully enlighten your understanding and move your will to the choice of that which is right and Good There are too many of those frivolous Hearers who are more pleased with little gingles and the tinkling of words than with the most perswasive arguments which the most piercing reason in the world can urge upon their hearts But their punishment is heavy enough for this levity they being condemned for ever to be fools or children whose minds are inchanted with the Rhiming of words or with their countermarching and the ringing of
let me remember you of this Advice which was long since given me by a good man NOT TO BIND YOUR SELF UNALTERABLY TO VOLUNTARY CUSTOMS Since these are imposed upon us by our selves we may grant our selves a release when we we see it most convenient and not tye our selves unto them as if there were an indispensible obligation lying upon our conscience The rigorous observance of these doth alwayes hinder the freedom of the heart in the Love of Jesus when a better course to promote us in it doth present it self to our choice And therefore do not think there is any necessity that you should alwayes pray in the same way or pray so long or read so many Chapters in a day or study such a Book whereby you have reaped much benefit or think every day of the very same things but you are at liberty to do in these matters as shall most conduce to the ends for which they serve and that is The quickning of you to live agreeably to the Rules of Sobriety Righteousness and Godliness Be not timerous and fearful of stepping aside out of your ordinary course when you only leave what you have bound upon your self by your own will and go to do the Will of God If we can do well what matter is it though it be not in the form that we have prescribed If our business be effected why should we trouble our heads because it was not done in the order and method that we appointed Is it not a madness to deny our selves a natural happiness because we cannot have it according to the precepts of Art It is just as if a man would not speak nor hear Reason unless it be in mode and figure or as if a man would not be saved from drowning unless a friend would bring a Boat to fetch him out of the water or as if a captive Prince should refuse to satisfie his hunger unless all his servants and attendants were admitted to wait upon him What a sottish obstinacy is this thus to adhere to our Rules What a rigorous Justice is it that makes us unjust to our selves What shall we do with this scrupulous Piety which claps fetters and bolts upon our own leggs We should wonder if a man to observe some unnecessary terms of Law should suffer all Laws to perish and it is no less strange if to maintain some free impositions we sustain a loss in the most necessary improvements of our souls This extreme right is an extreme injury It would be an offence against reason not to offend here against a form And we should very much depart from God if we did not here depart a little from our selves To this let me add another thing which it will be profitable to you to be advised of which is that when you are following Jesus in acts of Justice or Charity or any of the rest you do as strongly attract and draw down the blessing of Heaven upon you as by the best devotions which you perform upon your knees You do not think I believe that they are the words which you speak that have any virtue to charm the caelestial Powers but that the Love to God which is expressed in Prayer invites him to come and dwell with you Now this Love is testified as much in other actions of an Holy Life especially when we deny our selves any sensible good in the performance of them and therefore they cannot chuse but re-inforce our Prayers and redouble our Petitions and call still for new Grace to make us able to do better Besides it is to be considered that doing of good being the use and improvement of that Grace of God which we obtain by our Prayers it must needs intitle us to the right which the Promise of God gives us of more Grace to be added unto that which we have already received We render to God hereby his own with Usury and Increase and so cannot miss of procuring more Talents to be lent unto us And indeed if you enter into a strict Examination of things you will find that every act of Virtue hath the very same effect upon the Understanding and Will which I attributed to Prayer it self For there is nothing more inlightens the Mind in the knowledge of good than the experience and taste which the practice of it gives us and the Will is so effectually determined hereby to the choice of it that it gets an habit and naturally propends unto it There is nothing can more dispose the soul to well doing than the doing well and we are never more secure of the help of Gods good Spirit than when we follow the motions of it Behold then what a dangerous Rock doth here discover it self upon which many have dasht and split themselves and perished Men think there is no Communion with God but what is held by Prayer and such like holy duties Nay as if this was all we have to do for maintaining friendship with him it hath ingrossed the name of duty and inclosed the greatest part of Religion in it self A strange conceit As if in the constant exercise of an Holy Life we did not keep a fellowship with him by doing the same that he doth and shewing forth his Virtues to the World Is there any thing more visible than that by Righteousness Charity Patience and such like we approach to God and are made partakers of him Do we not feel him by these things Are we not made one Spirit and Nature with him Doth not he dwell in us and we in him What is the reason then that men confine Divine Communion to Prayer and receiving of the Sacrament as if we never enjoyed him but in these immediate addresses to him What is it that makes them imagine God is here to be found and no where else They know not sure what it is to pray and partake of those holy My steries They fancy it is but the pouring out such a number of words or the stirring of some devout affections in them These they conceive wil put them in the favour of God and secure them there without any further labor Which hath caused it is like the corrupted Church to increase the number of Sacraments and create a great many more than God hath made For it is an easie matter to receive these Seals of Grace and there is no such repugnance to them in our fleshly nature as there is to the life of Jesus Hence it is that men would have the whole summ of Religion to be contained in these small volumes They would have all Piety cloistered up in these narrow walls and are loath to give it a larger compass Within these limits they would willingly have it confined and not have it walk abroad in our common conversation in the World But if they had any true rellish of vertue they would soon discern that these Holy Duties are preparations for whatsoever else we have to do They are so far from excluding all the
that they are Masters of to intice or draw your heart from the Love of Jesus and make you weary of prosecuting your purpose of going to him But whatsoever any or all of these shall say and in whatsoever form they shall make either their addresses or assaults believe not a word they speak or rather stop your ears as much as you can to all their chams And be sure at least to betake your self to that one secure Remedy which I told you of answering thus unto them I desire nought but the Love of Jesus and to be with him in peace at Jerusalem This word will drive them all away as having no hopes to find any room in those souls that are full of such desires And unless you cease to say and think that or you give it but a cold remembrance they will let you go on in your way thither without any further disturbance from such perswasions But yet when they see that they cannot be admitted at this door they will try to enter in at another or at least they will endeavour to repress the forwardness of your course and to make your way intricate and perplexed For finding that you cannot be perswaded to be in love with them or any of their confederates they will begin to throw scruples and fears into your mind that you may bear an affection to some or other of them When they cannot disturb your Passions they will be so subtil as to trouble your Fancy And when they cannot perswade you to break off your journey they will labour to possess you with a conceit that you have not yet prepared your self sufficiently for it They will often be stirring up such thoughts as these in your mind that you have not washed your self clean enough by sorrow and contrition for your sins that your conscience hath not been thorowly searched nor your faults duly confessed nor your heart rightly humbled and deeply afflicted and therefore that it would be best for you to return again at least for so short a space till you may be better purged and so the better provided for travel With much speciousness and very fair shews of faithful counsel will all this be represented and they will make you believe if they can that you cannot please God better than by going back to the very place where you first began in order to prepare your self with more exactness for such a long journey But do not give any credit to a syllable of all this nor think your self obliged to ransack your conscience all over again and to spend your time in I know not what pensiveness and tiresome humiliations For these courses may indanger to keep you alwaies at home either because you will never think that you know the bottom of your heart or because you will still seem not to be sorrowful and penitent enough or because these horrours will even affright you from Religion and make you think as I have known some do that it is impossible to be saved At least these things will put you into uncouth and unknown wayes and make others think that Piety is madness They will hinder you also exceeding much so that if you go on at all yet you will travel very slowly and be a most tedious time before you come at Jesus Say therefore to these scruples when they buzz in your ears I am nought I have nought c. I have sunk my self as low as I can in my own esteem I have forsaken all and carry nothing in my heart as he knows but only Jesus and Jerusalem and therefore molest me not in my passage to them And if they shall still proceed to tell you upon the discovery of this Artifice to deceive you that it is too great a boldness for such a person as you to think to see Jesus and Jerusalem if they say that you are not worthy of his favour nor ought to be so presumptuous as to hope for it answer them again in the very same words I am nought I have nought c. I know as well as you can tell me that I am unworthy of any thing and much more of his favour but therefore it is that I desire him and am going to him that I may have some worthiness by resembling him I do not presume upon my own deserts but upon his Love nor am I pricked forward by my own desires only but by his invitations nor was it my motion but his own which first put me upon this design of travelling to him Nor shall you ever perswade me to desist in this enterprize unless you can tell me from his own mouth that he will do no good unto a sinner as I confess my self to be but I will continue to pray without ceasing and to labour perpetually that I may be righteous like to himself and so be accepted with him I am not so foolish indeed as to imagine that he will receive me to himself at Jerusalem if I become no better than I am but I study by his Grace which I know he is not wont to deny to be made so conformable to his desires that he will not think me unworthy to be there entertained by him And now if any old friend or acquaintance should chance to cross your way and pittying that poor and desolate condition wherein you seem to be should in civility invite you home to him and pray you to accept of the kindness of their Country or if he should promise you some great pleasures and rare divertisements to the flesh which are far more eligible in his opinion than such a miserable Pilgrim's life as he sees you lead turn a deaf ear to him and do not go along with him Nay if he only stop you in your journey by vain frivolous and impertinent discourses which you think detain you too long from accomplishing your intentions break loose from him as soon as you fairly can and say only this to him Sir I would fain be at Jerusalem And if he persist to trouble you and follow you with his importunities to turn aside to his dwelling or to let him have more of your company invite him to go along with you and tell him that then he shall enjoy as much as he pleases of it And if to these Temptations there should many others succeed from the proffers of Gifts Honours and Preferments which will incommode you and be a clog to you in your journey regard them not but still bear in your minds the thoughts of what you shall have at Jerusalem Which is not meant as if I thought the Rich and the Honourable could not get thither as well as we but only to preserve you from the greedy humour of the world who catch at all that presents it self though they start out of their way to get it and turn into an hundred by-paths to possess and augment it CAP. XIX Of many other devices to discourage him in his Journey Especially if he should chance
you have done the Will of God you may inherit his Promises This is a Virtue which is absolutely necessary in all great enterprises but in none more than in this noble undertaking which you have in hand If this be wanting you must needs stay short of Jerusalem but if you be armed with it you need not despair of executing the pleasure of Jesus and having the favour of seeing him there 1 James 4 Let it but have its perfect work and then you will be perfect intire and wanting nothing By this the first Pilgrim which I told you of came happily to his journeys end Heb. 6.15 for after Abraham had patiently indured he obtained the Promise And if you inquire of all that succeeded you will hear this language from every one of them Be not slothful but followers of them who through Faith and Patience inherit the Promises Ib. v. 12 Wherefore being incompassed with a cloud of witnesses and having on every side so many glorious examples run with Patience the Race set before you looking especially unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of your Faith who for the Joy set before him Heb. 12.1 2 3 endured the Cross despising the shame and is set down at the right hand of God For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself lest you be wearied and faint in your mind CAP. XX. How they will indeavour to puff him up with Spiritual Pride A description of one of our conceited Believers And also of a certain Artificial Religion which deceives many AND now if they see that your Will to him is so strongly set and your Heart touched so powerfully with his love that neit her by Poverty nor Sickness by Fancies nor Fears by Perswasion nor Violence no nor by sins neither it can be hindred from going to him they will grow extream angry and you may expect the very last assault of an inraged enemy which commonly is worse then all the rest Nothing can more provoke their spirits then to find that all they say is slighted and dis-regarded There are no words you can speak of them that they esteem so reviling as the scorn you put upon them by not hearkning to any of their words to you It will incense them to take a sudden revenge when they see you so obstinately resolved as to force your way through the midst of all the difficulties wherewith they surround you This will necessitate them to invent a new Method to surprise you and to lay their trains in a way quite different from the preceding which though they may seem not hard to discover yet have more of Malice if not of Craft then any other For now it is possible they will fain a compliance with you and make as if they neither could nor had a mind any longer to resist you They will commend your constancy and praise your resolute mind and indeavour to make you believe that they are so sensible of it that they will forbear to trouble you Nay to such a complaisance will they form themselves that you shall hear no more of the badness and difficulty of the way wherein you are but they will say it is excellent easie and void of all dangers which are now disheartned from presenting themselves to a mind that is only resolved to overcome them By this means they will secretly labour to cause a very good opinion of your self to steal into your mind and study to blow you up into an empty conceit of your own worth and sufficiency They will bring before you all the good deeds that you have done and display your Victories before your eyes and let you know what a gallant person you are accounted They will tell you how all men admire you that the whole world must needs love you and have you in great esteem for your piety yea even venerate the sanctity of your Conversation They will not spare to say that you have shown such love to Jesus as none can equal and especially that your courage and valour is so eminent that it is above their praises And all this with a great deal more they will suggest unto you only to breed in you as lofty an esteem of your piety as they perswade you others must needs have of it and to puff you up with such a vain joy that you may please your self in your self and forget to go forward to Jerusalem But if you tender at all your own wellfare and would not miscarry after you have done so worthily hold all this for an illusion and a dangerous piece of flattery Look upon it as a deadly poison under the tast of honey and so throw it away saying I will have none of it I AM NOUGHT I HAVE NOUGHT Do not think to please me with this dissembled sweetness for that which I desire is nothing short OF THE PEACE which is promised to me at JERUSALEM And here I should have entred a serious caution against Spiritual Pride and a vain conceit of your own abilities with which most of the world is infected but that is included already in the general advice that I have given you and besides I see you are so humble as to become a learner It may seem indeed a thing worthy of little or no praise for those who are Ignorant to come to be instructed but there are few I assure you of our contentious Christians though never so silly who are yet arrived at this perfection They think themselves fit not only to dispute with their Minister but to be his Teachers They are his Masters rather then his Schollers and they do not only call him in question but boldly deliver their opinion of him If they had so much modesty and sense of Christian duty left as to bring their doubts unto him about what he sayes it could not but be esteemed a commendable care of their souls But alas they are grown to that degree of insolence and are so monstrously arrogant that they have possessed themselves of the chair and sit as Judges of his Sermons What else means the rebukes which they meet withall the hasty censures which are passed upon them and the Magisterial sentence which is instantly pronounced with such a peremptoriness as if there lay no appeal from the Bar of their understanding It hath been my hard hap to converse with many of them and among the rest I fell into the company of one the other day who spake of his Guide with such a scorn and condemned his Sermons with so much confidence and laught so loudly at his Ignorance and likewise cavilled so impertinently at his expressions when he had nothing to say against the sense of what he had spoken that a well disposed man though a little fierce said he had some doubt whether the Devil did not appear unto us to try if he could infect us with the leprosie of his Pride and Passion And indeed I thought that I never saw those
to follow their Vertues But I may rather wonder with what face men can speak against those who neglect the observance of these Dayes when they themselves are the chiefest cause of it or the best colour for it They dishonour all holy rites and bring a reproach upon holy times and if it had not been for such as them those dayes might have been in more credit even with those who now despise them What do we see say those scrupulous persons but riot and luxury at such seasons All places are full of vomit and men seem to be celebrating the Feast of Ceres and Bacchus i. e. of Bread and Wine of some heathenish drunken belly-god They fancy there is no restraint layd upon their appetite if they do but strictly forbear their ordinary labours They are like some bad Christians in the old times who made no doubt of being drunk so they did but take off their cups as they sate on the Martyrs Tombs It is easie indeed for these objectors to see something else They might behold some devout people who frequent the Worship of God and rejoyce most in remembring their Saviour and his great Grace in sending those that Preached the Gospel to the World But the number of the other are so great who never regard such things that by looking on them they are tempted to take no notice of all the rest The Taverns are fuller by far then our Churches and the Theatre is more frequented then the House of God And therefore it is for such as you to set your selves a work to take away this objection which they will not take away themselves Do you satisfie them that these dayes are no necessary cause of doing evil by your own example of doing good Leave their Argument no force at all for it is in your power to do it and let them see that the marriage between these Festivals and Profaneness is not so legitimate but they may be divorced Deprive them of this colour and leave their peevishness so naked that it may be exposed to the view of all Or if they have taken a real offence remove it out of their way and let all that they alledg have a full confutation in your holy life Answer them by your behaviour that there is no need to take away these dayes for you can take away all the wickedness and leave them still remaining Let them see that you can rest from your labours and yet not spend your whole time in sport and play Let them find the Bible or some good book in your hand oftner then they do the Cards Let your Spirit rejoyce in God your Saviour more then your body doth in meat and drink Feed your soul upon the Heavenly mysteries of our Religion and do not live as if the Saints were only good Purveyors for our Kitchins So will you both bring these dayes into esteem with others and your self into greater favour with God And I beseech you desire all you know that they would not sleight such admonitions as these I give you But that for the Honour of our Lord for the credit of his Church who hath appointed these solemnities for the love of their own souls who are intended to receive the benefit of them they would behave themselves soberly and religiously at such seasons That so the Church may not be forced to do with these as it hath done with the Feasts of Love and other rites used by the Apostles themselves i. e. abolish and banish them because of mens obstinate abuse of them For it is a very absurd thing as one of the ancient Guides saith to study to honour the Martyrs with too much fulness who we know pleased God by fasting and abstinence It is a prosperous way of doing honour to our Saviour by pampering and pleasing our selves who it is known did honour his Father by denying himself and despising all the pleasures of the flesh Therefore exhort every one to feast themselves with an holy fear Let them make Feasts of Charity and doing good to their poor neighbours Let them be Feasts of Love to make us friends one with another Feasts of the Spirit to put us in mind of the joyes of the Lord and the eternal Supper of the Lamb. And now I think I may have leave to conclude my directions having put you into the hands of better Guides then my self the sum whereof is briefly this Let your principal design ever be to knit your heart to the Love of Jesus and the ardent desire of being with him at Jerusalem Let this be your great business to set your Soul directly towards the place where he is and to stir up in it such longings as these O that I were with Jesus when shall I come to Jesus And since he is the Way to himself there is nothing more needful for the accomplishing your desire then to propose him before your eyes for your imitation As for Prayer Meditation and such like things they are to be designed to this end that your Love to him may be inflamed your Desire after him increased and your Resolution of doing his will and treading in his steps be made unmoveable Whatsoever therefore you find proper to advance that Love that Desire that Resolution be it Praying or Reading Discoursing or Solitude Walking or Reposing your self Visiting of others or Keeping at home make use of it for the time that your Soul rellishes it and as long as it quickens your Desire and indeavour of enjoying the love of Jesus and the blessed sight of him at Jerusalem But when any of these shall prove irksome to you be not troubled at it but try for that time some of the rest which may be then more useful because more pleasant to you And when any of those Enemies I have mentioned shall disturb your peace beat them off as soon as you can but be not troubled because they do not presently yield provided you do not yield to them neither And if after a Victory they rally in the same manner again be not affrighted at that neither as if now they had greater courage but endeavour only to beat them as before and by obtaining a new Victory to show that it is your courage which is increased And do not think you shall be in danger to lose the Victory over them if you suffer your Bow sometimes to be unbent Do not think a Pilgrim must be so severe as never to recreate himself in the way he goes By perpetual Watchings and labours your enemies may undo you as well as by any other means Take but heed that you fall not into their Quarters when you divert your self and let but your pleasures still lye in your way and you need not fear to make use of them Remember the Example of the Saints of God and stir up your self to imitate their zeal and their discretion both together And rest assured my Friend that this good Desire thus cherished thus augmented and
towards him then he that suffers the remembrance of it to ferment and boil perpetually in his mind Is it not a business of less difficulty to be peaceable and quiet then to be ever contending quarrelling and falling out with our neighbours And what toil is there in sitting still and not so much as lifting up our hands and on the other side what labour in fighting and beating and wounding one another Is it not far more easie to hold ones peace then to rail and revile as much as we please Which puts us to more pains to say nothing but well of others or to be alwayes finding fault and still speaking evil of them Meekness seems to me to be far less troublesome then anger and rage Charity is more easie and delightsome then covetousness and scraping up of wealth To drink little is sooner and easier done then to drink and swill as if we were in a perpetual Feaver And I cannot see what should hinder you from confessing instantly that it is a thing of far more ease and facility to live by Faith in God to depend on his providence in honest wayes and to cast our burden upon him than to be alwayes careful and sollicitous to be ever vexing our selves with worldly thoughts and to be devising shifts and naughty Arts how to get more than we need Is it any burden to praise God for the blessings he sends us Or Is it not more natural than to praise and commend our selves to which all men seem so forward And how can it be so toilsome to pray to him for what we want as it is to spend our time in a laborious diligence without a serious and hearty acknowledgement of him To be humble and modest is far more agreeable than to bear it high and lift up our selves above others It is nothing so hard to obey Governours as to be turbulent and fall into rebellion against them Yea to suffer wrongs breeds us less molestation than to do them To be patient creates us not half so much trouble as it doth to vex and fret and sume within our selves To rejoyce in God is a thing that more gratifies than all the pleasures of sense And even to mourn for our sins doth give us more satisfaction than to mourn and grieve for worldly losses It would be a very easie matter I beleeve you discern to make a long discourse on this argment as also to shew that besides the ease and the pleasure that there is in doing these things they leave also a certain joy and contentment when they are done They that hold the course into which you are entring do feel that every step they take leaves a certain print behind it which it is an infinite delight to reflect upon They enjoy a repose and security in their consciences which is not to be uttered and remain in great tranquillity all their lives There is no body that can rob them of their pleasures neither can any man intercept them and hinder them from coming into their souls nor will they themselves be ever weary of them or desire to make an exchange of them for some other contentment There is no disgust in those holy delights They breed no dislike by their frequent enjoyment They depend not as others do on infinite circumstances whereof the want of any one makes them either odious or unprofitable but they have a constant cause and depend but upon one thing which is alwayes present and inseparable from all good souls They live without fear in their possessions and without distrust in their wants They do not blush in the company of others nor do they tremble when they are alone They are not bitten with remorse nor covered with shame for what is past and their present condition is not troubled with any disquiet and they have nothing but fair and goodly hopes for the time to come In fine they are the portion of God in the world they are his treasure they are his delight and his joy and whensoever he makes them know so much there is not an higher pleasure that the heart of man is capable to possess To make joy in Heaven to give delight to the King of the world O what a ravishment is it What glorious hopes doth the thought of it inspire us withall It would make any man cry out I will be good I vow that I will be good though the whole world should oppose me in it Your very flesh will consent to be one of the subjects of Jesus if you do but let it know the happiness that he will bring unto it It will become a Votary to him when you understand how much the better it shall fare for that repose of your mind and the constant pleasure of a regular life Your very stomach cannot but commend his measures and submit it self to his Laws who layes no burden upon it but rather eases it of all its loads It will complain of your unkindness if you deny it the favour of being absolutely governed by his will There is never a drop of blood in your body but had rather be spilt in his service than that you should refuse his blessed life which leads to such endless felicity to the whole man Consult every thing about you Take advice of every thing that belongs to you and it will confess that there is no such Master of pleasure in the whole world as the Holy Jesus that it is the greatest Epicurism to be one of his followers and that if a man should study till the worlds end he would never cast himself into such an extasie of joy as the knowledge and belief of what he hath promised and an heart full of love to him proportionable to that belief will put him into And therefore it is a wonder that the Voluptuaries of the world go to any other School than his to learn the Art of making much of themselves Here is true pleasure here is the very spring of all contentment It is the very inscription upon the door or entrance of Christs School that Blessed are the poor in spirit blessed are the pure in heart blessed are the meek blessed are the peaceable blessed are the merciful yea blessed are they that mourn and that suffer for righteousness sake Nor are these vain braggs and empty boasts like the Papers which Empericks set upon posts pretending to the cure of all diseases But if any man will try he shall find all this to be the very truth he shall preach this doctrine himself to the world he shall avow it confidently to all that he meets that Jesus only brings true rest to their souls and bodies Nor is the tryal of such difficulty that you or my man else should refuse it When you have left my company and are retired to your self do but fix your mind as long as you are wont to do on lesser businesses upon these truths that Jesus is exalted at the right hand of God that he hath
was alwayes assaulted with some Monster or other and God would not suffer his own child as one of them speaks to be nursed up in idleness and the delicacies of life No he fought with Lyons and Boars and Serpents and Tyrants and Theeves and he was appointed to travel into strange lands to cross dangerous seas and to go through terrible wildernesses and deserts And all to testifie the favour of Heaven to him that would thus imploy him No doubt his Father could have freed him from such conflicts but he would not because as they render the reason it is not lawful for him to will any thing but that which is best and most excellent Or he might have freed himself and perhaps some men would have advised him to flee these dangers and rather to quit his place then expose his life to so many hazzards But they knew not the pleasure which he found in his heart when he remembred that he was thought worthy by God to be singled out to be his Champion and that Heaven had not an ill opinion of him nor judged him a weak and effeminate person It was a strange contentment also to imagine that all these dangers presented themselves only that he might overcome them and he felt that there was not half so much pains in fighting as there was pleasure in the very hopes of having the Victory Nay if he had perished in the encounter so he had carried Victory out of the World with him he would have thought himself crowned with an high satisfaction He would have thought that he dyed more happily then Cowards live and that it was more glorious thus to end his dayes then to spin them out basely to the longest Age. Besides herein there being so considerable a proof of the sincerity and fidelity of such persons unto God it cannot but please them very much to reflect upon it It yields them a great joy to remember that they have his approbation and that after many fiery tryals he finds that they are not indued with a counterfeit Vertue Nay it is some joy to think that their enemies judge them so considerable as to raise such mighty forces against them and fight so many battels with them They assure them hereby that they are more in their account than they could wish And that power which gave them a shock but could not shake them doth demonstrate the solidity of their souls and the great strength they have to resist such forcible impressions I do not know whether it be a tale or no but I have been told that among other wayes the Queen of Sheba tryed the wisdom of Solomon by offering certain Boys and Girles to be distinguisht one from the other by him when they were put into the very same garb and had been taught the same gestures and carriage of their bodies And that he calling for some cold water commanded them all to wash themselves Into which the youths plunging their hands boldly and then rubbing their faces very hard and the others tenderly dipping their fingers and only sleaking their faces over with it he soon discerned the difference and separated them according to their sexes Hardships will make a true proof of the strength and masculine force of our spirits Prosperity as a wise man of later times observes doth best discover Vice and Adversity makes the best discovery of Vertue And as the one is not without many fears and distasts so the other is not without its hopes and comforts of which this is not the least that God thinks us worthy to be the men in whom he would make an Experiment what Christian souls are able to suffer The Vertue of Prosperity is Temperance and the Vertue of Adversity is Fortitude which in the account of all the world is the more Heroical of the two and yields the greatest Triumphs Nay He fears not to say that Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament and Adversity is the blessing of the New which carries the greater benediction and the clearer revelation of Gods favour And therefore do not take that ill which to such a man as you is a mark of the Divine Love Be not unwilling that God should do you an honour and bestow upon you a blessing Let him have the pleasure of seeing you behave your self gallantly Deny him not that spectacle which is not to be had in Heaven and for which he manifested himself in flesh Let it not repent him of his choice if he pick out you for some notable Combate The General appoints the stoutest men for the hardest services And they do not say He bears an ill will to us and owes us a spite but he hath an high opinion of us and intends to do us credit Do you now issue forth with an heart full of the same thoughts and take my word you shall never want the noblest pleasures You will thank God for placing you in the foremost rank of Christian Souldiers You will praise him for esteeming a poor Pilgrim capable of such atchievements You will rejoyce to see your self herein preferred before the Angels For if they can do more than you yet you can suffer more than they Nay you will find your self in the fellowship of the Son of God who was never so glorious as when he hung upon the Cross never triumphed so much as when he seemed to be trampled under feet and then spoiled principalities and powers when he was robb'd of all and lost even life it self CAP. XXV How the Pilgrim and his Guide parted And with what a brave Resolution he began his Journey WHen the Good Father for so we will hereafter call him had said those words with some other to the same effect he told him that now he thought it would be an injurious act to hinder him any longer by his discourses from going to prove the truth of what had been said If I am a Mercury continued he with a little smile as you have been pleased to fancy I may have leave to make use of my wings and fly away There remains nothing now to be done but that which I cannot do for you and the greatest courtesie that is left in my power is to keep you no longer from doing it your self Whereupon after he had exhorted him briefly to be strong in the Grace of Jesus Christ and to endure hardship as a good Souldier of his He bade him heartily farewel and put himself into a posture of departing But the Pilgrim being sorely afflicted within himself at this news suddenly caught hold of his Garment which gently moved towards him as he turned about and in a contest between joy and grief uttered these words as well as those passions would give him leave Let me intreat you Dear Sir to prolong your patience so far as before you go away to receive my thanks for the good Directions you have furnished me withall and to give your Blessing likewise upon a poor heart that is resolved
his way of the smoothness of which notwithstanding all that had been said he too much presumed and made him watchful because he saw he could not pass without some enemies So it gave him some degree of courage because he perceived they might be overcome and confirm'd his belief of the Wisdom of his Director who foretold these troubles and gave a proof withall of the efficacy of that Remedy which he had prescribed and above all revived that Joy and gladness in his heart which he thought began to languish and faint away Full of joy he was even to an excess and he suffered by it a kind of transportation partly from the brightness of the Truths he had received which yet were fresh in his mind partly from the increase of his understanding by the experiment which he had made but chiefly I think from the Victory which he had obtained over those enemies that attacqued his Soul For in truth there is no greater Triumph then that which the Soul feels when it comes off a Conquerour and applauds it self for the Valour and Courage which it hath expressed in its conflicts There was another thing indeed which added something though not much to his joy viz. that ded something though not much to his joy viz. that his enemies he hoped had received such a foil that he had sent them away discouraged if not disabled from making any further attempts upon him But so mutable is our condition here and so many are our enemies that he had not travelled many dayes after this Triumph before he was arrested with a new trouble to exercise his Wisdom and Patience His soul which just now was ready to leap out of his body he felt to sink so low that it was as if he had no soul at all His spirits not only began to flagg and hang down their heads but were grown quite faint and weary as if they meant to swoon away Which was partly occasioned by his going too fast and taking over-long Journeys and partly by a very hot day when the Sun beat very strongly upon his head and partly by the very violence of his joyes which stirred his spirits so much that in the agitation they flew away and partly by letting slip two or three of those Instructions which had been left with him which should have been a Cordial to him but were as impossible he found to be by any means recalled as it was to bring back his tyred spirits which were flown from him Very melancholly and sad he now began to be and the more because he had been so joyful O how desolate said he within himself is this place into which I am faln I am forsaken sure of God or else I that was so high yesterday should never have sunk into this pit which is next door to the dwelling of damned spirits Was ever any man in such a deplorable estate Was there ever any bereaved thus of all his comforts which should sweeten his way when he hath no other company Oh Who will restore unto me the dayes that are past Who can call back but the joyes of yesterday into my bosome What are those sins that have cast me into the displeasure of my Lord Or What shall I do to regain his favour which I would purchase at any rate though I dyed the next moment Thus he lay many dayes sometimes bewailing his former affrightment which he suspected might deserve this desertion as he was apt to call it sometimes complaining that he could not find the cause and so could not be cured sometimes reflecting on the times of joy which were gone and sometimes taking a view of his misery which made him but the more deeply miserable And which was worst of all he kept his bed all this time and stirred not a foot in his Journey being indeed so ill that he despaired of life But see how the Providence of God watches for an opportune season to do us a kindness When he was in the greatest torture that he had felt all the time of this Agony there came an unexpected Letter to his hands from his beloved Father which was to this effect My friend for so I cannot but call you since you express such love to me These are to let you know that though I am absent from you yet I follow you with my thoughts and good wishes which attend you in all your motions I am so far from being forgetful of my promise that I am much better I assure you than my word You desired me to pray for you and so I do But I cannot content my self with that unless you as well as God know that I have a remembrance of you That is the very reason of my sending this Paper after you that it may be a token how regardful I am of your concerns and sollicitous about your welfare So sollicitous that having enjoyed some good thoughts this morning I could not but impart them unto you because I fancied they would prove upon some occasion or other very useful to you They are a Meditation upon one of the Fsalms of David where he bids his Soul not to be disquieted but to hope in God as the health of his countenance and his God and they are infolded in a distinct Paper within the bosome of this Letter because they were too long to be inserted in the body of it Farewell Upon the very first receipt of this Letter before he had broke it up his pale cheeks began to be streaked with a little blood as a prognostick of his recovery to health again But when he opened it and read the kind expressions of the Love of his Friend one might see how the spirits crept up as he went along out of the Center whither they were retired In so much that the light danced in his eyes yea leaped out as if it meant to kiss those lines which now saluted them But then as soon as he arrived at the Meditation it self and had carefully perused all the parts of it his face shined like an Angel and one would have thought he had not been the man that was so lately dejected For it was so pat to his present condition and so exactly suted to the necessities under which he laboured that it seemed as if it had been indicted by God and not by his Friend There he found a discourse of the Nature of Joy of the causes of its decay of the Interess that our Animal Spirits have in it of the way to recover it and the means to be content without it and above all of the Resignation of our selves to the Will of God to serve him chearfully without those sensible pleasures as well as in their company And not to name other things which were more fully debated between them afterward these now rehearsed were so fully opened that he was partly amazed and partly elevated to the height of his Joyes again when he thought that God had put it into the heart
which like a greater fire put the other out But he poor Soul though alwayes denying his own desires breaking of his will in pieces lying upon a rack and fast nailed to the Cross where the body of sin was bleeding to death yet found his Spirit in horrid torments and deprived of those divine delights which cheared the bright souls of the blessed Martyrs and made them shine with a greater luster then did their fires But since I cannot express the soreness of this Agony in which he a long time lay I shall only add that it was so great that one day being quite tired and spent he fell into a kind of trance and remained as immoveable for some space as if he had been dead And a blessed occasion this was though all his acquaintance that were come to comfort him imagined he would then have expired For he thought he saw a man coming to him with a very smiling aspect as though he knew him who bad him get up and go as fast as he could to a certain Oratory that was not far off and in his way where he should meet with some relief When he was come to himself he thought this Vision or what else you please to call it was in stead of an Oracle and had discovered to him one of the greatest causes that he continued so long ill of these grievous distempers And that was That while he afflicted and tormented himself with the remembrance of what was passed he neglected to implore the help of God with such constant prayers as was nieet for the redress of his present evils and prevention of the like in time to come This began to make a vehement commotion in his mind for he saw there was nothing truer then that We are apt to pray least when we have greatest need of it and are wont to spend that time in looking upon our sores which should be imployed in looking up to Heaven for its Balm to drop into them And truly so lively were the colours wherein this was set before his eyes that he was ready to burst into tears and pour out his Soul there before he stir'd from the bed whereon he lay But remembring presently the voyce to which he thought himself so much beholden had bid him make what speed he could to a particular place where he might address his prayers to his Saviour he arose and dressed himself without any further delay And though he knew that our Lord hears the suits of his humble Clients every where yet he would not be disobedient to the directions he had received but made haste to go and see what good might wait for him in that Oratory or Chappel which had been built in the rode by some charitable person for the use of devout passengers to Jerusalem And no sooner had he entred within the doors but he fell upon his knees and there sent out his Soul in such strong and passionate desires as left all words behind which were not able to accompany them If the throng of his thoughts which upon this occasion were assembled had not been so great you might have received a better account of them But truly such was the violence wherewith they pressed forth and so great were their numbers that he found it very difficult either then to range them in any order or afterward to recall them distinctly to his mind Yet some of them carried this sense as I have been certainly informed by him from whom he hides none of the secrets of his Soul O thou Almighty Goodness the Father of the Fatherless the Patron of the Poor the Protector of Strangers cast thy gracious eyes upon a miserable Pilgrim who all torn and ragged implores thy mercy When I look on my self I dare scarce be so bold as to lift up mine eyes unto thee When I think in what condition I am and what I have done it so confounds me that I can hardly think of any thing else It is the greatness of my misery alone that constrains me to this presumption of prostrating my self at thy feet The weight of which oppresses me so much that it hath left me little more power then to expose my self before thee as an object of thy wondrous Charity O what a Wilderness am I faln into where I can find no water What Desarts are these in which all comfort forsakes my Soul Into what strange regions am I wandred where there is nothing but darkness and the vallies of the shaddow of death O the terrors that surround me how dreadful are they O the affliction and torment which I indure what tongue can express it my Soul is parcht and dryed up My spirits are consumed by the heat of thy displeasure May I not now beg one drop of comfort from thee O my God my soul thirsteth for thee my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and barren land I remember thy loving kindness in former times I call to mind the dayes of old And I cannot but wish at least to see thy power and thy glory so as I have seen thee in the Sanctuary There is none in Heaven that I desire but thee nor on earth besides thee My Soul followeth hard after thee O when wilt thou come unto me O hide not thy face from thy servant for I am in trouble hear me speedily I am poor and needy make haste unto me O God thou art my helper and deliverer O Lord make no tarrying I am come a great way from all my friends and kindred and there is none to pitty me O my God be not thou far from me draw nigh unto my soul and redeem it I am poor and sorrowful let thy Salvation set me up on high For thou who searchest the hearts knowest that I am travelling nowhither but to thee All the world have I left that I may find my happiness only in thee And at thy heavenly motion it was that I undertook this long journey I am become a Pilgrim meerly in obedience to thy Will Yea thus far I acknowledge thou hast most graciously conducted me Hitherto I have been highly favoured and wonderfully helped by thee And wilt thou now at last abandon me who have ahandon'd all things else for the sake of thee Hast thou called me from mine own Country and Fathers house that I may perish by famine here and only for want of thee O my Lord give me leave to plead for a Soul which once I thought was dear unto thee Pitty O pitty an Heart which thou hast made too great for all the World and cannot be satisfied with less than thee Canst thou see it dye for lack of one smile from thee yea canst thou let it dye of love to thee for that hath brought me thus far to seek thee And wilt thou suffer it to dye at thy feet Canst thou endure to behold it perish in thy arms into which it now throws it self with all the force it hath Shall it miscarry full of
might be so greedy of these things as to mind them more than their duty and for that cause it is best to take them away that they may be sensible there are other matters of greater moment and necessity But if none of these dangers should be supposed will we not give God leave to exercise our Faith and Love and make a tryal of the sincerity and strength of those Graces in what way he pleases He would know perchance whether we will build our confidence upon himself and upon his Promises rather than on sense and whether we will follow after him upon the same account though we have no present sensible attractive And who can take it ill that he makes such a proof of us seeing we do it every day our selves to others whose friendship we value not if they court us only when we are bestowing gifts and benefits upon them But if you think that this deprivation of Joy is a punishment for some fault which you have committed and that it is a token he hath sent you a bill of divorce and separated you from him you are much to blame in suffering your Soul to make such a rash conclusion Perhaps you have deserved to be chid for some fault but will you presently fancy that your Father intends to disinherit you Is it his manner to forsake and run away from us when we chance to stumble and not rather to come and lift us up and bid us take more heed to our selves I never thought he loved us so little and me thinks it ill comports with the notion of a Father to represent him so severe It is very necessary indeed that you should weigh your faults and confess them sorrowfully and mend them speedily but I can never think it is pleasing to him that you should be so dismaid at them and afflicted for them as to imagine he will cast you off and never look upon you more No I believe rather he esteems this a greater dis-service to him then the very fault it self because it keeps us from mending what is amiss and makes us so feeble that we are apt to offend in some kind or other again To say nothing of the dishonour it is to his Goodness and the great scandal it gives to others who will be loath to enter into the service of that Master whom they think it impossible to please But then if under the pretence of humbling your self you shall make a sin that is no bigger than a grain of Mustard-seed as great as an Elephant I beseech you what service do you therein do your Lord And yet this stone many are apt to stumble at and that so oft that in time they fancy a great sin there where indeed one can find none at all Do you think our Saviour will conne you any thanks for aggravating your offences to this heigth or accusing your self when there is no guilt Is there nothing for him to pardon unless you make some faults or bring him a great mountain to cover and hide with his love Let me tell you my dear Brother that this is a part of your mistakes and a cause that you and Joy are no better acquainted You imagine that you have done Nothing and complain of such dulness as if you had stood still ever since I saw you when as you have made a very fair progress and in some things you see have overtaken my self And then on the contrary you groan under the sense of an heavy guilt when as you did but neglect a Free-will offering and was kept from a duty to which you had then no tye but what you received from your own hands You are apt I see to overwork your soul and to impose too great burdens upon its back Which when you are not so well able to bear as sometimes you find your self you are apt to think it a great fault if you take some ease when as in truth it is your duty then to omit those tasks you have injoyn'd your self that you may not neglect those duties which are required by our Saviour Come come my friend if these things be all that trouble you my life for yours you shall do well enough Let but my advice be followed though at first it should be with unwillingness and take my word you shall fare the better for it in your after-course And first I must not have you lay more loads upon your self then Christ hath done nor oblige your self without the liberty of a dispensation to so many hours of Prayer and Reading every day Let it suffice to do what you can all other things being duly considered that require your attendance Next I must forbid you to make so much haste to perfection A soft pace goes far Do not tire your spirits by your speed but go on so fairly and leisurely that you may hold out And then likewise let me not hear any more that you exhaust your natural strength and weary your very body with much Fasting unseasonable abstinence long prayers or such like things which had better be let alone than procure so much mischief as I have seen them do And remember I beseech you that Lesson which I think was taught you before this journey That you bind not your self alwayes to one way of Prayer or Meditation nor confine your soul to one exercise only at the hours of retirement but chuse that which shall like you best and wherein you can proceed with the greatest freedom and delight Besides I perceive you have forgot another of my Lessons which was to make use of some innocent Recreations and harmless pastimes as you went along And therefore what I did but then advise let me now enjoyn that you give your self sometimes a little divertisement from more serious employments And truly if you should say as I know some do that it is not for want of these Joyes that you complain but because you can neither understand nor tast the goodness of Divine truths this last advice is one of the most useful that I can give you for the remedying of that melancholly dulness All that I shall add is only this that you would have patience and you shall see the good temper wherein you were return of it self as it went away without your consent Indeed said the Pilgrim who all this time had been very silent I am very sensible that I have lost a great many of your good counsels or else I should not have been so bad as here you find me And I take it for a singular favour that Jesus hath done me in sending you again thither to rub up my memory and to fasten those things in my mind which hung there too loose before I must not forget likewise to acknowledge my new obligations to you from whom I have now received not only so large but so plain and familiar an answer to my doubt And truly you do very prudently and charitably to lay your commands upon me to
deceive and cheat you with its dissimulations while you are in this state endeavouring to slubber over negligence under the pretext of I cannot do any more It is true we are not tyed to that which we cannot do but yet the flesh will sometimes juggle and complain of impotence when there is nothing hinders us but only Sloth Here you must look upon your self with a great many eyes you must become your own spy and narrowly watch the most secret motions of your heart For this Eve that is within us is so desirous to be cherished and pleased to be walking up and down the Garden and to be eating of the forbidden fruit that she wants not a thousand inventions to make us believe that her demands do not extend to superfluities but only to things necessary for us that she doth not desire ease and pleasure so much as rest from hard labours and she is in a mighty chafe if we will not give a perfect credit to her She perswades us sometime that we are much weaker than in truth we can affirm our selves to be She tells us that we cannot with safety think of any thing else but her and is not willing to let us make a tryal She bids us attend only to her quiet and satisfaction and not suffer the mind to disturb her repose at all And the more we humour and gratifie her desires the more still she bemoans her self to move our pitty towards her It concerns us therefore to be careful in observing what good it is that we can then perform without a manifest prejudice to our health and to make provision that it be not neglected by means of the heavy complaints of laziness and sloth Look up unto Jesus as often as you can Tell him in the secrets of your soul that you heartily love him Open your very bosome to him and shew how desirous you are to be more conform'd unto him by this affliction Pray him to come and ransack your heart and to throw out of doors whatsoever is offensive to him Let him know that you had rather not only be sick but dye a thousand times than not be friends with him And so entreat him to take pitty upon you Promise him to do whatsoever he would have you And exhort all others of your acquaintance that they would love and serve him more than you can do And this let me add for your comfort that sometimes he bestows more favours upon sick men in their Beds who can pray in no other manner but by the humiliations and prostrate submissions of their Wills to him than he doth upon some others who spend many hours on their bended knees in that holy exercise And do not despair I beseech you of receiving this mercy though you think your self never so unworthy of it since it costs him no more but only his Will to bestow it With these and such like Discourses the Good man entertained his friend in this sickness for many dayes which put the time into a speedier pace than otherwise it would have pass'd away Though he kept his Bed for some weeks yet the hours did not seem at all tedious to him but rather fled away as fast as he used before to do himself So happy a thing it is to have a partner in our troubles and the assistance of another shoulder beside our own to bear our griefs Good Discourses are like the breath of Heaven which when the burdned Vessel feels she cuts her way through all the waves and never complains of the greatness of her burden Nay they proved to him like the cool Air which refreshes the gasping Traveller in a hot day making his very body feel its leggs the sooner by the delicate touches which they gave unto his Spirit All the Art of his Doctors and an whole Apothecaries shop had not been able to restore his consumed flesh so easily and in such a little space of time as these Soveraign Cordials which distilled from the Good mans lips and were drawn he felt from the very bottome of his heart I have wondred sometimes when I considered the suddenness of his recovery for though he lay some weeks in a feeble condition it was because he did not at first receive these Medicines which so soon as he tasted he became another man and seemed to have a New Essence infused into him It is no new piece of Philosophy but an Axiome older than Hippocrates and which calls Solomon that great Physician its Father Heaviness in the heart of man maketh it stoop Pro. 12.25 but a good word maketh it glad And in another place of his Aphorisms we read that A merry heart doth good to a Medicine Pro. 17.22 but a broken spirit dryeth the bones CAP. XXIX Of the trouble which the Pilgrim was in about some business which had layn neglected during his sickness Of his desires after a contemplative Life Of Solitude The Profit of it especially at the beginning of our Christian course And how they that enjoy it do not find all the satisfaction which they expected in it BEing able therefore by the good inspirations of his friend whose mouth he acknowledged was a Well of Life to go about the house Pro. 10.11 He spent as much time as he was able in praising God instructing the servants and doing good to all his neighbours not neglecting any duty which God or man required of him But so it was that having been long sick there were some necessary businesses in which both he and his friend were concerned that had layn as long as himself without any regard These called very importunately upon him for his attendance and being very weighty and requiring quick dispatch would not cease to sollicite more of his thoughts than he was willing to allow them It will be of no use to tell you what they were but it may be sufficient to let you know that they were of such moment that without a manifest wrong both to himself and others he could by no means put them off nor make them rest contented with a cold and slow management of them And yet from hence his mind took occasion to spring a new doubt which he had not power to remove himself till he had made it known to his Friend though his affairs were not so urgent but that they left him a little leisure to consider of that which might have given him some satisfaction For whensoever a crowd of little occasions throng'd in upon him and would not be denyed his company then he began to frown upon himself because he did not find so much vacancy as his heart desired for private Prayer and Recollection To this the Father said as soon as he had eased himself of the scruple by telling of it that for his part he was very glad to find he had such a vehement love for retired thoughts and secret converse with God and that he sighed so much after it as far more delightful to
they have his Word and hear him speaking to them But they must have a greater communication with them both than this amounts unto They must set their affections on things above they must have their conversation in Heaven they must be like to God and made partakers of a Divine Nature They must be renewed after the Image of him that created them in Wisdom in Righteousness in Purity in Charity and Love so that God may dwell in them and they in him No less Good than this must you design for your Souls You do not act like reasonable Beings till you seek by all means this conformity with your Original from whence you spring Do you doubt at all of what I say Let me send you then to that Philosopher again that you may blush once more to see your selves in greater Ignorance than those whom you reproach with the name of Infidels Diogenes saith he hearing a Sophister once making a vain-glorious declamation L. 3. c. 2. put forth his middle finger and pointed at him saying See there is the man behold him for that is He now you may look upon him and know him if you will At which words there being a great stir and tumult excited he proceeded thus in his speech unto them Do you think that I shew you a man as we do a stone or a log only with the indicatian of my finger No I have no such meaning it is a folly to think of distinguishing a man from his neighbour by such an Instrument But when one hath shown you his opinions that he hath of things when he hath demonstrated to you what are his great concerns then he hath shown him to you as he is a man And from thence now you may take this mans Character whom you have heard speaking to you He hath told you what he thinks and what he most desires I only bid you to mark and observe him Let us see thy opinions and notions also saith the Philosopher who makes application of this story Let us behold thy sentiments that we may be acquainted with thee Discover to us what thou lovest and chusest above all other things Dost thou place thy happiness without thy self Dost thou value all things more than thy self Thou readest the best Philosophers thou studiest Chrysippus and such good Authors and this is all Why then we see very well who thou art Hast thou not discovered to us in what esteem we are to hold thee A poor-spirited Creature angry and furious fearful and distrustful querulous and complaining of every thing proud and conceited of thy self covetous and voluptuous desirous of glory and popular applause accusing all things and never quiet nor at rest These things thou shewest us and by these we are to esteem thee It is not thy Books nor thy Masters and Tutors nor any thing else but such as these that shew the man And what I beseech you can be more proper to be spoken in the ears of most Christian Auditories You read the Bible you have the Books of Christian Learning in your hands Do these denominate you Christian men and women Must we call you the Disciples of our Saviour because you sit before us and hear our Sermons No such matter Shew us O man thy thoughts shew us thy decrees and opinions of things Let us see thy understanding thy will thy choice thy affections that we may know whether thou art a Christian or no. And where shall we see these but in the actions of thy life Covetousness love of pleasure tell us plainly what thou art Pride and study to be admired in the World proclaim thee to us more than all that we see beside If thou wilt give a proof thy Humanity and of thy Christianity too if thou wilt have us believe that thou art not yet turned an unreasonable creature live according to thy reason practise thy Religion preferr thy Soul before thy Body the concernments of an immortal Being before the trivial injoyments of a few moments Do not tell us of thy professions nor of thy belief when we see with our eyes that which better declares thee to us Let thy Soul recover its command again let it be restored to its Empire and Dominion let it rule all the passions and affections of the lower part that we may know thou art a Man and not degenerated into a Beast And now by this time you may well think these Pilgrims were awakened unless they meant to snort eternally And indeed the poor men were so warm'd or rather inflamed with this discourse that they could refrain themselves no longer but burst forth into a passionate weeping first for their fault and then for joy that God had sent them so faithful a Monitor They gave him most hearty thanks for his excellent Sermon as they could not chuse but call it and promised most solemnly to think more of the value of their Souls and thereby excite themselves to use their best diligence to save them We will go said they to the Father of our Spirits we will make it our constant endeavour to reconcile our selves to him We will say Father we have sinned against Heaven and against thee we have sinned against our selves We have wronged our own Souls we are no more worthy to be called thy Sons no not worthy of so much as to be called the Sons of men We have lived like Brutes we have spoiled thy Workmanship and miserably effaced and mangled thine Image But we repent and remember from whence we are faln We are desirous now of nothing so much as to be conformed to thy self O let us be thy servants if we are not worthy to be called thy children Admit us but into the lowest place in thy family to the meanest degree of thy Love And if that be too good a name for us to be stiled thy servants we are willing to be thy Vassals thy Bonds-men any thing that thou wilt have us For we are the Captives of thy Mighty and All-conquering Love and we shall think our selves happy if we may sit in the most inferiour rank of those that shall eternally sing thy Praises CAP. XXXI How the Pilgrim was falling into the contrary Extreme and was prevented by his Director Of the Necessity of Discretion And the assistance which one Vertue gives another How he was troubled that he should have any passions Of the use of them That it is fit for us for us to love our friends passionately and to take great delight in their company IN such ardent effusions as these they a long time unloadned themselves of the passions which they felt in their hearts Which being all vented there still remained a very great one for this Good man which they were not able to utter Very sorry they were that it was not possible for them alwayes to accompany him and when they took their leave it was with so many fresh tears and vows of never forgotting his instructions that he thought
good design through rashness and hast It keeps us from tripping up our own heels by running too fast It keeps us from being tired while it keeps us from taking too long though continued Journeys It keeps us alwayes at our work by keeping us from over-working our selves It makes Religion easie and pleasant by making it free and unconstrain'd It brings Religion so much into our love that it will never fall into our hatred It preserves us from destroying the body while we are labouring to save the soul It feeds the soul without any gluttony and saves it from nauseating spiritual things by providing that it take no surfeit of them It conducts our affairs with more temper and less rumour with more effects and less show It makes us zealous without rashness and excites us to do good to our selves without prejudicing the good of others It quenches the furious heat which affrights the wicked and discourages the weak and upbraids the soberness of those who are strong It shews that it is possible at once to be Religious and yet Wise It adorns the Gospel and is a great grace and ornament to him that wears it It commends Piety to the World and doth not impair it in our selves It gives a lustre to all the Vertues and they borrow their beauty from it And in one word it is at least their Handmaid which must ever wait upon them or else they will dishonour themselves Our young Pilgrim you discern by this time was a man of so much wit that he could not but see the design of this story and think that it had an aim at himself And being very much cooled and refreshed by this charitable breath which the Father had spent upon him he instantly apprehended that he had contrived to give him a divertisement and an instruction both together For sometime he could do nothing else but commend this Vertue till at last he remembred there was some praise due to the Father who had given him now such an instance of it And having rendred him his thanks both for the lesson and the seasonableness of it he assured him that he would never travel without this Discretion about him No more you had need said his Companion for though I called her only the Handmaid of the Vertues yet in truth she seems to be a Mistress among them and to dispose them to their several duties For one Vertue you must know is in need of its neighbour and cannot live alone They must help one another continually or else they will be very lame and defective They must lend to each other a mutual support or else they will be in danger of falling to the ground Meekness must lend its hand to Zeal and Zeal must do as much for it again or else the one will be but Fire and the other will be but Phlegme Seriousness must be beholden to Chearfulness and chearfulness must call to be repayed by it or else we shall be either all earth or nothing but Air. Humility wants a little confidence an holy Faith must be joyned with some Fear an high Generosity and great courage is very imperfect without Modesty and a severe Justice must be acquainted with sweetness and complacence Or if the one should refuse the other this assistance it will feel such a want it self that it will be forced to beg that which it doth deny But what is it I beseech you that pairs and links them thus together and makes them do this mutual service unless it be the Discretion and Judgment which the Holy man recommended to you This superintends over all and issues forth her directions and orders to them which if they be not obeyed they do most hurt where we intended the greatest good and they run to the borders of Vice when we designed the highest degree of Vertue This makes a sweet mixture of Faith in God with fear of our selves of Godly Sorrow with Spiritual Joy of innocence with prudence of lowliness with greatness of mind of heavenly-mindedness with diligence in our Callings of delight in God with a pleasure in our friends and those who are good It teaches us to discourse and not be talkative to be silent but not melancholy to be content with what we have but not be idle to labour but not be impatient to bear a dear affection to our friends but not to their faults to reprove others and not incur a reproof our selves by undue severity towards them Enough said the Pilgrim I see such need of this Vertue that you may be confident I shall never be willing to be without its company But truly I think it must be your Discretion more than mine own that will be my security for I have been you see afflicted with such contrary passions that I am ready to wish that I had none at all There is not one of those that I have about me but it is sometimes such a trouble to me that I should think my self more happy if I were wholly deprived of them They are so strong and violent so boisterous and turbulent that if they do not overtop my reason yet I cannot overcome them without suffering a great tumult and disorder What should we do with things which it is so hard to rule Were it not better to discharge them all since there needs more discretion than I am Master of to keep them The Good man was a little troubled to hear him speak after this sort and askt him with a greater quickness than he was wont to use Would you then be well pleased if I should bring a Sythe and mow off your leggs Had you rather be carried than go upon your feet The poor man was amazed at this question and askt him what he meant My meaning said the Father is plain enough Your passions are nothing else but those motions of your soul whereby you go to that Good or run away from that Evil which your understanding presents to your heart You would be so far from being happy by being deprived of them that I maintain you could not be happy at all without them A Tree would be as happy as you if you had no desire nor love nor hope nor none of the rest of their company And therefore you may as well desire to have no feet or to have a Dead-Palsie smite your loyns and disable you to move as wish to have no passions or to have them so benummed and stupified that you shall not feel them We must not pluck out our eyes for fear they be abused with unworthy spectacles nor stand stock still for fear of falling nor alwayes stay at home because the weather may prove rainy Nay When did you see any excellent Vertue which was not accompanied with a plentiful portion of these Or When was there any love or courage or any such like thing in a noble degree but you might discern it edged with no small passionateness of spirit And do not think that our passions
are of little use for it is plain they are good for more purposes than one There is at least a double end for which they serve They first incite and dispose the Soul to seek those things which are good and necessary for us and then secondly they fortifie and conserve us in this disposition and make us to persist in our inclinations to those things which are profitable for us the thoughts of which else might easily be blotted out They stir you up and bring you to that good which objects it self to your mind and then they impress it there and cause it to stay with your Soul For you cannot but observe that those things which move you with any passion when you see or think of them do stick longest in your mind and those with which you are not affected are but little remembred All your business then is and in that you must bestow some pains to get better eyes to guide you in your goings and not to endeavour that you may not stir at all You must study I mean to understand the true difference between good and evil to be able to judge what is fit for you and what not what good can certainly be attained and what evil avoided and what is quite without the limits of our power and then how is it blameable if you be carried with a great passion to the one and from the other Do not think all things to be evil which the World calls by that name nor admire the goodness of any thing above its price nor follow that zealously which you are in doubt whether or no it can be attained and then your passions will be so far from being your Masters that in fear of that you will not refrain to use their Service And if you should chance to be surprised with a fancy of some evil or good before you can have liberty to discourse the true nature of it and your passions hereby become very strong and are raised to a greater height than you would have them there is no reason to be troubled for none can prevent these sudden assaults nor can they be quell'd without some scuffle within If you can conquer you have well acquitted your self And that will be attended with those triumphs which will more than recompence the trouble of those furious and rebellious commotions You will not think those things bad without which there could not be such a brave and noble thing as Victory is Be content then I beseech you to be of the race of Adam and do not affect some higher Original Go not about to destroy one half of your self by labouring to be free from all passion For they that undertake this as hath been well said by those before us instead of making a good Man do only raise a Statue In order to make a man wise and live in peace they turn him into a dead and insensible Image These kind of Images say they are more suitable for the ornaments of the Porch then for the uses of life And if we be not blind we may discern between hardness and softness a middle temperament which is called solidity and firmness The Pilgrim was so much pleased with these words that he could scarce forbear to hugg him when they were ended And his passions having found such a defendor to take their part were ready to serve themselves but too much of this friendly discourse in their behalf I love you infinitely said he clasping about his neck or to speak more moderately I love you above all earthly things There is no Musick can be so charming to me as your words They can both appease my raging humours and excite me out of my dull and phlegmatick inclinations You are my Intelligence my Tutelar Angel the good Genius of my soul without whom I think I should either have no Passions or Nothing else Go on I beseech you to oblige me and to make me if it be possible more in love with you Be not weary of the charge you have undertaken and do not despair neither but in your company I may learn more discretion to govern those passions which I see must not be rooted out When he had vented this passion of love as much as he pleased and was capable to attend to some new discourse the Father thought it not unseasonable to ask him if he did not begin already to repent of all those embraces which he had bestowed upon him Nay do not wonder pursued he at this demand for I do not intend to question the greatness of your love but by what I have observed I believe you may be afraid that it ought not to be so great I have long taken notice that you are so scrupulous as not to dare to trust your own soul nor rely upon the credit of your severest reason Though you think it is impossible but that there should be such motions as you feel and know your self to be of such a complexion that if you will love at all it must be with a passionateness and fervency of affection yet upon the next ebullition as I may call it in your soul you are ready to condemn your self and to quit those Maxims of reason which you took to be infallible I know my friend that there is in this a pardonable or rather commendable niceness of soul a delicacy and tenderness of conscience which would not in the least offend God but it must be confessed that there is something of weakness and unsetledness of mind in it also which dare not adhere to its own Conclusions We are not to let a sudden fancy shake that which is so well and rationally established Or rather we are to ponder those things so long and to settle our selves so strongly in our reasons which are the ballast of our souls that we shall never desert them upon the pretence of any pious fears lest we should displease God To suffer our selves to love any person that is amiable very much or put any such like case is it justifiable or is it not If not away with all these Passions and dig them up But if you will have them remain be not angry that they grow and blossome and bring forth fruit and produce it in abundance And a little the more to confirm your mind let me fay something to you of that tenderness of affection which I observe in you towards a vertuous friend that inclination which you have to be with him and especially of that pleasantness and mirth you are apt to yield unto in the company of those you love You think perhaps that this is too much and that you take too great a liberty of pleasing your self But I beseech you did you ever observe any great vertue in those cold creatures or rather in those morose and austere natures who judge it a crime to love their friends with any passion to feel a joy in their approach to talk pleasantly in their company and to use
more than two or three are able but by Friends we may talk with all and be able to effect innumerable things for they will be sure to speak and do for us all that which is conducible to our good But that which is most incredible is that when a man hath friends he may do many things at the same time and consult about divers affairs at once and see and hear nay more then that he may be in many places at the same moment His pleasures are multiplied as he multiplies his friends for all that delights them touches him with a sense of joy as much as what concerns himself If he give any thing to them it rejoyces him as much as if he had gained a great deal of Wealth If he receive any thing it rejoyces him too because his friends are pleased Though he be very fond of his kindred yet he thinks friendship a greater good then Consanguinity for without any kindred between men this is a strict and profitable relation but without this there is no comfort at all in the greatest nearness of blood And therefore we may well conclude with our Wise man that this is the greatest treasure the strongest defence an invaluable Jewel the very Balsome and comfort and only preserver of our life A man is scarce himself till he have found a friend or at least he is but half a man For as another wise man saith Nuptial love produces men but it is friendly love which gives them perfection It may well be called the salt and seasoning of our Pilgrimage Without this life it self would be unsavoury and all the pleasures of it insipid It is the most agreeable pleasure that a person of Vertue can enjoy It is an holy chaste and innocent pleasure a Voluptuousness which riseth higher then sense and seeks the superiour part It acts on the mind without causing it to suffer a change It moves it with so much sweetness that it stirs not out of its seat Or it ravishes it from it self only to remove it to a better place When he had done they all agreed he did illustrate his Author as much as he had done the Son of Sirach For said they we have read now this Writer by the benefit of your eyes and you have so happily transported us out of our selves that we find indeed we are better then where we were before But yet added another that Wise man you spoke of gives us this advice in the same place If thou wouldst get a friend prove him first and be not hasty to credit him For some man is a friend for his own occasion and will not abide in the day of trouble Some friends will be thy companions at thy table but in the time of affliction they will not continue In thy prosperity they will be as thy self and will be bold over thy servants But if thou be brought low they will be against thee or hide themselves from thee Separate thy self from thine enemies and take heed of thy friends How therefore shall we know the faithful friend whom he so much praises or by what Marks shall we distinguish him from these pretenders I would be loath to stay till the day of trouble before I know these counterfeit Lovers and would be glad to impart my joyes to one that deserves them It is a very necessary Question said a Third and therefore with your consent I will undertake his Character or at least his description You shall not only have our leave said a fourth in the name of the rest but our thanks which we give you beforehand for so good an offer The world is full of false hearted friends Towns and Kingdoms are made up of these honest kind of Cheats as one whom you know is wont to call them Into whatsoever place you come you will find very little of that which you have brought hither I mean affection without interest fidelity without stain with all the goodness and freedome of the Age of Innocence There are many saith he that had rather lose an hundred Friends then so many Crowns They value them no more then they do men in Turky that are to be sold And I know some that would easily forgoe their most dear and faithful Intimates at the rate of ten or twenty pound a piece Men they are if we honour them not too much with that name who as the Wise Man you spoke of suggests to us come but to drink and return back again when the Bottles are empty And therefore it will oblige us very much if you will be at the pains to let us know the qualities of a man that is fit to be admitted into our Society A Friend then replyed he that is worthy of our bosome love is a person that is equally good and intelligent That can neither deceive nor easily be deceived that can seldome do ill out of weakness and never out of design He is one that will serve you without Vanity but with all imaginable zeal without any interest but with the exactest care and diligence That will engage himself most passionately in your defence when you are absent or unfortunate or dead That will follow you with his love to the other World and serve those when you are dead whom you would have served if you had been alive He is one that never conceals his own secret from you nor reveals yours to others That will freely reprove you and never back-bite other men That can see your faults and yet easily pardon them And that as readily acknowledges merit as he espies and pardons faults That cannot tell how to do any thing without your knowledge unless it be a good turn That would have you see all he doth except the friendly offices which he is every where rendring to you That loves to entertain you with pleasant discourse but howsoever with wholesome and profitable That will follow you to all dangers though to no sins That can vary perhaps with your humour but not with your fortune That can make you a feast where there is no good chear besides himself That can serve as sauce to excite your appetite and save you the charge of Wine to exhilarate your spirits That will divert you without the prejudice or offence of any body else That will make you more sensible of his tenderness by small things then others can do by greater services He is one that thinks all the praises of others importune if you complain To whom even his own merit seems odious if it receive not your approbation One that loves no pleasure so much as complacence to you To whom all places are alike so you be not absent He can deny himself any thing and his friend nothing He can bear himself company in Solitude but is never weary of the company of those he loves He hath a sense of honour equal to his sense of love He hath no vulgar thoughts but yet stoops to the most vulgar actions for the
thought to find every thing to his desire The difficulties of his Journey seemed now to be overcome and every step he saw would bring him to a new pleasure There was nothing to be done but what promised to gratifie him with repeated joyes and to reward his labours with abundance of content in the doing of it And there was nothing to be suffered which threatned any harm but seemed to have lost it prickles and thorns and to court men into its embraces Now he thought he should be so happy as to live more above and hold a constant communication with Heaven He expected to surmount the clouds wherein he had been wrapped and to live in a purer light and enjoy a greater serenity of mind Now he hoped to pass his time in sublimer Meditations in a steadier Faith in a more ardent Love in more comfortable Expectations in quicker tasts of the good things to come and so in more perfect Peace and Joy in the Holy Ghost In short he discovered on all sides both present satisfactions and future hopes with larger Assurances also that they would not make him ashamed Being thus then spurred by the admonitions of his Friend and the invitations of the Way on he went again together with the happy Companion of his Travels sometimes casting his eye upon Jerusalem and sometimes upon his Way which now became more easie and more delightful to him than ever before But having descended a little from the Head of that lofty Hill where they had stayed thus long the young Pilgrim observed that he had lost that fair sight of Jerusalem which he so much admired At which he began to be surprised with a little quivering and coldness in his Body till his Old Comforter told him that this ought to be the cause of no troublesome thoughts For the whole way said he to that place consists much of Hills and Dales and as now you are going down from the heights wherein you have been so shall you advance again in due time and be presented not only with a fresh but with a fairer sight of it He told him also how impossible it was for any Traveller to remain long upon those Mountains where the Air is so quick and piercing that it would make them quit their earthly Mansions And withall he discoursed of the advantage of those Vallies and shewed him the Silver Brooks full of the Waters of Life which ran in those humble places together with all the pretty flowers wherewith the verdant banks of those streams were crowned In fine he represented to him that they were so far from descending now into any dismall shades that they were but going to ease their minds with a little variety in these cool levels which were almost spent and exhaled by so long a fight of Jerusalem in those superiour Regions Not omitting also to let him know that it was not so impossible as he imagined to meet with something of it in those low Meadows into which they were now entring which spread so goodly a Carpet for their feet to tread upon that the Hill which they had left seemed to bow its Head to look upon the richness of it And thereupon he shewed him how those Crystal Waters which he heard murmuring and inviting his thirst to quench it self in their streams came down from a Spring on the brow of that Mountain where they had lately been And can you believe said he that any thing can flow from thence which brings no tydings with it from Jerusalem Tast and see if their rellish be not such as tells you from whence they come and makes this place happy which flows with such contentment Believe not me but your self if it be not too much for you to stoop down and drink that these Vallies are watred from above and receive at second hand what the more rising ground at the first enjoyes The Young man heard him very obediently and soon satisfied himself in the truth of what he said by tasting of the Waters which had a strong tincture of Jerusalem For the Rayes that come from it and beat continually upon that aspiring Hill had indued the whole body of it with some of their Vertue which might constantly be communicated to the neighbouring though lower places He was immediately inspired I mean with a great heat of Divine Love in which he found not a little of Heaven He saw that Meditation Prayer and such like holy imployments do but dispose the will to acts of Charity and doing good to all according as God hath done to us The clearer sight he perceived that any one hath of the Glory to come the more powerfully is his heart touched with a fervent desire and endeavour to be thus imployed This is the natural issue of a right belief of what Christ hath promised There is nothing so naturally flows from it when raised to its highest pitch as and easiness and pleasure in doing good than which nothing can come nearer to the life of them that dwell above He saw now that Jerusalem might be found in the houses of the sick in Hospitals and the meanest places where Humility and Charity can find themselves any work If he met with a poor Stranger that moved his compassion it was as if he had met with an Angel If any differences came in his way which he could compose it was as if Jesus had spoken peace unto him When the Orphans and Widows gave him their Blessing it was as if he had received one from Heaven And all this gave him the greater satisfaction because he was afraid he should have met with it no where else save only on such Mountains as they had newly left But yet I must not forget to tell you that there was none for whom he felt such a particular kindness as this person who had so charitably conducted him and made every condition so pleasing to him He had no sooner drunk off one Cup of the waters named and began some actions of Charity to others but he felt himself all over in a flame of love to him Whatsoever he did the end of it still was to think how much he was beholden to his love which had directed him to this most happy life of doing good One would have thought by the effects that it had been such a potion as they call a Philtrum which hath a power it s said to fascinate Souls and draw them by a sweet inchantment to that party who administers it to them And to tell you the very truth had not the wisdom of his Friend again prevented it this had proved one of the sorest temptations which he had hitherto encountred notwithstanding all the good counsel wherewith with he had been armed For as he was wont to report of himself his heart was so much glewed to this Friend of his that sometimes he could not think of Jesus or Jerusalem meerly for thinking of him He thought it was very sad that any one should
be too greedy of so innocent a pleasure but yet he fancied sometimes that he was and that nothing else pleased him but only the society of this person Who now therefore thought himself concerned to have a more then ordinary care of his Patient because he had made him sick or at least been an occasion of his present disease And so quick he was in his Applications that it could scarce be called by that name but by the Vertue of his remedies was rather turned into a cure of other distempers which had some root within him It is not strange said the Old man that I should creep so far into your heart if you do but consider how wide we open our breasts to those things which are of great use and advantage to us There was no other cause but this that made men Deifie certain Creatures which they found to be very high benefactors unto them Have you never heard any body call the Sun a Visible God And what was it I beseech you that procured him so many adorers but the sense that men had of the benefit of his fires which enamoured them of his beauty and inflamed their love to the height of Devotion to him Wonder not then at your self that you perceive such a fervour in your soul to me your poor friend whom you esteem though alas unworthy of such a name to be no less then your Treasure This will justifie an high degree of affection towards me And there is no danger I 'le warrant you of proving an Idolatrous Lover if you will but let me shew you how easily you may make me become what you call me and improve this Affection so as to be a very great gainer by it But first I must reveal to you this secret which you have not hitherto discovered that of this affection I my self have a larger share then yet hath appeared yea to your own person I have not been so cold as you may perhaps imagine And yet I am so far from thinking my self the worse for what I feel of it that I take my self to be much the better and would not for all the world have a less portion of it then I perceive you find in your own heart Now that you may not think I make use of Rhetoricall figures and launch out a great deal beyond the truth let me beg so much of your patience who as you confess have imployed much of mine till I relate what benefit I have found by loving you For then I hope you will think it possible for your self to reap the same and not be troubled for the excess of love you bear to me since thereby you receive no greater hurt then to become capable of enjoying a more exceeding advantage And God being the Chiefest Good the highest object of our Understandings the satisfaction of our Wills the Centre of all rational desires what greater commendation can there be of Friendship than that it is apt to bring our Souls into a fuller possession of this Beeing who is the cause of all other and of all happiness Will you not confess that it is a thing of great Use and great Value which shall indear him unto you who is of more use and worth then the Sun or all the World Now if you can give any credit to me you may be assured that my Friendship with you hath taught me not only that God is Love but what it is to love God better then any thing else perhaps could have done And what is this Love but as you have often heard the whole Duty of man all that God requires of us that we may enjoy eternal felicity with him This if I can demonstrate I suppose you will no longer complain of an excess of this excellent affection which may so easily be converted without much Art or contrivance into one so Divine that that God himself will love it very much And if you would know by what Chymistry it was that I turned this Baser affection as you are apt to call it into that which is so noble and sublime it will be a matter of no difficulty to make you understand it for there was no longer operation in it then this I used to observe what it was that my love caused me to do to you and that I concluded was farr more due to God And so it taught me 1. To think often of him and to keep him in Mind for this I found a necessary effect of the Friendship I have with you If there be something in your Idea that is grateful to me which makes me to hugg it so much and carry it about with me then there must needs be a great deal more in that Idea I have of God who ought therefore ever to bear me company and to go along with me as my Joy where ever it be that my occasions lead me And so 2. I learnt by loving you to take a delight in conversing with him and to embrace or rather seek all opportunities of frequenting his company And then 3. For I must not stay to enlarge these things into long discourses but leave that for your work I was instructed hereby to desire his acquaintance more to thirst after an intimate familiarity with him and to be more perfectly united to him 4. To be highly pleased also in him was another fruit of this Amity To rest so satisfied in his enjoyment as to want nothing to compleat my contentment And 5. To study withal how to be pleasing to him or rather to be able without any study by a meer likeness of Nature to do all things agreeably to his mind For I must take so much liberty by the way as to tell you that there is no anxious labour in love nor any carefulness to find what is grateful to our Beloved but we have a natural inclination to do just as they would have us From hence 6. I proceeded to like well of whatsoever He doth and to be pleased with all his Providences For we alwayes feel our selves inclined to find no fault with our Friends to interpret every thing to the best sense and rather to excuse that which is ill then think that they can do it And 7. To receive all his kindnesses with a singularly great gratitude as proceeding only from the goodness of his own nature and not from any desert of mine 8. To keep in Memory also his Benefits and to think of them as I would of the tokens of your love which I could not but look upon when I did not see you And 9. as for his Holy word which one of the Antient Guides used to call the Epistle of God to man I cannot but read it as I do your Letters with a great deal of pleasure and transport And 10. Likewise I read it over and overagain as I am wont to do your Letters not being content with a single pleasure not thinking that I can espy all your affection at once that breathes
there And 11. Do you think that I can live and not long to hear from him or that I can be so patient as not to desire to see him No I am ever saying as the holy Psalmist O when wilt thou come unto me You have taught me to contrive all wayes that I may enjoy him and to think my self more happy in it then all the world can make me And 12. then I cannot but contrive how I may most serve him and be glad of any occasion which is offered of so doing For you may be confident I should suspect my love if it did not excite me to render you all the services that are in my power and make me study to be able to do that which is now out of the compass of it And 13. another thing for which I stand indebted to your love is that I am taught thereby to be very tender of his Honour and to be troubled that any body should speak evil of him or do any thing against him Nay 14. Since you have given me leave to love you I find that I am desirous every Body should love him that is so amiable in my eyes just as I wish that you may be acceptable to all and never meet with any unkindness 15. I have learnt also to consult and advise with him upon all occasions and to open as it were my very Heart to him 16. And then to be confident of his help and to expect undoubtedly to receive it whensoever I have occasion for it To which 17. if I should not add that I have learnt never to be weary of his Company but still to take a fresh delight in it I should much forget my self for that is a most sensible effect of your Friendship And 18. so is this To be loath to part with it and to hold him so fast as not to be willing to let him go As also 19. To be impatient of his absence at least not to be so well any where else as I am with him And 20. in fine To long ever to be with him and to be put into such a condition that I may never have the trouble of parting with his company which alas in this world I am forced too oft to suffer And you need not wonder that I have learnt this last Lesson by our Friendship for if you and I could now leave these pleasant Plains wherein we are and strip our selves of this flesh I formy part would willingly consent unto it if I had assurance but of this happiness that I should take you by the hand and we should wander up and down in the Air together I had almost forgot to tell you another happy fruit of this passion and that is when I desire any thing of him to leave it to his choice and disposition knowing that his wise Love will do that for me which is most requisite and conducing to my welfare Nay more then this I feel such an inclination to you that I cannot but be ashamed if I am not carried with such a Natural affection unto God I did not begg of my Will to love you for I was surprised at first sight with that affection and felt such a propension to you as the Iron doth to the Loadstone which cannot chuse but be ravished and attracted by it From which you may be confident that now it is out of my Power to forbear to love you and that it is not a business to be referred to choice but which Nature commands which will not be disobeyed or controuled But then me thinks my Soul cannot be so dull finding it self thus disposed to you as to stay to ask it self a reason why it should love God or whether it will love or no. I am forced to love him and carried to him by such a strong inclination as hath no Cause but only Nature At least this state I am reaching after and it seems very unhandsome that I should be ever telling my self that there is this and that cause why I should love God for I would be so impressed by him that out of an innate tendency of mind I might run to him or rather might still be with him and have him continually before mine eyes I have heard it I remember affirmed by some that this Love of Inclination comes only from a Reminiscence or calling to mind such things as have been before Such souls say they have been acquainted in some other World and they do not now commence a new love but only continue an old And truly if I might judge of the truth of what they say by the love I find to God me-thinks they are not without the countenance of some reason For my soul seems but to renew an antient acquaintance with him My love to him is so natural and easie that it is just as if once we knew one another before It doth not seem to be the birth of an affection which was not but only the awakening of that which lay asleep For there are no pangs no difficulty in bringing forth this Love but we open our eyes and see that glorious object which our Souls would have and cannot but fasten themselves upon And if I should add an heap of observations to these of another sort and show you how hereby we come to be perswaded of Gods Love to us and to have such high thoughts of it as to believe he is ready to grant us any thing that we ask to pass by our faults to come and visit us to send his servants the Angels to see us and wait upon us c. and all because he is our Friend you would see a further use of this divine affection and be convinced that we cannot but live uncomfortably without it And indeed if any one should think that it is put into our Souls for so poor an End as to tickle us with a little pleasure in civil conversation and to help us to pass away the time more merrily without any regard to these Heavenly uses it would be as absurd a conceit as to imagine the Sun was made for no other purpose but to colour the cheeks of our Apples and enlarge the Sphaere of our Cabbages No nature will not let us depress so far this darling of hers to which she is inclined above all other things That must needs be implanted by the hand of God to which all men have a propensity and since it is very strong overweighing all other inclinations we must needs think that it was planted in them to do them some great benefit and to be the instrument above all other things of their happiness Now what is there to which we have a more imbred inclination then to love and to desire to be beloved There is no man but hates to be alone and can as little indure to be with those for whom he hath no love For still he is alone if that be not there A crowd is not company as a Wise man
sayes and Faces are but a Gallery of Pictures and Talk but a Tinkling Cymbal where there is no love Nay so natural is this to us and withall so sweet that I believe there is no man in the World who for all the wealth in it would be bound to love no body and to be beloved of none He was going on to some further discourses on this subject when the other cryed out Hold do not wholly impoverish this argument but leave something for me to say who am abundantly satisfied that there is nothing comparable to this which hath been the cause of my trouble I will never blame my self more for exceeding too much in this sort of love I plainly see that Mediocrity which every where else is counted a Vertue doth here become a Vice I am more then converted by your excellent discourse I must turn Proselyte to him who said That he would have the Affection of Friends appear rather a Passion then a Vertue That Friendship hath nothing more excellent in it then excess and that it doth rather offend in the Moderation then in its Violence and extremity And here he began to invent all the Praises he could of Friendship which he called The top and perfection of Love the Soul of the World the Spirit of Nature the bond of Society the marriage and happy union of agreeing minds the life and joy of mankind the relief of our sorrows the Physitian of all our secret griefs our Buckler in all assaults our Oracle in our doubts the Governor and Tutor of a prosperous condition the Comforter of a declining fortune without which the greatest happiness would be irksome to us and in whose company the greatest affliction cannot make us miserable He reflected also very happily on this that it was one of the last things that Jesus himself did in this world to make a Friendship between two great persons his blessed Mother and his beloved Disciple These he remembred our Lord would have to live together like Mother and Son which he thought imported such a dearness between them as would justifie the height of his affection And then he cryed out Thou O Divine Love art the nature of God the life of Angels the employment of Heaven By knowing thee I know what it is that I owe to God and I now also know Jerusalem better where they exercise the Noblest Friendships I will never fear thee any more for I see thou wilt secure my duty to God and it will be strange if my Neighbours be not better for thee who art alwayes instigating me to do good What though I be chained more to one person then another you need not think O sons of men that I shall thereby become less charitable to you For my love finding here a continual employment and constant exercise for it self I am the more disposed and ready when occasion serves to express it to you all My retirements cannot work its decay but in the greatest privacy this friendship keeps any rust from growing over it and preserves it pure and bright for the use of others too I love you all wheresoever you dwell on the face of the whole earth I stretch out my hands to you from one Pole to the other wishing I could do you good And though I cannot reach you every one yet my love gives me the comfort of this assurance that God is with you who as he hath a greater love so a greater ability to help you all But his Guide who was better acquainted with his duty then himself thought it best to bring him out of this Rapture because he saw that he would immerse himself too far in the pleasure of this contemplation and likewise thought it was not safe to gratifie themselves with too much of this Honey at once He prayed him therefore to lay aside this discourse a while and to divert himself with the observation of some of those flowers and plants wherewith they saw the earth strewed as they went along For sure said he these were not made for us to tread upon nor only to feed our eyes with their grateful Variety or to bring a sweet odor to our Noses but there is a more internal beauty in them for our minds to prey upon did we but let them penetrate beyond the surface of these things into their hidden properties You are a Christian it is confessed but doth that make you cease to be a Man You read the Gospel of our Saviour but must that give a discharge to all our rational inquiries into the Book of Nature Doth the new Creation intend to destroy the old Or because we behold God in the face of Christ must we look upon him no where else No such matter there is a more antient obligation upon you to study the Works of God of which you ought to quit your self while you study his Word It is an honour to the School of Christ when his Disciples are skill'd in all Wisdom He is such a Master as would not have us know other things the less but the more by knowing him And so they began to pry into many curiosities which several of the Creatures they met withall presented to them not without a great astonishment at that infinite understanding that was the Contriver of them And having once tasted of this kind of Learning he often wished that it was in his power to understand more of his own Body of the motions of the Sun Moon and other Stars with many things besides in this great Fabrick wherein he knew God had hid great treasures of Wisdom and ingraven a fair Image of himself Yea he conceived the whole World sometimes a great Temple and himself one of the Priests that God had placed therein to offer up the Praises of all the Creatures and acknowledge his Wisdom his Power his Goodness which are conspicuous in the frame of them And though he could acquire but a very small knowledge of some of them yet it was a great pleasure to see that there were many more intelligent Priests then himself and more acquainted with Natures Mysteries who rendred to God continually better Praises and called upon all his works in all places of his Dominion to bless his Holy name CAP. XXXVII How after this the Pilgrim fell into a conceit that he did not profit in Vertue and how his Guide rid him of it That we must not make too much haste to perfection but go leisurely in our way How afterward he feared that he should never hold out to the end of his journey Of the confident zeal which some men are possessed withall A beginning of a new discourse about Faith AND now would you think after he had gone thus farr that he should be troubled with such an odd fancy as this That he did not profit at all in Vertue Yet so it was that one day he seriously told his Friend He could not perceive that he had done any thing worthy of himself or
there any reason to fear drowning after he had walked half a furlong or to imagine it would not bear him up the next half as well as it had done the former none at all sure The winds that blew and the rough waves that began to lift up themselves were no less subject to that power which upheld him then the smooth and quiet surface of the Sea It was as easie to walk upon a Billow as upon the still water The blustering wind had no more power there then the silent Aire Whence then proceeded this change that the man who lately trampled upon the Sea and gloried over the deep doth now feel himself slip into the bosome of it and is in danger to be swallowed up by it The firm ground which he thought was under him is gone and he is left to the mercy of the angry waves Was not the change within before his feet felt any Did not a violent fear lay hold upon him and did he not let go his hold of the hand which before sustained him Yes this was the business If his Faith had been as strong as once it was his condition had been as safe in the midst of the storm as before it was in the calm When this Anchor broke the waters began to suck him in They challenged him then for their proper goods because his Faith was in a manner already shipwrackt But did his Gratious Master so part with him Would he lose a servant because he was weak and wanted confidence in him Or did he delay to help him and only hold him up by the chin when all his body was in the deep No when he cryed for relief and beseeched to be saved he instantly put forth his hand caught hold of him and rescued him from the jaws of death He only chides him because he doubted but neither lets him sink into the belly of the waters nor stayes his succours till he was in greater need of them He straightway lends him more power and chuses rather to incourage a little Faith then let him perish because he had no more Now this story methinks bears a great resemblance with that condition wherein you and many more besides have been We have a great mind to go to Jesus and for that end to walk here in the World as he walked But it is very much that we who are so earthly and have such ponderous affections to things here below should be able to tread them under our feet and keep our selves above the soft pleasures of the flesh into which we are apt to sink This seems no less a wonder then it was for a body of earth to walk upon the face of the Sea which uses to swallow down such heavy things that come into it Whence is it I pray that we have this strength and can lift up our selves above our natural propensions to lead the life of God Is it from our own Vertue or rather must we not acknowledge that we receive it from that voice which saith to us as unto that Apostle of our Lord Come This sure is the cause to which it must be ascribed And it cannot be of less efficacy afterward then it was at the first but when he still saith Follow me he gives a greater power and force unto us so to do But how comes it about then that you and others begin sometimes to sink or at least to imagine that you are falling into the World and that the sensual life will at last draw you into its embraces again Truly there is the same cause of it that there was in him and that is Diffidence You forget your self and distrust God and that works a decay of the Vertue and ability that was in your heart You regard more the winds and the waves the difficulties and temptations that you are incompassed withall then the power and the love of Jesus which attends upon you and so you begin first to fear and then to fall Yet behold what a loving and kind Master you serve He doth not take this so ill at your hands as to let you quite go and fall still lower and lower into the water untill you be drown'd But if you look earnestly upon him and call to him and intreat him to take pitty upon you and not to leave you he gives you his hand presently and sets you in safety Though now you have been very distrustful of his goodness and have fainted in your mind as if he would not regard you yet his tenderness is so great that he bids me assure you he will not forsake you nor fail to support and help your feeble soul Only in his name I must a little chide you and give you a gentle reproof in his own words saying O thou of little faith wherefore didst thou doubt I say no more because I see you are sorrowful and hope you will give me no more the like trouble Indeed replyed the Pilgrim I deserve a more severe reprehension and you deal too favourably with me when you give me so mild a rebuke But I suppose you use me thus tenderly that I may be sensible of the gratious nature of our Lord who hath compassion on our weakness and is loath to discourage those by any sharpness of his who are too apt to invent over many discouragements to themselves And truly I am so apprehensive of his lenity and behold also so great a portion of it in your self that were it not upon that account I should again be apt to stand in fear of creating not only you but him a greater trouble then you are able to bear I am you see very foolish alwayes complaining and exercising your patience I have so many scruples and little fears am so unconstant and wavering in my thoughts so frequently sick and out of order so forgetful also of your counsels that perhaps by this time you begin to reflect and consider how great a burden you have drawn upon your self by undertaking the charge of me And I pray tell me sincerely whether you are not a little weary of me and do not wish your self rid of such an impediment for I can scarce call my self your Friend any longer but your Trouble or your Burden Tell me I say is not this a fitter name for me then any else And can you find in your heart to own that sweet relation to him any more who hath made himself so unpleasing on all occasions and nothing but disquieted your happy repose I doubt if you could see my heart and behold what a seed of new troubles and doubts lodges there you would tell me plainly that you shall never enjoy your self till you be divorced from me You surprise me strangely said the Good old man and did I not consider that you have suspected the kindness of God himself I should be so amazed at this alteration in you as to lose the use of words and not know what to say to you Little did I think that
as much nobleness in the handsome acknowledgement of a kindness as there is in the conferring of that which deserves such acknowledgement But besides all this let me ask you a Question for I am resolved to ferret this scruple out of the bottom of your heart should you not love me unless I had done you benefits Tell me the truth is there any great dearness think you created in peoples hearts towards each other by this means For my part I have often found the observation true that the remembrance of benefits wears out of mens minds as grief doth out of the heart of afflicted persons from which every moment steals a part Time hath power over the one as well as the other and it diminishes the affection which is the fruit of favours as it doth the sorrow which is produced by losses and calamities Nay so little power have benefits to make a friend that they sometimes make a foe There are some men the more they owe the more they hate A little debt makes a man a debtor but a great one makes him an enemy What is it then that produces a durable Friendship Nothing sure but worth and desert together with the agreeableness of a person to our humour and his resemblance to our disposition The impression which these make can never be blotted out Time which wipes away the remembrance of benefits can never efface the sense of worth and merit We alwayes carry in our minds the amiable perfections and accomplished qualities of worthy persons We alwayes think of those who have touched our inclinations by their agreeable nature And I appeal to you whether you could refuse me your Love though you were not so much beholden to me as you now acknowledge And whether all the kindnesses in the world would produce a Friendship with me if you saw not something else to woe your affection No no my Friend it is Gratitude not Friendship which is the proper effect of benefits They ought to dispose us to suitable returns and an hearty acknowledgement but they cannot oblige us to entertain him for a Friend who is bountiful toward us They may possibly make our Friendship grow but they cannot beget it They may give it some nourishment but they cannot produce and bring it forth It depends upon an higher cause it owes its Original to some nobler thing to that from whence all benefits and good offices ought to come I mean a great love and a sincere affection which if deserts be not wanting is more powerful to move than all the gifts in the world and is able without them all to tye us fast to a worthy person Be so just then to your self and to me as to think that I am your Friend though you do not bestow those benefits on me which you desire since they can serve only as I said to make me thankful but not your Friend I esteem you very highly for your self and upon the account of your own proper worth which I am sure doth put me into the next disposition to be your Friend And since you have added to your own desert a very great Love to me that cannot but compleat it and make me perfectly yours This Love alone hath been thought sufficient to make a Friend and indeed is more powerful than any benefits According to that of Hecaton Wouldst thou know how to get a Friend I will shew thee and thou shalt use neither Medicament Herb or Inchantment to produce the affection thou desirest If thou wilt be beloved Love When Vertue then and it have made a league and shews it self in a subject whose qualities also are worthy to be embraced its force must needs be irresistible and leave us no power to withstand its desires The poor Pilgrim remained astonished a while at the kindness of this discourse And finding himself overwhelmed with the weight of such Love was fain to strive very much to recover a power of making this short reply unto it I am utterly ignorant said he what worth it is that you ascribe to me which hath brought me into your good esteem and obtained me the noble title of your Friend I see that I please you but I know not what it is that should give you that pleasure I find my self very happy but what hath advanced me to this felicity I cannot define And truly since it is your will to have me so I will not be too busie and curious in examining the causes of my good fortune nor will I seek to lessen my worth lest in so doing I should upbraid you with a bad foundation of your Love No I will rather think I am worth something than render your judgement nothing worth I will think of my self as you would have me that you may not seem to be mistaken There is nothing else can make me of any value unless it be that I had the wit to judge of the deservings of such a person as your self It is a mark they say of some sufficiency to be able to discern an able person from a flashy wit It is a note I have heard of great wisdom to chuse an excellent Friend By this I am told a man is known to others and I have little else whereby to know my self This is the chiefest thing that makes me see I am not so unfortunate as I thought I perceive I am worthy of some esteem because I had the judgement to set such an esteem upon your self For I must needs confess that though your favours could have imposed a greater necessity upon me of loving than you will allow yet I feel that I am not beholden to them for my Inclination to love you That is something more antient than any benefits you can bestow and depends only on your own merits And let it not be judged an amplification to say that they are so great that they will not leave it to my choice either whether I will love you or no or how much I will love you but they constrain me to love you as much as I can It is a constraint indeed to which I am very willing there being no violence offered but of what my own judgement is the cause yet it is irresistable and I can never be of any other mind nor have a will to dispose of my affections otherwayes Nay I cannot for my life but think that your favours are a part of your deserts and that there is something peculiar in them to merit mine affection They flow purely from your own goodness and owe not themselves so much as to my entreaties You have not put me to the trouble of begging your kindnesses but they ran to me of their own accord I did but ask and you were pleased to open your heart and make me a liberal gift I did but shew my need and you instantly inriched me with your self And ever since I have not had so great a care to conceal my griefs as you have taken to find them out Nor have you suffered my troubles to speak before you saw them in my looks All your favours likewise have flowed so freely from you that there was no hope they should return again They have brought me a great deal of happiness but could not be thought to come to fetch any to him that sent them This adds exceeding much to the esteem I have conceived for you This will ever make me to propound you as the pattern of an excellent Friend And if I were now to dye it would be one of the last words I should speak to those that love me Remember that those will be your worst enemies not to whom you have done evil but who have done evil to you and those will be your best Friends not to whom you have done good but who have done good to you The End