Actions of Men and it is so pure and excellent that her greatest Enemies have been forc'd to acknowledge it to be so that they might be the less suspected when they blame her in other things XI This Account of the Essentials of Religion I have given in her own Words she having summ'd them up in several Parts of her Writings sometimes under fewer Heads and sometimes under more tho' as to their Substance they are still the same And all her Writings have no other Tendency but to awaken in Mens Hearts a Sense of those Divine Truths and to convince them how far they are from them in their Practice She aims at nothing but to perswade Men that they cannot be saved without the Love of God that their corrupt Nature now leads them only to love themselves and the Creatures which is inconsistent with the Love of God that they cannot return to it without denying and mortifying this corrupt Nature which Jesus Christ by his Merits and Intercession has obtained Grace for them to do and this can be done only by obeying his Gospel-Law and following his Example which no body truly does This is the Substance of all her Writings These Truths she inculcates a hundred and a hundred times This is the constant Burthen of her Song Some other Sentiments which she calls Accessory Truths she mentions perhaps but three or four times in all her Writings And because every Palate does not relish them shall therefore those Books be despised and thrown away which do so lively represent the Essential Truths of the Gospel Would we throw away a Box of Pearls because some conceited Friend snatch'd at something amongst them and squeezing it hard at our Nose made it smell as Dung and then cry'd out Fie all is Filth throw all away Sure if these be the Great and Essential Truths of Religion they who love the Religion of Jesus Christ more than Prejudice or Party will greatly value and esteem the Writings of which those Truths are the Marrow the Substance and the All and will no more be scandaliz'd at them because of the Snarling of some than they would despise Pearls because Swine trample on the or Holy Things because Dogs bark at them XII Now that these are the Great and Essential Truths of Christianity will I think be readily granted by all The Holy Scriptures declare unto us that God is Love that they who dwell in Love dwell in God and God in them that there is none Good but God that the Sum of his Law is to love him with all our Hearts and our Neighbour as our selves that while we love the World the Love of the Father is not in us that Jesus Christ became Sin for us who knew no Sin that we might be made the Righteousness of God in him that Jesus Christ is come to bless us in turning every one of us from our Iniquities that unless we repent we shall certainly perish that in his Life and Death he was given us an Example that we should follow his Steps that by Nature we are the Children of Wrath that we cannot be his Disciples unless we deny our selves take up our Cross and follow him that if we be risen with Christ we will set our Affections on those things that are above and not on those things that are beneath that they who are Christ's have crucified the Flesh with the Affections and Lusts thereof that Knowledge puffs up but Charity edifieth that all Knowledge and all Faith without Charity profits us nothing XIII Thus S. Augustine in his Writings and particularly in his excellent Treatise De Doctrina Christiana Lib. 1. makes a Summary of the same Nature Of the Essentials of Christianity He considered all Beings under Three distinct Ranks and Orders Some which are to be enioy'd others which are to be used and others in the middle between these and they formed to enjoy and to use those other Beings The Things to be enjoy'd are those which make us happy The Things to be used are those which help us to attain to that which makes us happy and to cleave to it We who are to enjoy and use those things being plac'd between both if we give our selves to Enjoy the things which we should only use we are stopp'd in our Course and come short of our Happiness being entangl'd with the Love of things below To enjoy is by Love to cleave to something for its self To use a thing is to employ it as a Mean to attain to that which we love as Strangers travelling to their Native Country make use of Horses by Land or Ships by Sea to bring them thither That which is to be enjoy'd is only God the Father Son and Holy Ghost the Infinite and Unchangeable Good We ought to love nothing for it self but God and all other things only in and for God Other things are to be used or avoided as they are Helps or Hinderances of the Love of God All who are capable of Enjoying God as we are that is all our Neighbours we ought to love them as our selves that is to desire or endeavour that they be brought with us to love and enjoy God All Sin and Evil consists in the Loving and Enjoying what we ought only to use the Creatures and their Perfections and the Using what we ought to Enjoy Vtendis frui Fruendis uti This has so darkned and corrupted our Minds that we are not capable of loving and enjoying this infinite Good In order to this they must be cleansed and purified which is as it were a Travelling and Voyaging to our Country This could not have been if Wisdom it self had not stoop'd to our Infirmity and cloath'd himself with our Flesh to obtain Pardon and Grace for Sinners and to give them an Example in their own infirm Nature And as to convey our Thoughts to others we must cloath them with Words tho' thereby they are not defil'd nor chang'd so the Eternal and Unchangeable Word became Flesh and dwelt among us the Truth and the Life became the Way and brought us the wholsom Physick that is necessary to cure the Maladies of our Souls Remedies for every Disease The Sum of all is that the Fulness and End of all the Holy Scriptures is the Love of God and our Neighbours the Being that is to be enjoy'd and those Beings which are capable of enjoying him with us And that we might know and be able to do this the Providence of God has order'd the whole Temporal Dispensation for our Salvation which we ought to use not with an abiding Love but a transient one as we would love a Way or a Chariot that we may love those things in which we are carried for the sake of that to which we are going This is the Substance of that Excellent Book XIV It is true A. B. mentions other Sentiments which are not of the Essence of Religion but then she declares they are not
Religion have to one another This then is certainly a remarkable Property of the Writings of A. B. that they give so distinct a view of the Relation of the several Parts and Duties of Christianity to one another and to the whole How some hold the Place of the end and others of the means some of which are so absolutely necessary in Man's present State that without them he cannot attain the End They make appear that the great end of Christianity is to bring us back to the Love of God and that we can never recover this without the mortifying of our Corrupt Nature and that this cannot be effected but by obeying the Doctrine and following the Example of Jesus Christ so that his Commands are all the necessary Helps of our Frailty teaching us what way to overcome our Corrupt Nature and to return to the Love of God For the End of the Commandment is Charity The Gospel-Law teaches Man Poverty of Spirit to shew Man that Covetousness has withdrawn him from the Love of God and that he cannot recover it without ceasing to covet earthly Goods and it teaches Men to be humble in Heart and to choose the lowest Place because they have lost the Love of God by loving themselves and thinking themselves worthy of Honour and Glory while they merit nothing but Contempt and Confusion Jesus Christ chose a poor and mean State in the World lived in Hardships and Unease in Reproach and Contempt and never did his own Will but the Will of him that sent him to show us what are the things that withdraw us from the Love of God and what are the means we must use to overcome them XVIII 3. The Writings of A. B. do give us most lovely Representations of the Divine Nature such as may serve to enflame our Souls with Love and Wonder when we think on the depth and height and breadth and length of the Love of God in Christ Jesus which passeth all Knowledge They shew us that God's very Nature is Love that there is none Good but God that no kind of Evil comes from him but all Good that it was nothing but Love and Goodness that made him create Man so wonderful a Creature that he might communicate himself to him and dwell in him by his Light and Love and that he might oblige him by the greatness of his Magnificence made a world of beautiful Creatures to attend him and to compleat his Happiness and Contentment would needs become like to him as he had at first form'd Man after his own Image And so far was he from designing that Man should destroy himself that he us'd all means to prevent it and to keep him from abusing the greatest Natural Gift he could bestow upon him Liberty of Will and which he could not in justice take back again for the Gifts of God are without Repentance That Man's Baseness and Fall did not alter God's Love but he resolves to recover him again and continues unalterably his first Design of taking his Delight with him that he accepts of the Intercession and Mediation of Jesus Christ for that End and allows Man Grace and a Time and Means of Penitence that the very Evils that came upon Man and upon the Creatures by his Sin he order'd them all so as that they might tend to his Good and his Recovery thrust him out of a delightful Paradise into an Earth cursed for his sake and bringing forth Throns and Thistles least the Pleasures of the first should now still bewitch his Heart the more and that the Miseries and Vexations of the last might give him Occasions for Penitence and make him return to his God that God has not forsaken Man but Man has forsaken his God that God by all his Works and by his Operations in Man gives him all sort of Occasions to love him That he is not content to send us his Servants and Prophets to enlighten us but he came himself and became in all things like to us yet without Sin that he might redeem and save us That God tempts no Man but every Man is drawn away of his own Lust That he damns no Man for he is the Fountain of all Good and can do no Evil and the Damnation of a Soul is the greatest Evil in the World That he does not permit Sin but permits Man to make use of his Free-will which being the greatest Treasure he could receive it was not just for God to take it back again and if Man abuse it it is for himself so he may do with his Hands and Tongue which are given him for excellent uses That as God is not the Author of any Sin any Moral Evil neither by Influence nor by Decree nor by Permission but it proceeds wholly from Men and Devils by the ill use of the Liberty and Free-will that God gave them so neither is he the Author of any Natural Evil or Malignity that is in the Creatures he having created all Good and Perfect but Sin and the Self will of Man has brought a Malignity into all things and therefore it belongs to Man as being the Works of his Hands That God lets this Malignity continue now in this Time of Trial to withdraw Man from the Love of the Creatures that at the Times of the Restitution of all things he will deliver all his Creatures from the Malignity contracted by the Sin of Man and since it is just to render to each one what belongs to him it is necessary that they who will not return to a Dependance upon their God have for their Portion this Malignity of all the Creatures to all Eternity as being the Work of their own Hands That in the Love of God consists all Good and all Happiness and in the turning away from that Love all Evil and all Misery which Men are not now so sensible of because of the superficial and transient Delights with which the Creatures do amuse and tickle them but upon the removal of that they shall feel it to all Eternity God is not the Author of Death but by one Man Sin entred into the World and Death by Sin and Death has pass'd over all because all have sinn'd It is saith St. Augustine God alone the only Truth the only Salvation of all and the First and Supream Essence from whom every thing is what it is in so far as it is for in so far as it is what it is it is good and therefore Death is not from God For God did not make Death neither does he take Pleasure in the Destruction of the Living for the supream Essence makes every thing to be what it is and therefore it is called the Essence But Death constrains that which dies not to be in so far as it dies for if these things which die should die altogether undoubtedly they would come to nothing But by how much less they partake of Essence by so much they die Now a Body is less
in his Spirit that he dwelling in our Hearts by Faith may communicate himself to us with all his Graces and Merits It is in the former Sence only that A. B. declares against the common Doctrine Of the Satisfaction of Jesus Christ as if it were a Substitution of total Discharge dispensing with the Obligation that lies on us to live a Life of Penitence and not at all in the Second They who read the Writings of A. B. will see that this is the Summ and Substance of her Sentiments on this Head and that any simple Expressions which seem harsh by themselves are to be interpreted by this Measure And they who consider by what Principles the Generality of the Christian World do I do not say speculate and talk but live and act and what Encouragement the Doctrine and Glosses of Men has given thereunto and how tho' they live in a perfect Contradiction to the Life and Spirit of Jesus Christ yet they hope and believe they shall be saved by his Merits will see how necessary and how seasonable it is to inculcate those Truths upon the Hearts of Men. VIII But because it gives great Offence to some that she says Tho' Christ has satisfied all for us on his part yet that the Merits of his Satisfaction will not be applied to us unless we our selves do satisfie the Justice of God for our Sins and in order to our Purification I shall set down her Sentiment more particularly in this Matter We sometimes stumble at Words and Terms when we grant the thing it self upon the matter and it is like this is the case with many here 1. Then she says That no Man could merit Eternal Life tho' Adam had never sinn'd for all our good Works are but Temporal and bear no proportion to eternal Happiness Heaven and eternal Life is the free Gift of God which he prepared for Man before he created him and so he could not merit it He does not therefore bestow it for our Merits but for his great Mercy and for the Love he bears us He is no Merchant and will not sell his Paradise at any price but will give it freely and he has no need of our good Works or Penitence but because of our Corruption and Infirmity we have great need of them without which we must perish 2. That we having forfeited God's Favour and eternal Life Jesus Christ has merited for us Pardon Grace and Life Eternal upon Condition that we receive and correspond with the Pardon and Grace offered and turn again to God with all our Hearts and embrace the Means that are necessary for this End without which in Justice Pardon and Grace could not be demanded for Man and for our Performance of this Jesus Christ becomes our Pledge and Surety 3. As such he cloaths himself with our Mortality and undergoes all the Parts of this Penitence himself that he might merit Grace and Pardon for Man and might strengthen and direct him how to embrace this Penitence and to follow his Example 4. Upon his Intercession and obtaining of Grace and Pardon for Man the Love of God is not immediatly conferr'd upon Man but the Grace of doing Penitence by which he might recover it And this was a greate Mercy to Man than if God had simply pardon'd him and restor'd him to his Love without suffering the Earth to be accursed or all to be corrupted by Sin since it is to be fear'd Man would have quickly fallen back again into new Sins finding himself as before in all sorts of Delights such as Adam had For we see how Men now turn away their Hearts from God to love the Creatures and themselves even when they see they are so wretched weak and imperfect subject to all sorts of Maladies and to Death and that all the Creatures now do them mischief whereas formerly they honour'd and obey'd them as their Lord and tho' they see themselves and all the Creatures so filthy corrupt and miserable yet they cannot abstain from loving them to the Prejudice of the Love they owe to God How much more would Man have done so in case he had remained as beautiful and perfect after his Sin and all the other Creatures had continued as lovely as before It is to be fear'd he would not have remained in the Love of God if he had recovered it after his Sin by the pure Mercy of God without out the Condition of doing Penitence or without all the other Creatures their being accursed in him since we see Men do yet love this Life that is so miserable and the Creatures that are so wretched and Man feels in himself Contradictions Griefs Displeasures and all sorts of vicious Passions which he cannot govern by his Reason and yet his Spirit is become so brutish that it loves those Miseries and Imperfections tho' he find nothing in himself or the other Creatures but what is worthy of Contempt and Hatred Yet he loves and esteems them to the Contempt of the Love of his God who knowing the Baseness of Man's Heart has given him Penitence as a necessary Mean to withdraw his Affections from this wretched Life that he may turn them to his God who will have Man to love him only And for the same Reason he has permitted all the Creatures which were subject to Man to contract with him the Malediction of Sin that by this Mean occasion might be given to Man to return to the Love of his God the only lovely Object 5. Since this Penitence contains the necessary Means to recover the Love of God and we cannot do this so long as we love Self and the Creatures and this corrupt Love cannot be mortified so long as we gratifie our Senses and our Appetites and enjoy a Paradise here and our Lusts cannot be subdued without feeling the Bitterness Anguish Griefs and Pains of them to extinguish the Sence of the unlawful Pleasure and Delight we took in them Penitence therefore is 1. The turning away our Hearts and Affections from every thing that hinders the Love of God Love not the World c. 2. And in order to this the avoiding all the Occasions that may foster the Love of other things and continually striving against and doing Violence to Self-love Self-will and Corrupt Nature He that will come after me saith our Lord let him deny himself And 3. The embracing willingly the Anguish Bitterness and Pains the Afflictions both inward and outward that must be endured for the purifying of our Hearts and bringing us to the Love of God and let him take up his Cross 6. Jesus Christ has taught us how to undergo this Penitence by his Doctrine and by his Example and follow me 7. It is most unreasonable to think that we are discharg'd from this Penitence because Jesus Christ did thus live and suffer for us for we must have the Spirit of Christ our Old Man must be crucified with him we must be conformed
lead a Pious and Holy Life 2. If she was moved by the Spirit of God to write for the enlightning of others I. THAT we may know if A. B. did lead a Pious and Holy Life we must first understand wherein true Holiness and Piety does consist to wit in the Love of God only and of those things which are Eternal And seeing two Contraries cannot be lov'd at the same time and the Love of the Creatures and things Temporal is opposite to the Love of the Creator and of things Eternal it is from hence more clear than the Sun at Noon-Day that he who loves God cannot love the Creatures Our Saviour having taught us that no Man can serve two Masters but he must needs hate the one and love the other St. Paul says expresly If ye be risen with Christ seek those things which are above and set not your Affections upon those things which are on Earth And St. John warns us That we love not the World nor the things which are in the World for if we do so the Love of the Father is not in us II. This is likewise confirm'd by the Example of all the Holy Patriarchs Prophets and Apostles as he who reads the Holy Scriptures will find through all so that there is no need to produce Testimonies here But seeing this Love of God and of things Eternal is hidden in the Heart and the Heart is known by God only it is therefore difficult to know if any truly love God This Difficulty is so much the greater that Hypocrites and wicked Persons can so craftily counterfeit the outward Actions which are the Signs and Fruits of this Love that it is hard to distinguish them That this Difficulty may be removed it is to be observed and considered 1. That there are nevertheless sure Signs by which one may be convinc'd of the Holiness of another and that he is endued with the Love of God For we affirm that Abraham Isaac Jacob and the other Patriarchs Prophets and Apostles were Holy and that with so much Assurance that we look upon it as an Example which we ought to imitate But 2. it is to be considered that we cannot know but by Divine Light and not at all by Natural Reason if one be Holy and a Lover of God And this is bestowed on those only who are Holy themselves or at least endeavour in Sincerity of Heart to become so To such God reveals his Secrets in so far as it is fit for them to know them for their own Conduct or that of others as for others who are not in that State but care for and seek after earthly things they really cannot know if any be truly Holy and a Lover of God or not Nevertheless they take upon them to judge magisterially of all things as if they only did possess all divine and humane Wisdom tho' in the mean time they are ignorant of the Essence of things and content themselves with their outside and surface So that their Testimony as to Holiness and the Love of God even of the Patriarchs Prophets and Apostles is founded meerly upon their own Advantage For they judge that to be Good and Holy which advances this but on the other hand they account that to be Evil and Prophane which brings them in no temporal Gain III. It is just of this Matter as it is of the Light of which a Blind Man cannot judge neither can he form the Idea of it because his Eyes by which alone the material Light is perceived are ill disposed for it Yet this does not hinder but that he whose Eyes are well-disposed may be certain that he sees the Light because when he opens his Eyes he discovers many things round about him which without this Light could not be discern'd and withal he can walk and do other Works which would be impossible for him if he were depriv'd of that Light And when he sees other Men walk resolutely and steddily and do their Works by sure Rules he has reason to conclude that these Men do also enjoy the Light This may be easily applied to Spiritual things For tho' the natural Man turning his closed Eyes towards the Divine Light is Blind in Spiritual things neither can he know if one be Holy and have the Love of God yet this does not hinder but that he who has the Eyes of his Mind opened may be assured that he himself and others like unto him are illuminated by God for when the inward State of his Soul is discovered to him and the work of God in his Soul and the means that are to be made use of for the preserving and strengthning of that Work he justly concludes from hence that he enjoys the Divine Light and he walking in that Light and abandoning all the Creatures that he may love the Creator only may be certain that he loves God and is Holy And observing the like in others he concludes that they also do truly love God and are Holy Upon such Grounds is founded that Knowledge by which Holy Men do understand their own State and the State of other Holy Men. And after this manner are they perswaded that the Patriarchs Prophets and Apostles were Holy Men. IV. Some perhaps may reply to all this Altho' Good and Holy Men may mutually know their own and others State yet it is not so with those who has not as yet attain'd to Holiness and the Love of God I answer such imperfect Persons may be of two sorts to wit some know that they are Blind and therefore are desirous of the means whereby they may see and be enlightned others altho' they be more Blind than Moles yet they do not desire to see either because they imagine that they are enlightned and see sufficiently or for that they are so sunk into and carried away by the Love of the Creatures that they have no thought of the Creator and of things Eternal Those of this second kind are so far from being able to know their own State or that of others that they cannot form any Idea of it more than a Blind Man can judge of Light and Colours Hence it would be to no purpose to endeavour to demostrate to such that one is Holy and in the Love of God But as for those of the first sort who know they are Blind and desire the Light they according to our Saviour's Promise shall see And as they are conscious of their own Blindness and anxious about it so God will reveal unto them the Holiness and Illumination of his beloved ones in so far as that may be a Mean of recovering them out of Darkness into Light and from Sin to Holiness So St. Paul was instructed by Ananias Cornclius the Centurion by St. Peter And God in all times has employ'd Holy Men for the enlightning of others and for guiding them by their Examples Words and Writings into the way of Holiness This is the Ground and
does it not deserve that it love him He farther obliges it by more powerful Means For that he might make them see that his Delight is to be with the Children of Men he becomes Man visible and sensible as themselves not being satisfied to have made Man after his Image and Likeness but God is made after the Image and Likeness of Man yea he becomes truly Man to teach them how to love him by material Words and Deeds conformable to their humane Capacities VII Could God testifie more Love for Man than to abase himself yea to annihilate himself to speak according to our Language and to cloath himself with humane Nature What Judgment could conceive greater Testimonies of his Love Or what Means could be fallen upon more powerfully to oblige Man to love him than to become like to Man in Nature to become his Equal in Condition not preferring himself to the meanest Men to converse and be familiar with them as their Brother and Companion yea he subjects himself unto and obeys Man that he might gain his Friendship he serves him even to the washing of his Feet and tho' Man offend him he prevents him always with Friendship le ts a Judas kiss him who contriv'd his Death and at the time he came to deliver him up to his Enemies he even calls him his Friend VIII And for an Evidence that he makes Man his Friend he declares unto him his Secrets and all that he learned from his Father and all this to engage Men to a reciprocal Love He eats and drinks with them draws them by his sweet Conversation teaches them familiarly all the necessary Means to love him gives them a Law all of Love which contains no other thing but the Love of God and our Neighbour All his Gospel contains nothing but the true Means to fulfil this Law of Love He so earnestly presses this Love that he threatens with eternal Damnation if we do not love him with all our Heart with all our Soul and with all our Strength Could he express more powerfully the Desire he has that Man love him while he draws him even by force to his Love IX And to make this Force altogether Lovely he charges himself with the Burthen of Man's Sins resolving out of the Love he bear him to suffer in his own Body the Punishments due for them He suffers Hunger Thirst Weariness travelling through so many Places to seek Man and to help him in his Penitence that he might have no other Care out to love him Is it possible that Man should not acknowledge such a Love Is he so unnatural as not to love such a Benefactor who obliges him by so many so painful Proofs of his Love that they seem to exceed the Bounds of Reason X. Who ever saw Love arrive to such an Excess of Good-will for the Person beloved For a GOD to debase himself to subject himself and to suffer for his Creature that which no Body would do for his Equal and it would be no small Love for one to give his Life for his Friend Which JESUS CHRIST gave for Man who was his Enemy having overcome his Malice by the Excess of his Love And the more that Man is transported to deal hardly with him he is led the more to love him laying down his Life voluntarily the more to oblige him by the Consideration of such a LOVE that surpasses all Vnderstanding that a GOD should be enclin'd to love a Worm of the Earth of which he has no need and which is led even to outrage and offend him instead of being enclin'd to love him XI Ingrate Creature Wilt not thou yield to this LOVE Cruel to thy Self Enemy of thy own Good Wilt not thou bow under this Yoke which is so gentle and lovely It s Captivity is Liberty its Service is a Kingdom its Pains are Delights its Labours are Repose its Griefs are Contentments This LOVE satisfies the Soul fills it with all Happiness comforts it and adorns it keeps it always chearful with its Beloved nothing can offend it What Happiness what Joy what Peace what Delights to the Soul that possesseth this Love It fears nothing it hopes for nothing it seeks nothing it finds nothing Lovely without this LOVE XII How blind and ignorant is he who loves the Wealth the Honours and the Pleasures of this World He is never content nor satisfied For Riches bring along with them a Thousand Cares and Disquiets with an unsatiable Thirst which fastens the Soul to Earth and to Metals and turns it away from God Honours are yet more vain than Riches for they are nothing but Fantastical and Imaginary which give nothing to the Soul that loves them but an empty swelling of Pride which makes the Heart break at the least change of Fortune which vexes and torments them continually with the fear and care of Losing them and tho' they did possess them lawfully and securely yet they are nothing but a Smoak of Vanity since we are nothing and all they who honour us are equally Nothings What Folly is it to look for Glory from all these NOTHINGS and to love Honours so vain and of so short Continuance Pleasures such as they may be give very little Satisfaction to Man in general because they are of so short Continuance in particular for that they are so vile and earthly unworthy of the Nobleness of our Soul which is Divine and Spiritual for to take Pleasure to eat and drink is to level our selves in this Point with the Beasts and often to hurt both Soul and Body seeing these Pleasures do sometimes breed Excesses prejudicial to the Health indisposing both Body and Mind which pay very dear for the Pleasures which they pretend to have in Meat and Drink All the other Pleasures of the Body are always insatiable to him who would please his Five Senses the Eye will never be satisfied with Seeing the Ear with Hearing and so of the rest if Reason do not govern all they will still importune us yea become Insolent and Unsatisfiable To love Play is loss of time to love Hunting is Weariness to love Company is Disquiet The more we would oblige them the more they are dissatisfied And what shall we have after having satisfied all our Senses and given to our Body all the Pleasures that it desires Nothing but Weariness and Remorse of Conscience which will torment the Soul especially at Death We may lawfully use these things but not love them for they are no wise worthy of our Love XIII There is nothing LOVELY and that can satisfie our Soul but GOD ALONE Neither was it created for any other End but to love its god and to cleave to him only All other Goods are false and deceitful Since we cannot live without LOVE Why do we not love this GOD who is ALONE LOVELY So much the rather that he desires it that he has obliged us to it by
Christians I 've sought from my Nativity I liv'd I wrote to shew how such to be Convinc'd the World of â—rrors sins abuses All hate me for 't each one my NAME traduces To death they persecute me every where How should I other Lot than JESUS bear AN APOLOGY FOR M. Antonia Bourignon In Four Parts I. An Abstract of her Sentiments and a Character of her Writings II. An Answer to the Prejudices raised against them III. The Evidences she brings of her being led by the Spirit of God with her Answers to the Prejudices opposed thereunto To which is added A Dissertation of Dr. De Heyde on the same Subject IV. An Abstract of her Life To which are added Two LETTERS from different Hands containing REMARKS on the Preface to the Snake in the Grass and Bourignianism Detected AS ALSO Some of her own Letters whereby her True Christian Spirit and Sentiments are farther justified and vindicated particularly as to the Doctrine of the Merits and Satisfaction of Jesus Christ Non multum Disputandum Nuda enim Veritas seipsam Validissime tutatur probé intellecta genuinâ suâ luce tenebras omnes Dispellit Rob. Leighton Archiep. Glasc Prelect Theol Paraenes p 199 LONDON Printed for D. Brown at the Black Swan without Temple Bar S. Manship at the Ship in Cornhil R. Parker at the Unicorn under the Piazza's of the Royal-Exchange and H Newman at the Grashopper in the Poultry 1699. THE PREFACE I. SVch and so universal are the Prejudices raised amongst all Parties against the Writings and Sentiments of A. B. that the Sight of the very Title Page of this Apology will make some perhaps throw it by which Disdain scorning to look into it others to take it up in Derision and ask What would this Babler say Others to pry into it with an evil Eye with a Design only to carp at it and to pick out here and there some Expressions or Sentiments which differ from the ordinary Systems and put them in such a Dress as may excite the Hatred and Derision of the People II. But being fully perswaded in my Conscience that those Writings do greatly tend to revive the Life and Spirit of Christianity which is acknowledg'd to be so much decay'd and lost amongst all the Parties of Christendom and knowing that there are many well-disposed Persons who are frightned from lookâ—ng into them because of the odious Representations made of them and the Prejudices given them against them who if these Prejudices were remov'd would certainly peruse them with Delight and Profit to their Souls and would sensibly â—eel that the True Doctrine of Jesus Christ and the only way to eternal Life chalk'd out in his Life and Sayings is there plainly and distinctly represâ—nted I shall therefore in all Sincerity without Respect of Parties or Persons write this Apology And I do earnestly beg of Almighty God the Father and Fountain of all Light and Love that he may be pleas'd so to illuminate my Mind with his Heavenly Light and warm my Heart with his Divine Love that I may utter nothing but what flows from or tends to both and that some Rays of both may stream through this Writing to touch the Hearts and Spirits of others III. To dispose Persons to hearken to and to make a right use of an Apology of this Nature it is fit to premise two things First That it needs not prejudice any against A. B. and her Writings so far as not to listen to an Apology for both that they know she is evil spoken of said to be an Enthusiast an Enchantress a Blasphemer a Seducer and the Devil of a Saint that her Writings are said to be full of Heresies Delusions and Errors and that by Persons of all Parties Papists Protestants Lutherans Calvinists Presbyterians Episcopal Persons Anabaptists Quakers and even by the Preachers and Writers and Learned Men of the respective Parties for there is nothing more ordinary than for the most Innocent and the most Vpright to be thus treated Woe to you when all Men shall speak well of you This was the Treatment that Innocence and Truth it self met with our Lord Jesus Christ He was made to pass for a Blasphemer a Sorcerer a Perverter of the Law of God The most Learned and the most Godly in his Age hated him They who in other things stood at the greatest Distance did agree in this Herod and Pilate the Pharisees and Sadducees the Jews and Samaritans So that this may be rather a favourable Prejudice on her behalf at least so far as to allow her a fair Hearing IV. 2. I shall entreat you may not come to read this Apology nor the Writings to which it invites you with an evil Eye They who come to consider Writings or Persons with this Disposition are not capable of understanding them aright themselves or of giving a true Representation of them to others I know no Person tho' never so innocent nor Truth tho' never so clear nor Book tho writ with never so much Plainness Sincerity and Consistency which they who consider with this Spirit may not mistake expose misrepresent and ridicule Nothing more true than our Saviour's Words nothing more confirm'd from daily Experience The Light of the Body is the Eye if therefore thine Eye be single thy whole Body shall be full of Light but if thine Eye be Evil thy whole Body shall be full of Darkness It was from those different Dispositions that our Lord himself and his Doctrine met with such different Entertainment in the World They who were full of self-Self-love and Esteem and desir'd to love God and the World both to please Him and their Appâ—tites too to get and keep that Rank in the Esteem of Men which they thought they merited and hugg'd the Glosses and Sences they had put upon God's Law by which they had reconcil'd it with the following of their own corrupt Inclinations such look'd on all that Jesus said aud did with an evil Eye they never came to hear him but with a Design to catch him in his Words and they found out ways to put a hard Sence upon every thing The Miracles he wrought they said were done by the Power of the Devil they accus'd him of breaking the Sabbath Day and of countenancing it in his Disciples of Blasphemy in calling himself the Son of God of Pride in speaking well of himself of a Design to destroy the Law and seduce the People by his Doctrine and they made him an Enemy to Caesar in calling himself a King But the sincere and the single-hearted who came with a pure and upright Desire and Intention to understand and to follow the Truth did readily embrace the Doctrine of Jesus Christ the entrance of his Words gave them Light and Understanding and they were so fully satisfied of the great things of God's Law that they were not apt to wrest or mistake his Sayings or Actions in things of lesser moment
to give a hateful Turn to ones Sentiments to make them pass for impious extravagant and ridiculous I shall therefore set down here a brief Summary of her Accessory Sentiments first premising some things that may dispose the Reader to consider them calmly and without prejudice 1. She declares they are reveal'd unto her by God and that now in the End of the World and near the Time of the Restitution of all things many things which were more darkly represented in the Holy Scriptures are now to be manifestly laid open when the Time of fulfilling all is at hand and that such things are now laid before us like a Clustre of Grapes of the Land of Promise to make us conceive something of the Beauty and Glory of the Heavenly Jerusalem 2. She declares as has been said that those Accessory Truths are not necessary to Salvation are not Articles of Faith ought not to be enquired into from a Spirit of Curiosity are not design'd for all but for those who being perswaded of them are thereby stirr'd up so much the more to the Love and Admiration of God and for others they maâ— let them alone XXXII 3. St. Augustin has given us an excellent Rule whereby to judge charitably of Sentiments and Interpretations of the Holy Scripture Whosoever says he so understands the Holy Scriptures or any part of them as that thereby he does not build up the twofold Charity the Love of God and our Neighbour he does not understand them aright But whosoever gives such a Sense of them as is profitable for advancing this Charity and yet what he says is not the particular Sense of the Writer in that place he does not err damnably neither does at all lie And if he err by a Sense which edifies Charity which is the End of the Commandment he so errs as if one by a mistake leaving the Highway should go streight over the Field to the Place whither the Way leads If these Accessory Sentiments then tend to promote the Great End of Religion the Love of God and our Neighbour tho' there were no Evidence for them from the Holy Scriptures they are neither hurtful nor damnable In giving an Account then of her Accessory Sentiments I shall consider them under these Heads Those which relat to 1. The State of the World before Man's Fall 2. The Fall of Man and its Consequences 3. The Methods taken for Man's Recovery by Jesus Christ 4. The Present State of the World 5. The Future State and the Restitution of all things And because the Series and Chain of those Accessory Sentiments cannot be well conceiv'd without some mention of the Essential Ones too I shall not scruple to do it where it is necessary to understand the Connexion of those Sentiments 1. As to the State of the World before Man's Fall the Summ of her Sentiments is as follows 1. VVHEN God created all things at First there was no Deformity in any of his Works all was Beautiful and Luminous no Grossness in the Earth no Whirlwinds and Hurricanes in the Air no Tempests in the Sea no Poison in the Herbs no Venom in Insects The Earth was all transparent throughout in it were to be seen the Plants the Stones and Metals all transparent likewise one might see thorouh it to its Center as easily as through the Air all the Beasts and Plants were all Beautiful in their respective kinds no Deformity in any of them and the Beauty of their Frame and Contrivance was to be seen throughout all being Transparent and Luminous All things were worthy of God and were Representations of his Greatness Magnificence Goodness Beauty Light and Fruitfulness in several ways and according to their different kinds 2. God having resolv'd to form a Creature that should love and enjoy him and in whose Love he would take Delight and Pleasure he creates Man after his own Image endues him with an immortal Soul breathed from himself with Understanding capable to receive him with a Heart to desire and thirst after him and cleave to him with a perfect Liberty and Free-will to do it heartily and freely and without the least Limitation or Constraint And to oblige him the more to love him his most Bountiful God and Lover gives him for an Accessory Felicity and Happiness the whole Creation subjects all his Works to him to be his Servants and to attend upon him puts all things under his Feet that he receiving the Homage and Delight of all the Creatures might return the Praise of all to God in the constant Love and Adoration of so Bountiful a God who would give himself to be lov'd and enjoy'd by him and would take his Delight with him and would give him such a world of beautiful Creatures to serve and attend upon him 3. That Man might partake of this Accessory Happiness and receive the Delight and Homage of all the Creatures and rule over them as their Lord and King he forms to him a Body as the Case and Organ of his Soul by which he might communicate with all the Creatures and rule over them and endues it with Faculties and Senses capable to give them Orders and to take in the Tribute of their Delights and Pleasures the Sense of Seeing to take in their Light and Beauty of Hearing to be entertain'd with their Melody and Musick Smelling to receive their odoriferous Steams and the Taste to relish their Sweetness and Delight the power of Moving of Speech and Gestures whereby to rule and govern them he might go to any place and make known his Will which all obeyed 4. This Body was not created by God after the manner that we see it at present but incomprehensibly more beautiful and more perfect as the Master-piece of all Nature clear subtile agile and transparent its Skin like Moscovy Glass its Flesh like Crystal its Veins like streams of Rubies its Waters like Diamonds its Nerves like the Hyacinth the Substance of the Fruits its Aliment that of all good Odours its Excrements all its Parts within and without its Bones Muscles Sinews Bowels all so bright fram'd with such Art that all the Beauties of the Universe were nothing to the least part of it The Quintessence of all Natural things was the Matter of which it was form'd and all Nature obey'd it If he design'd to go on the Waters they supported him if to the Center of the Earth it yielded to him if through the Air it was a Chariot to him The Sun the Stars the precious Stones and all the Beauties of the Earth were nothing if compar'd with the least Beauty of the Body of Man His Soul was wholly Divine his Understanding clear-sighted penetrating all the Secrets of Nature all things Divine and Supernatural 5. Man when he was created at First was endued with a Principle of Foecundity with a Power to produce his like without the help of another having within
his Body the Principles of both Natures and in that respect being a compleat and perfect Man which Power was actuated upon ardent Acts of Love to God and a Desire to produce a Creature like himself to love and enjoy his Maker 6. Adam while he was in perfect Innocence did thus produce one like himself who was the First-Born of every Creature the Second Adam and the Son of Man And God being desirous to give to Man a full and perfect Contentment in Body and Spirit and to dwell with him bodily and visibly so that he might Converse with Man as a Friend with his Friend he therefore not only made Man after his Image but he becomes like to Man he unites himself to the Humane Nature in the Second Adam that he might Converse familiarly with Man by an Organ to be seen heard and felt by him conformable to his Nature This is Jesus Christ Eternal God and True Man 7. Notwithstanding of this Adam swimming amidst all sensible Delights the Time of Trial given him being then a State of Delight and Pleasure began to lean too much towards them and to please himself in them without turning his Soul so constranly towards God and so became less sensible of the Motions of God's Light and Love upon his Spirit being taken up too much other ways which encreasing still upon him to prevent his total Degeneracy and that he might not sink so low as to place his Love and Affections on things which were only earthly and material God resolves to make a Help for him he for this end takes one of the Principles of Foecundity out of Man and therewith forms the Woman who being form'd more Beautiful than any of the Creatures and being a more lively Representation of God he might love her in God as God's Image being endued with a Divine Soul as he was and so she might take off his Affections from the other Creatures and raise them towards God 2. As to Man 's total Fall and the Consequences thereof 1. THE Woman who was given for a Help to Man to keep him from a total Degeneracy listning to the Temptations of the Serpent the most subtile and beautiful of all the Beasts turn'd away from God her self and led on Man to do so too both of them shaking off their Dependance upon God and his Will and following their own Wills and breaking a just and easie Command that God had given them forbidding them to eat of the Fruit of one Tree as an Acknowledgement of Homage to their Great Creator and Benefactor and that they held all of him 2. As by turning from the Sun we fall into Darkness and Obscurity so Man much more by turning away from God and setting his Heart upon the Creatures brings an universal Corruption and Misery on himself and on all the Creatures which had been subjected to him Above all Sin corrupted Man's Soul did it the greatest Mischief having damn'd it eternally and made it like unto the Devil For both were created by God to love him and when they both withdraw this Love from God to love themselves or other Creatures they are equally become Devils the one incarnate and the other spiritual depriv'd of all sort of Good and fallen into all sort of Evil. So that if Man will consider himself narrowly he shall find his Soul defil'd with all sort of Sins fill'd with Injustice subject to Lying enclin'd to Covetousness blown up with Pride furious with Anger Lustful Gluttonous Sloathful Negligent with all other sort of Sins which reside in the depth of his Soul Sin so corrupted his Will that he had always a Bent and Inclination to Evil so that all that comes from the Self-will of Man is Sin his Self-will being fill'd with nothing but Self-love Sin has also so corrupted his Reason that it is no longer capable of discerning and judging aright of things It has so darkened his Memory and confounded his Understanding that he takes Evil for Good and Good for Evil without Judgment and Reason From the Corruption of his Soul did flow that of his Body all its Humours and Parts being disordered his glorious Body becomes filthy dark and deform'd in every part of it contracts that gross Crust of Corruption which we now carry about with us and which has seiz'd on every the least part of it within and without so that our First Parents were asham'd of themselves sought wherewith to cover their Nakedness and went and hid themselves The Senses also became gross dull and feeble could discern nothing but the outside of things and the whole Body became full of disorder within subject to the ill Impressions of all the Creatures and at last to Dissolution and Death 3. Man by his Fall brought also a Corruption and Deformity upon all the Creatures which had been subjected to him the Earth became gross and dark barren and unfruitful and all the Creatures became hurtful and mischievous to Man and rose up against him who had shaken off his Allegiance to their Bountiful Creator The Air stifles him the Waters drown him the Fire burns him the Earth Corn and Trees deny him their Fruits without his Care and Labour the Stars send bad Influences on him and he is subjected to Cold Heat Hunger Thirst Weariness and innumerable other Evils being deprived of the Dominion he had over all things and subjected unto them 4. All Men in the World are the Natural Off-spring of Adam and do descend from him both as to Body and Soul so that they must partake of the same Qualities with him being all his Living Images and therefore all Men who were in his Loins when he turn'd away from God sinned in him and do inherit his Corruption and Misery both of Body and Mind as if he had not sinned he had produc'd all Men to Salvation as God created them But every Man for himself would have had the same Liberty that Adam had to remain firm in the Love of God or to turn away from it by placing his Affections on himself or other Creatures He might damn or save himself during this Time of Trial and all who had remained faithful to God would have been saved on the contrary all who had withdrawn their Affections from him to love any other thing would have been damn'd and their Posterity would have been in the same State tho' Adam had never sinn'd So free and independent would Men have been during their Time of Trial which is that in which we live at present and must continue till the Day of Judgment And then being confirm'd in Grace as the faithful Angels are they could never fall away being perfectly united to God after this Time of Trial. 3. As to the Means and Method for Man's Recovery 1. ALL Mankind had been thus irrecoverably lost and damn'd as the fallen Angels are if the Son of God our elder Brother had
Antich Decouv Part 2. p. 66 67. she says That Jesus Christ True Man is also True God that his Humanity is most strictly and inseparably united with his Divinity which is the True God and the Eternal Word that created all things and and saves in Christ In the Third Part p. 26 27. she tells how Antichrist has led some to deny the Divinity of Jesus Christ and not to pray to him and shews that he as God and Man can save us immediately if we will follow him that he is the True Eternal God who alone can save as being God and he is our Mediator our Master our Physician as Man who is become our Pledge and Surety to obtain our Deliverance so that they are wretched Creatures who say they will not pray to Jesus Christ since the Salvation of all Men depends on him and without him no Body can be sav'd VII They affirmed that she denied the Merits of Jesus Christ or any Satisfaction made by him for the Sins of Men and this Calumny they have of late renew'd affirming that she falls in with the vile Socinian Heresies and even outdoes them What Socinian has ever taught That Man by his Sin would have perishâ—d eternally and never have obtain'd Pardon had it not been for Jesus Christ true eternal God and true Man and for his Merits the Force and Dignity of which proceed from his Vnion with the Divinity and that he has also obtain'd for Men Time Grace and Means to enjoy this Pardon and the Effect of those Merits and that he cloath'd himself with our Mortality and satisfied for our Sins on his part that we in imitating him might enjoy the Pardon and Recovery which his Merits have purchas'd for us And yet this is the Substance of the Doctrine of A. B. upon this Head as appears through all her Writings as in Temoign de Verite Part 1. p. 201 202 she says Your Preachers say that I reject the Merits of Jesus Christ tho' in truth I esteem them more than any Body in the World I believe I cannot be sav'd but by the Merits of Jesus Christ yea that none was ever sav'd from the Beginning of the World but by the Merits of Jesus Christ for if Jesus Christ had not merited Pardon for all Men with God his Father after Adam had sinn'd all Men had remain'd in a Lost Estate as the Devils have done because they had no Intercessor with God to obtain Pardon for their Sins as Men have had who having Jesus Christ for their Brother obtain'd by his Means the Remission of their Sins I mean not that Jesus Christ has not also satisfied for the Sins of Men since Adam seeing for them expresly he cloath'd himself with our Mortality and came into the World to Redeem us from Eternal Death into which all Men had wilfully precipitated themselves and sunk themselves into a Forgetfulness of God living according to the Motions of corrupt Nature as the Beasts which Jesus Christ perceiving he came from the Bosom of his Father unto the Earth to recal them He comes to shew them the State in which they were and how they had abandon'd their God to delight in other things than in him and by what means they might recover the Grace of God to attain to Salvation And he himself does before them the Works that they ought to do after his Example And because they had turn'd away from the Love of God to love the Goods and Riches of this World Jesus Christ came in Poverty that Men might embrace it after his Example And because Men had forgotten God through the Esteem they had of themselves Jesus Christ came in all Humility and Sufferings to give them an Example And because Men had left off their Obedience to God to follow their own Wills Jesus Christ came to shew that he is Obedidient even to the Death of the Cross that he might teach Men how they ought to be subject and obedient even to Death And Jesus Christ has done all this with many other things for the Love he bear to Men and that by such Means he might draw them to his Father that he might live with them to all Eternity giving himself thus in Sacrifice for the Redemption of his Brethren But this Sacrifice was not offered for Men who do not believe in him and do not the Works that he did nor for those who will needs wilfully continue in their Sins after having known the Law of the Gospel c. And in Antichr decouv Part 2. p. 76. They have says she sometimes argued against me that I deny the Satisfaction of Jesus Christ But I believe this is because I do not hold that Jesus Christ has satisfi'd for Men after the Manner that they hold it to wit that Jesus Christ has satisfied for all Men and that they shall be saved by his Sufferings without being obliged to suffer themselves which is a great Error because the Sufferings of Jesus Christ will never be applied to any but those who shall follow his Life and Doctrine But because on the one hand Men are apt to pervert the Doctrine of the Merits and Satisfaction of Jesus Christ to encourage the Indulging of their corrupt Nature and others to despise it and think they can save themselves I think it will not be unacceptable to shew how she discovers the Evil of both as in many of her Writings so particularly in Antechr decouvert Part 3. p. 45 46 c. Those Persons says she she speaks of those who despise Jesus Christ and think they can save themselves without him perish thro' Pride as well as they who say that Jesus Christ has satisfied all for them All of them fall into the same Sin of Pride and Ingratitude tho' by different Ways The one is proud to believe that he shall be saved by his own Works and he is also very unthankful that he will not acknowledge what Jesus Christ has done for him requiting his Benefits with Contempt and Irreverence And the others commit the same Sin of Pride in presuming that they are God's Elect and his Children to whom Salvation appertains tho they do not labour to obtain it and they â—â—ll also into the Sin of Ingratitude in that they will nor render unto Jesus Christ what he has paid for them They now that he was their Pledge and Surety yea that he effectively paid the Penalties due to their Sins yet they will not use any Endeavours to make Restitution to him Would it not be a great Ingratitude for a Person to say to him who had paid his Debt as his Pledge and Surety That knowing his Debt is paid he resolves to live in Idleness without taking Care to return the same Payment to him who had paid it for him Such a Person would be look'd upon by us as wicked and unthankful while we think our selves the Children of God in doing the same things to the Person of Jesus Christ We
to his Image we must suffer with him if we would reign with him His was meritorious and expiatory and exemplary ours is absolutely necessary for our Purification By his he obtain'd Pardon and Grace for us and chang'd the Eternal Punishment we deserved into a Temporal Penitence for our Purification and Recovery and to say we cannot undergo this Penitence is to have no Faith in his Merits to believe that it is enough that he did undergo this for us is the greatest Indignity done him and the greatest Cheat that we can put upon our Souls it is to belie and be false to our Surety and our Pledge It is like Bankrupts to swagger and rant it out with our Creditor's Goods because our Surety has paid the Debt for us It is to make Jesus our Slave to suffer all manner of Afflictions Poverty Reproach and Pain for us that we may go to Heaven in the pleasant and broad Way of Honours Wealth and Pleasures It is to be well pleas'd that the Physician has provided wholsome and necessary Physick for our Recovery and has taken it himself for our Direction and Encouragement but tho' we be sick to Death we will not taste it our selves because of the Bitterness of it believing that we shall Recover nevertheless because the Physician has taken it Jesus Christ led this Life of Penitence for us in his visible and mortal Body that he might shew us how ready he is still to undergo it in every one of us by his Spirit 8. God has no need of this our Penitence but we stand in need of it to recover the Love of God He does not covet our Wealth or Honours or Friends or Ease in that he requires of us to be poor in Spirit to deny our selves to take up our Cross and follow Christ to forsake all things since he created all things for Man and would be well pleased he could enjoy them still But Man is become so miserable that he cannot enjoy these things without setting his Heart upon them and turning it away from God and therefore Jesus Christ has given this his Gospel-Law without which no body can recover the Love of God It is a sad Mistake then to think that there is no necessity of good Works but only by way of Gratitude and Thankfulness to God as if he had need of our Acknowledgments or as if we could make him Presents of our Good Works to thank him which cannot be said but in Contempt of the Riches of God who possesses all in himself and seeks nothing without himself and needs not that we should give him any thing all the good Works that Men can do are for no other End but to resist and overcome the Evils of their Corruption And they are as necessary for our Salvation as Bread is for the Life of the Body for we cannot be saved without subduing our Corruption and no Body can do this but by the means of such good Works and such Penitence as stifles and mortifies the Vices and Sins which this Corruption has brought into the Soul 9. It is a Pride to glory in our Penitence since it is enjoined us for our Sins it ought rather to fill us with Humility and Confusion for in the Beginning it was not so God created us to live in all sorts of Delights without any Pain All this beautiful World was created to serve for Pleasures to the Body of Man and God himself was the Delight of his Soul But Sin only has changed that excellent Order and made Man subject to that over which he ought to rule because he had withdrawn his Subjection from God Our Sins have occasioned the Law of Penitence which Jesus Christ came to teach us by Word and Deed. This Penitence does not consist in Undergoing Pennances chosen by our selves and after our Fancy by which the Devil would drive us headlong and excite us to Vain-glory and which usually make Men presumptuous believing themselves to be better than others and that God is obliged to them for their good Works as the Pharisee All this proceeds from Self-love but true Penitence consists in taking patiently whatsoever God permits to befall us either to our Body Estate or Mind and willingly to suffer it in the Spirit of Penitence to satisfie for our Sins for every Moment there falls out Occasions of Suffering and and Submission so that we need not seek for them It is necessary that we practise this Resignation of our Will to God for accomplishing the saving Penitence which he has enjoined us and for the Exercise of all sort of Vertues 10. Since then the Justice of God could not permit that Pardon and Grace should be given to sinful Man but upon Condition that he turn away from Sin to God and in order to that live a Life of Penitence and co-operate with the Spirit of Suffering Self-denial and Mortification which God will communicate to him if he sincerely desire to be saved it is necessary that Man satisfie this Duty which is so just before God and which the Justice of God requires as well as the Nature of the thing it self This is that which she calls Man's Satisfying God's Justice on his Part this is that from which the Satisfaction of Jesus Christ does not procure us a Dispensation for then he had neither been just to God nor us but he merited the Acceptance of it at God's Hands and Grace and Strength for us to perform it and taught us how to undergo it If People are nice and captious and will needs carp at Words and Expressions as Satisfaction and the Satisfying the Justice of God while they understand what is meant by them no body will contend with them about them provided they grant the Truth and Reality of the thing that no body will be saved by the Merits and Satisfaction of Jesus Christ without the Mortification of their corrupt Nature and the Recovery of the Love of God It is good Consideration which is now generally assigned why God thought not fit as Governour of the World to pardon Rebellious Man without the Intervention of an expiatory Sacrifice in the Life and Death of Jesus Christ that Men might thereby see the Evil of Sin and God's infinite Hatred and Abhorrence of it and so might be diverted from continuing in it or returning to it It is for the very same Reason that God thought not fit to pardon Man for the Sufferings of Jesus Christ unless he also follow him in a Life of Penitence and Sufferings for we are not so sensible of what others suffer neither does it breed in us such an Abhorrence of that which has occasioned their Sufferings as when we suffer the like Pains and Evils our selves without which we have as superficial a Sense of them as of the Actings on a Theatre And therefore to give us the more lively Sense of the Sufferings of Jesus Christ and to enflame our Love to him
is impossible to observe and then to damn us for not observing them that it is to indulge and gratifie our corrupt Nature in following our own Wills and Inclinations and taking our Ease and Pleasure here and yet to give us the false Hopes of eternal Life and Salvation hereafter because of some speculative Doctrines and Opinions and some fine Words and Complements that we give to God Whosoever impartially considers the ordinary Systems that are given of the Christian Religion and the Use that the Generality of People make of them in their Lives and Practice will easily see that they are exactly calculated for dispensing with a Man's following closely the Life and Laws of Jesus Christ and allowing him to gratifie his corrupt and sinful Inclinations in things that do not sound harsh in the World and are not hateful before Men without using the indispensably necessary Means of mortifying the Love of himself and the World and recovering the Love of God It will not be impertinent on this Occasion that the most pious Dr. Henry More in his Divine Dialogues having set down his Reasons of hoping for a glorious State of the Church and a Renovation of it approaching lays down some Principles the Practice of which he thinks would hasten and advance those excellent Times and his last and chief Principle is Faith in the Power of God and the Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ which he has promised to all Believers that by this Assistance we may get the Conquest over all our Sins and Corruptions and perfect Holiness in the Fear of God that through the Spirit of Christ dwelling in us we are able to be reduced to that Rectitude of Life and Spirit which our Saviour sets out in his Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere in the Gospels It is this Doctrine he says that must renew the World in Righteousness and bring on those glorious Times For what Doctrine but this says he can reach the Hypocrisie of Mens Hearts who under Colour of not being able to be rid of all their Sins will set themselves against none or but the least considerable or will be sure to spare their darling Sins and perpetually decline that Self-resignation which is indispensably required of every true Christian nay they will quit none of them under Pretence we must necessarily retain a gradual Imperfection throughout And they will be sure to pitch on that Degree that is most for their own Ease and the Satisfaction of their own Lusts It is this Faith he says in the Promise of the Assistance of the Spirit of Christ in the new Birth that must renew the World into the Living Image of God and make all the Nations of the Earth Blessed which must bring the new Jerusalem from Heaven and will call down God himself to pitch his Tabernacle amongst Men. I can do all things through Christ that strengthens me Much more to this purpose is said there by that excellent Person If this be a Doctrine so necessary for renewing the World and awakening Men out of their deadly bloth and Slumber in their Sins what need have all the Pastours of the Church to lay it to heart themselves and withal to inculcate it more earnestly on the People And tho' perhaps in some particular Churches their Sermons Confessions of Faith and Catechisms have propagated quite contrary Doctrine yet that O! they may not continue to sow Pillows to the Armholes of Sinners and blow them up with the false Hopes of Salvation Wo to the Watchmen that do so Let us remember that the Possibility of obeying the Commands of God and the Duty of tending always to Perfection thro' Faith in Jesus Christ is the Doctrine of the Holy Scriptures and also of the holy Fathers The Love of God is shed abroad by the Holy Spirit in the Hearts of those who are truly justified And this begets the Love of our Neighbour and the fulfilling of the Law And this is the Love of God that we keep his Commandments and his Commandments are not grievous for whatsoever is born of God overcometh the World Whosoever is born of God doth not commit Sin for his Seed remaineth in him c. It is an impious thing to say the Commands of the Spirit are impossible Basil in verba Mos Attende tibi c. We detest says S. Augustin the Blasphemy of those who say that there is any thing impossible commanded by God to Man and that the Commands of God may not be observed by every Man This Doctrine has no dangerous Consequence provided 1. it be not founded on a Presumption of Man's Strength but only in the Power and Strength of the Holy Spirit 2. That they who have not attained to Perfection yet are not excluded from Salvation if they be in the Way to Perfection and tending to it 3. That it be not said that in that State there is not a Possibility of Sinning yea and of perishing 4. That it be acknowledged that this is not a Perfection of Degrees free of all Imperfection Yea the Scripture tells us of some that walked in all the Commandments of the Lord blameless But that the contrary Doctrine has mischievous and most damnable Consequences has been made appear Were it not better says one how imperfect so ever we are yet to hearken to those sincere and generous Souls that we may be animated by Hope and strengthened in God to become what we are not yet than to give ear to cowardly Seducers who as the guilty Spies in Moses's Time make the Peoples Hearts to melt and dispose them by their diabolical Lyes and Calumnies to rebel against God and to return into Egypt It is true say they the Land is a good Land flowing with Milk and Honey but the Cities are great and strong and there are mighty Giants there and a strong People we cannot overcome them for they are stronger than we It is true say they at present the State of Regeneration and of perfect Christianity is an excellent thing full of Divine Joy and Delight but it is of hard Access there are high Walls of Difficulties Sin and the Devil are strongly fortified in the Hearts of Men there are strong Passions and a profound Corruption there we can never overcome this which is stronger than we who being so frail cannot exactly do that which God has commanded us for that End These are the execrable Tongues and the living Interpreters of the Will of Satan whom they will curse to all Eternity who have been so unhappy as to hearken to them and to live in Sloth and be seduced by their Means Let us go up let us go up said Caleb and Joshua wisely let us go up boldly and possess this Land certainly we shall be stronger if we strive to please the Lord he will bring us into it and will give it to us Let us not rebel against the Lord let us not fear those Enemies we
till she forsook the World the Things of the World and Self that she might love God only and be resign'd to his Will in every thing In which Resolution she persevered so faithfully even to the end of her Life that she would rather have died a Thousand times than have desired any Creature or followed her own Will in any thing never undertaking any thing till she was first perswaded that it was the Good-will of God As appears every where in the Writings of Antonia Bourignon particularly in the Account of her inward and outward Life and the Continuation of it where this is sufficiently demonstrated Which Testimony tho' given by her self is nevertheless true as I have made appear in the Seventh Section IX Moreover this Testimony is confirm'd by many Good and Iâ—ous Men who knew Antonia Bourignon from her Infancy and did narrowly observe her Conversation Many such Testimonies are to be met with in that Treatise of A. B. which is called The Testimony of the Truth It is worthy of Observation that these Testimonies seem to have been published by the Providence of God that it might be evident to every one that A. B. led a Pious and Holy Life and that the Mouths of malicious Slanderers might be stopped not only by Two or Three Witnesses by whose Mouth every Truth is established but by such a Cloud of Witnesses who assure us that the Thoughts and Words of Antonia Bourignon were serious and pious even from her early Infancy so that observing the change that Man is subject to throughout all his Life and that he must part with all at Death while he seems to propose to himself in every thing that he undertakes an abiding and perpetual Good this made her conclude that we were not created for this wretched Life but for an abiding eternal and blessed Life of which she became so desirous that she counted all bodily Delights Recreations Pleasures fine Cloaths and all other perishing things as Dung and Loss for the Love of those good things which were Eternal and would never fail And about the Fourth Year of her Age having learned that our Lord Jesus Christ and his Apostles did lead a Life wholly free of all earthly and temporal Cares and Desires that they might only care and seek for those things which are above and are eternal she look'd on such a Life as most reasonable and worthy of a Man but observing that the Life of Christians now adays was altogether contrary to that kind of Life hence she concluded that they were not True Christians and begging that her Parents would have her to the Country where the Christians liv'd she vehemently thirsted to go thither that she might lead a truly Christian Life And tho' they endeavour'd to perswade her that she liv'd amongst Christians yet she could not believe this especially when advancing more in Years she found that the best among all the Parties of Christendom did still love and seek after earthly things so that their Deeds were directly opposite to the Deeds of Jesus Christ and of the First Christians While in the mean time our Saviour says expresly That the Disciple ought to be like his Master and that he who believes in him shall do the Works that he did yea greater Works than these as the Children of Abraham do the Works of Abraham X. As Antonia Bourignon grew in Years the Love of God and her Neighbour did encrease in her of which she gave infallible Proofs on all Occasions for observing that the Conversation of Men was an effectual Mean to withdraw us from God and to deprive us of his Love she therefore lived as solitarily as was possible not that she was Melancholly or Brainsick for such also seek to be Solitary but that applying her self to the Contemplation of God and of his Perfections she might the better continue in his Love She was otherwise of a chearful sociable and ingenuous Temper and understood well how they ought to carry themselves who desire to be lov'd by the World as appear'd in the time that she applied her self to the Conversation of the World XI Moreover she denied her self as to Meat Drink Apparel c. all things that were not absolutely necessary for the support of Life and this both that she might not adhere to any Creature and that she might bestow on the Poor and the Sick what she had beyond her Necessity And that Antonia Bourignon did these things not that she might be seen of Men like unto the Hypocrites but only from the Love of God and her Neighbour and things Eternal appears from hence that she did all these things in secret as much as was possible entering into her Chamber and shutting the Door pray'd to her Father in Secret and gave Alms her Lefthand not knowing what her Right-hand was doing She shew'd such a chearful Countenance that none but her pious Mother knew that she fasted XII That the Deeds and Actions of Antonia Bourignon did proceed from the Love of God appears also from this that she persever'd in them constantly to the end of her Life except that short time in which she engag'd her self â—n the Vanities of the World and no Reproaches Persecutions hard Usages with which she wrestled throughout all her Life did ever make her sâ—acken nor yet the Deceit fair Words and feign'd Sanctity of Hypocrites and Impostours who continually endeavour'd by many ways to distract her and to withdraw her from the Love of God So that she had received the Gift of Fortitude from the Holy Spirit to such a Degree that she would not have done any thing against the Will of God nor omitted that which she knew to be agreeable to the Will of God no not for the whole World And tho' she greatly desired Solitude because there she had learned to converse with God and to hear him in a profound Silence yet when the Glory of God or the Salvation of her Neighbour did require that she should converse with Men she willingly left that Solitude For she ever observed this Rule to prefer the Glory of God and the Salvation of her Neighbour to her own Profit being always ready not only to lay down her Life for her Neighbour but being content also to be blotted out of God's Book and with St. Paul to be an Anathema for her Christian Brethren XIII Antonia Bourignon finding that Virginity was most acceptable to God and an effectual Mean of persevering in the Love of God she therefore from her Childhood begg'd of God that she might be the Spouse of Jesus Christ earnestly desiring never to be married to any Man This she obtain'd so perfectly from God that she never entertain'd a Thought contrary to it tho' she was oft-times sought in Marriage by Persons who could have afforded her many worldly Advantages and her Parents were solicitous to have her married Yea her Father contrary to her Will promised her in Marriage to
that you shall re-establish his Gospel-Spirit upon Earth among Men and Women that a great Number shall follow you to the Desart and out of the Hurry of the World and such like Promises which not being yet fulfilled it follows you cannot die yet since the Work for which God raised you up is not yet done and God will not forsake his Work She answer'd God will not give over his Work neither will he fail in his Promise but I have already seen enough that may save the Truth of his Promise tho' I die I have seen the Accomplishment of it in part by the first Fruits tho' not so perfectly God has already given me several Children I have some of them who are gone to him I have seen some of them follow me in Retiring from the World and hear me with all their Heart and that of all sorts tho' they have neither been in so great Numbers nor so perfect Nevertheless this is enough to have seen by the first Fruits the Truth of the Promises of God which on his Part he never fails to fulfil entirely But when Men do not correspond thereto God leaves them retakes from them his Gifts and seeks out other Subjects fitter to receive the Accomplishment of what he promises Whereas Men at present do render themselves unworthy of it and will not acknowledge nor receive the remarkable Graces that God offers them I greatly fear lest God withdraw his Gifts from them and turn himself to others so I cannot assure you that I shall not die shortly On the contrary when I consider the Ingratitude and Vnthankfulness which Men shew for the Favours of God I doubt if God will not shortly take me out of the World But added she suppose God withdraw me what is your Concern with my Person You ought not for this to leave off to seek God to cleave to him to do the best that is possible for you to enjoy his Spirit and then you shall have no more need of my Person for there is nothing in me to be esteemed nor sought after nor followed but the Spirit that guides me LXXVI So long as her Enemies knew not that she was at Hamburgh she liv'd peaceably enough but it coming at last to the Ears of the Lutheran Pastors they were the more affected with it that one or two of their Hearers relish'd the Truth of her Writings which put them into an extream Jealousie the predominant Passion of Churchmen They set Spies on her Friends who went to see her and having thereby found her Lodging and being certainly inform'd of her being there they assemble in Consistory and conclude to depute two of their number to Morrow Morning to represent this to the Magistrates that they might preserve the City and Religion from being infected with so great an Evil. A. B. was advertised of this and convey'd about Ten a Clock at Night to a little Garret beside a poor Man having sent her Manuscripts before her On the Morrow the Council sent four armed Sergeants to bring her to the Town-House but did not find her She staid fifteen Days in this little Garret from whence she wrote Letters to encourage her Friends But her Enemies persisting in their search for her she resolved to go to Friesland to a Baron who had invited her thither So she parted from Hamburg the 26th of June 1677. LXXVII After several Troubles in her Journey she came at last to the Lordship of Lutzburgh in East-Friesland and being well received by the Lord of the Place sent for her Friends to Sleswick who had endured much from the Rage of the People and Pastors there Reflecting on the Place where she was she judged it proper to live in according to the Designs of God who had already said to her The Perfection that I desire is to have your Heart entirely looss'd from all the Goods of the World 2dly From all the Creatures 3dly From the Love of ones self and to desire nothing but God alone To live in a forgetfulness of all the World To shut up your selves in some Place apart To offer and give up your selves entirely unto God Not to aim at any good things upon Earth To live all in common on the same Revenue and the same Entertainment And that without any other Engagement or Bond but the Love of God and without any other Rule but the Holy Gospel To receive all Souls who are fit and dispos'd for it without regarding whether they have temporal Means or not and this after the same Manner with the Christians of the Primitive Church God had also said unto her formerly upon Occasion of this Petition which she often put up unto him Lord what wilt thou have me to do Separate your selves entirely from Men. Keep silence Possess nothing in Property the Earth is sufficient to maintain your Life Do not entertain your Body but with its own Labour Never give it any thing but its Necessity Let nothing be in the Lodging but that the use of which is necessary Continue always in Simplicity and Poverty of Spirit Have no Priests but for necessity Let nothing be divided among you but let all be common without Preference Manure the Ground Be united as I am with my Father Let it be your only care to loosen Souls from the Earth I will take care of the rest LXXVIII She accepted the Care of a Hospital with which the Baron was charg'd by his Ancestors for a Retreat to Stran ers and the Persecuted and to her great Satisfaction she was freed of this Charge by a Letter from the Baron after having born it about two Years with Trouble and without any Fruit for the Glory of God There came thither some Strangers from Holland Hamburgh and elsewhere to lead as they said a Christian Life with her but really they gave her only much Trouble by bringing Dispositions quite contrary to that Design So they return'd whither they pleas'd While she and hers enjoy'd any Health they applied themselves to the care of Houshold Affairs to a Country Life to Husbandry the feeding of Beasts she sometimes to write and others to translate her Writings or put them in a Condition of being printed She was visited by many Persons even of Quality who came more than once and from several Places to converse with her She wrote here the Letter which makes the Body of the First Part of The Renovation of the Gospel Spirit and the Introduction that is prefixt to it She finish'd there the Second Part which she had began formerly and began the Third which is not finish'd she being employ'd in it when the last Persecutions and Death came upon her she made ready also the best part of her Manuscripts for the Press LXXIX She had there two long Sicknesses the first a continued Fever for some Months and the other a violent Quartan Ague which lasted for sixteen or eighteen Months When she was at the worst two of
excuses himself that he offers to judge and censure her Actions If he satisfie himself I shall excuse him but can find no excuse for his Misrepresentations and giving these as the greatest Proofs of Sanctity adduced by her Friends which neither she nor they reckon to be such viz. Affected Solitude and Retirement Celibacy Fastings Watchings Humiliations wearing of Sackcloth a contempt of the common Ornaments of her Sex with such like Austerities and great Raptures and Extasies in Devotion and declaring that he perceives no singular Instance of Sanctity mention'd by them beside those For it was easie to observe from the Accounts given of her that she lived as one constantly travelling towards Eternity and as such studied in all things to conform her Life to that of Jesus Christ I shall not here recount the many Instances of this which aâ—e to be seen in the First Part of the Apology and in the Character given of her in the end of the Apology but shall refer the Doctor to the Places cited on the Margent in which Places he will see some Instances of true Sanctity which he did not think fit to notice how observable soever they be in her own Writings and in the Accounts that are given of her by those who knew her in her Youth and Old Age and in all the Stages of her Life in the Temoign de la Verite and particularly in that by Mr. Franken Merchant in Amsterdam In the Eighteenth Article he speaks as if A. B. and others in comparing her Life with that of Jesus Christ thought that there were an Equality without giving any Evidence for it the thing is utterly false both she and they affirm only that she was a Follower of Jesus Christ she makes the Essence of Christianity to consist in the Imitation of Jesus Christ and in all her Writings lays before us his Life and Spirit for our Imitation in a way more divine and forcible than the general way of sermonizing And if her Vertues were truly Transcripts of the Life of Jesus it is very Just that they be represented to the World as such that so it may appear that it is the Devil and our corrupt Nature only that makes us believe that he is not imitable and that by such an Instance we may be stirred up to be true Followers of Jesus Christ In the next Article he hath a long Discourse upon Solitude Because he says it is recommended as a special Act of Sanctity by the Example and Sentiments of A. B. and because it has been much debated by Heathens and Christians by Ancients and Modern yet few says he have offered a just Decision of the Matter I was in good Hopes this should have been done by him yet at last he will not determine which of the States the Active or the Contemplative is fittest but then he thinks A mixt State the happiest which is plainly every Bodies State and gives his Reasons for it and corrects a vulgar Error concerning the Clergy as if they all ought to be Men of Study and Retirement which he says is a great Mistake since they are to shew the Possibility of the Divine Laws by their Practice and he who can hear himself prais'd without Vanity and accused without Wrath can accept of good things when they are offered without a brutal Joy and yet never be out of Humour when are they wanting Such a one prosecutes the End of his Calling better and his Conversation does more good c. A. B. considers and determines this Matter upon other Principles and by another Spirit It is not which of the States makes a Man a Drone or a Drudge in which a Man may enjoy himself best or do most good acquire Knowledge and Experience give himself to Study or to Business Which are the Measures by which the Doctor determines But she says we are all travelling to Eternity and our great Business both as Men and Christians is to give our whole Love to God and to keep our selves unspotted from the World that every one is obliged sincerely to examine their own Hearts and Consciences and whatever they find to be a Hindrance to the Love of God by all means to avoid it and whatever they find to be to them a necessary Help to it to embrace it that the Corruptions abounding in the World make it very hard for some to converse with it and not become Partakers of their Sin that many are so weak or so easie to be surprized by the Temptations it offers that they find it for their Safety as much as they can to avoid them by Solitude and Retirement that Babylon is presently over all and God calls to all his Children to come out of her least they be Partakers of her Sins and so of her Plagues also That nevertheless God has different Ways of bringing Souls unto himself and therefore what Method one follows and finds for his Eternal good he is not to impose upon others nor are others to despise him XXIII In the 20th Article the Doctor brings as he thinks certain Proofs that she had no Sactnity 1. That till the 18th Year of her Age she ran into a vain and light Conversation by which she lost her Conversation with God where in his Judgement he shews a flat Contradiction in the Preface to the English Reader of the Light of the World because a few Lines before he had affirmed this he had said that from her Childhood she had inward Conversation with God as if any could lose a thing they never had or never lose it because they had it from their Childhood However this he thinks proves That she could not be anointed by the Spirit of God to declare his Will for if it had been so it is no ways likely he would have left her so soon to her self or suffered her to be corrupted whom he had appointed to be so great a Light especially when that which tempted her was but the Censures and Misconstructions of other Men What could not the Spirit of God break through this Temptation Was her Grace too weak to resist it Must so Holy a Person do Evil merely to pass for a Wit The Doctor reasons upon other Principles different from those of the rest of Mankind when he comes to speak of A. B. Were not David and Solomon separated from the Womb Did not their Graces and Sanctity appear early Did they not fall into grievous Sins Is this a Proof that God did not anoint them to declare his Will Could not the Spirit of God break through their Temptations c. But moreover it is to be considered that it was no gross and scandalous Sin by which she lost her Conversation with God and yet notwithstanding she lived a Life of great Mortification for it for several Years 2. His next Proof is that even after this which is pretended to be the Time of her Conversation She did not determine the great State of her
blinded ones so often repeat that Jesus Christ has satisfied all for us and say that I reject his Merits by teaching that of necessity we must imitate him if we would be saved This might well surprize some weak Spirits who would think that they did Honour to Jesus Christ in saying that he had merited all for them and that they are too weak to endure any thing But this cannot surprize one of sound Judgment who will very clearly perceive that I esteem the Merits of Jesus Christ since to them I ascribe my eternal Happiness 11. For if Jesus Christ had not interposed with God his Father for our Reconciliation never any Man had been saved since every one of them would have turn'd away from God to cleave to their natural Sentiments of which they were become Idolaters to love them with all their heart as they were obliged to love God having chang'd the Love of God into that of our fleshly Sensualities Of necessity there behov'd to be a MEDIATOR between God and Man to make this RECONCILIATION and to obtain the PARDON of so great a Fault 12. We were all guilty of High Treason against God and justly condemn'd to eternal Punishment unable to deliver our selves from it having lost the Grace of God and become his Enemies There was nothing to be hop'd for on our part for obtaining Mercy for we even knew not our Miseries so far were we from having Strength to help them or Assurance to beg of God his Grace whose Enemies we had made our selves by our Sins There was no ground of hoping for Mercy by our selves therefore JESUS CHRIST as our Advocate undertook our Cause and procur'd this Pardon not as the Ddvocates at the Tribunals of this World who plead that they may gain Money but as a divine Advocate who aims at nothing but his Father's Glory He offers to pay himself the Penalties due to our Sins that his Father might in justice pardon the Guilt of them and take us again into his Favour which he has assuredly obtain'd for Light and Grace have been given us by Jesus Christ otherwise no body would see from whence he had strayed by Sin nor whether he had gone by the forgetting of God 13. It is the Light only which Jesus Christ brought upon Earth that has made us see both the one and the other for after that he had obtain'd the PARDON of our Sins as to the Guilt by his Merits only who was innocent and subjected himself to Sufferings and to Death that he might reconcile us with God and deliver us from the Power of the Devil to which we had voluntarily subjected our selves this bowed the heart of God to speak after our way and forc'd his Will unto Mercy towards us This Grace was grace was granted unto us by God only for the Merits of Jesus Christ of his Death and his Sufferings without our Intervention So that Jesus Christ may for this be truly call'd our Saviour for he alone has saved us from the death of Sin and recover'd us from eternal Damnation into which we had miserably fallen through our own Fault and our Sins for it was impossible for Man to recover himself from so grievous a Fall 14. He would have remain'd to all Eternity in his Damnation without remedy since he saw not the means by which he might be re-united to his God But Jesus Christ brought Light unto them when he came into the World and has made them see by his Deeds and Words the things which had withdrawn them from God and what things they must do that they may return unto him for he was not satisfied to have obtained Grace for them but he would also procure their Salvation which cannot be obtain'd without the co-operation of our own Will because we are created by God free Creatures He cannot take back that which he his once given So that tho' God was able to create us of nothing without our own Will before we had a Being yet we cannot be saved without the co-operation of this Free will which he has given us for Adam could not be saved after his Sin without his accepting of the Penitence due unto it even so Jesus Christ cannot save Men by the Merit of his Sufferings and of his Death if they will not take the Remedies for their Evils 15. He is indeed the Physician who prepares Physick for our Souls and takes it himself in our presence but if we will not swallow it our selves it will have no operation upon us This we ought well to consider if we would know how Jesus Christ has suffered for us and how his Merits will be applied unto us for to believe foolishly that the Merits of Jesus Christ will save us without our co-operation is a very dangerous Mistake seeing God could not pardon the Sin of Adam who had committed but one Disobedience without obliging him to so long a Penitence how could he save us who have committed so great a number of Sins unless we will embrace for them the Sufferings which Jesus Christ has taught us since the Scripture assures us by Jesus Christ that unless we do Penitence we shall all perish 16. How can we refute this Truth by saying That we are too frail to imitate Jesus Christ This is directly to reject his Merits since they have merited for us Pardon and Grace to amend our Sins and to do Penitence for them They who after so many Favours say that they are uncapable to imitate him despise his Merits and will not have them applied unto them rejecting them as insufficient to give them strength to do well which is false for there is nothing wanting to us on God's part He says Be faithful in few things and I will set you over many things We have received by Jesus Christ the Light of Truth which is not a small Grace since by it we can discern Good and Evil and in what state our Soul in 17. If we were faithful in this Grace of Knowledge we would obtain that of amending our Faults and resisting Vice and after being faithful to this Resistance we would obtain Grace to renounce all together the Inclinations of our Nature and to die unto the Old Adam that we might live unto the New which is Jesus Christ This is to have no Faith nor Belief in Jesus Christ for if we did believe that he has merited for us the Grace of God by his Death and Sufferings it would be impossible to say or believe that we are too frail to be able to imitate him 17. Your Friends reject my Sentiments as if I rejected the Merits of Jesus Christ and they do not see that it is they themselves who do indeed reject them while they say that they esteem them This cannot proceed but from a great blindness of Spirit that they do not sufficiently-discover it and in this they are much to be lamented since they cannot be saved in this Belief because Faith without
it to the Lord 〈…〉 not the Day to the Lord he doth not regard 〈◊〉 He that eateth eateth to the Lord and he giveth God thanks and he that eateth not to the Lord he 〈◊〉 not and he giventh God thanks But why dost thou 〈◊〉 thy Brother or why dost thou set a nought thy Brother for we shall all stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ For the Kingdom of God is not Meat and Drink but Righteousness and Peace and Joy in the Holy Ghost Let us therefore follow after the things that make for Peace and things wherewith one may edisie another XX. 5. The Writings of A. B. serve to vindicate and reseue the Doctrine of Jesus Christ from the false Glosses which the several Parties of Christendom have put upon it and whereby they have made it of none effect The Corruption of Man's Nature leads him to please himself and to follow his own Inclinations and yet while he does so he is content to believe that he pleases God and does his 〈◊〉 and therefore he puts such Glosses on the Laws 〈◊〉 Commands of God as many reconcile them to his corrupt Practice Thus she Jewish Church had advanced to that Heâ—â—â—hth of Corruption when our Saviour came into the World that they had glossed away the whole Law of God and made it of no Effect by their Traditions And therefore our Lord Jesus Christ takes care to vindicate Gods Law from their corrupt Glosses and most clearly and plainly to point out Man's Duty and the Way to eternal Life But as the World grows older the Corruption of Man's Nature encreases and becomes more subtle and refin'd so that the Professors of Christianity now adays have as palpably glossed away the Law of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as ever the Scribes and Pharisees had done to the Law of Moses for which there needs no greater Proof than to compare their Systems and Explications with the Gospel-Law it self and their Practice with their Opinion and Belief For tho' their Lives be in nothing like that of Jesus Christ yet they believe they are good Christians and hope to be saved by his Merits Now which is a singular Providence of God those Writings do most plainly vindicate the Gospel of Jesus Christ from the false Glosses put upon it They plainly shew that there is no Way to Salvation but by the Mortification of our corrupt Nature and self-Self-love and by the Imitation of Jesus Christ dying with him to all the Eases Honours Riches and Pleasures of this World And tho' no body does this yet they think they are good Christians tho' every one seek themselves their own Glory and their own Interest and have form'd Glosses on the Doctrine of Christ that may excuse them They are frail they cannot keep the Commandments of God they hope to be sav'd by the Merits of Jesus Christ thro' Faith in him not considering that the Laws of Christ are given us because of our Frailty and as the most effectual Means to recover the Love of God and that none will be saved by the Merits of Jesus Christ but they who follow his Example XXI 6. Those Writings do strike at the Root of the Corruption of Man's Nature and shew the Way to a true Reformation indeed Many have cried out upon the Corruptions of the Church and have set up to reform the World and these Corruptions being so visible it was easie for such to draw Disciples after them But then what has their Reformations been but a shaking off of some outward Rites Forms and Opinions which had been abused and taking up others in their stead as far from the Essence of True Christianity and in the mean time gratifying still their corrupt Inclinations their Pride their Love of the World their sensual Appetities under the Cover of their peculiar Forms and Opinions And still a new Sett discovering the Abuses of the former stands up for a New Reformation by another Form of Rites and speculative Doctrines Not but that there may have been good Men in all these Parties but that this is the Spirit that runs thro' all is but too visible It is as if People designing to cut down a Tree whose Sap and Fruits were full of deadly Poison should labour to do it only by lopping off some Branckes or plucking off some Leaves sometimes on this side and sometimes on the other while they still cultivate the Tree carefully about the Root and what they have done serves only to make it sprout forth on other Sides with the greater Force and Vigour or as our Saviour shews it is the making clean the out-side of the Cup while within it is full of Corruption Thus Men reform from some sinful Practices that have an ill Name in the World but then they gratifie their corrupt Inclinations more freely in other things Whereas the Root ought to be struck at the Heart made clean within and a Reformation made by taking up the first Institution of Christ himself who cloathing himself with our Mortality that he might lead us into the right Way of Salvation he has taken us by the Hand telling us I am the Way the Truth and the Life I am the Door he that enters by me shall be saved And whosoever will come after me must deny himself and take up his Cross and follow me This is the true Institution of Jesus Christ and they who neglect this and seem zealous for other things are not true Christians and they who pretend to reform Religion without bringing Men back to the first Institution of Jesus Christ and not straying from its Rules make only new Institutions and Religions no true Reformation XXII 7. The Writings of A. B. do tend to take Men off from a dry barren dead superficial and speculative Knowledge of Divine Things and to lead them to a solid living practical and fruitful Knowledge of them There is a speculative Knowledge of things and there is a sensible and affecting Knowledge of them This communicates to us their Qualities and makes us to enjoy them and the other gives us only their superficial Pictures or Idea's Thus when we open our Eyes and behold the Sun we enjoy his Light and his Heat he gives us Delight and Pleasure he lets us see the Beauty of all the Creatures round about us he enlightens our Path and lets us see where to set our Feet But in the Absence of the Light and Sun when we form to our selves Idea's and Pictures of them and give our selves to Speculation and Reasoning about these this is but an empty dead superficial and barren Knowledge the Idea's are true but they do not give us Light and Heat and Delight and a View of the Beauty of all the Creatures as the Sun himself did And if we had been born blind and knew nothing of the Light and Sun but what we had from the Discourse and Information of others then our very Idea's and Pictures of
them would be false and nothing but Chimera's of our own Imagination The Analogy holds in Divine and Spiritual Things as well as in Bodily and Material ones There is a solid substantial living and fruitful Knowledge of them when God communicates himself to the Soul and brings along with him his Love and Light and Joy and Peace These are all felt by it as we feel the Light when it shines into our Eyes This Knowledge is to be had only from God as the Sun and Light can be seen only by themselves For the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God Tho' the Sun shine never so brightly yet if we be shut up with thick Walls round about us or if our Eyes be blinded we cannot behold the Light This is the State we are born in in corrupt Nature The Light shines in Darkness and the Darkness comprehends it not The natural Man perceives not the things that are of God but they are Foolishness to him neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned Those Impediments and Distempers must be removed if we would know God aright and therefore the Light has embodied himself and the Word became Flesh and dwelt among us and became in all things like to us except Sin that he might shew us how to come to God not by much Reading nor great Learning nor high Speculations but by becoming like little Children by Simplicity and Singleness of Heart by Humility and Prayer by taking off our Desires from all other things and turning our Souls to God Blessed are the pure in Heart for they shall see God If thine Eye be single thy whole Body shall be full of Light The meek will he teach his Way I am the Light of the World says Christ he that follows me shall not walk in Darkness but shall have the Light of Life The Divine Knowledge that is thus obtained is solid and living it satisfies the Heart it enflames it with Charity the Love of God and our Neighbours this Wisdom that is from above is pure and peaceable gentle and easie to be entreated full of Mercy and good Fruits without Partiality and without Hypocrisie There is another Knowledge of Divine Things which is only superficial and speculative and consists in the forming to our selves the Pictures of Divine Things in the Absence of the Things themselves and employing our Thoughts and Faculties about these If we do this only in so far as it may be helpful to excite us to the other and to labour after those Dispositions that may make us meet for it it may be a good Handmaid and Subservient to it But if we make it our Study and employ our Time and Faculties about it we do as foolishly as they who being hungry and thirsty and depriv'd of the Light of the Sun should with the dim Light of a Candle go into a Gallery and view the Pictures of the Light and Sun and of all sorts of delicate Wines and Meats and should draw a great many of these themselves each Club contending that their Pictures were the truest quarrelling and fighting about them and and forcing one another to assent and swear to their Belief and Opinion of them and hating such as differed from them and were so craz'd in their Imaginations as to fansie they did eat and drink and enjoy the Light but when they awake their Soul is empty This is that Theology which has overspread the Christian World for the cultivating of which Seminaries are erected Masters and Professors set apart the Youth trained up to handle their Weapons and to argue Pro and Con upon every Head The very Catechisms fill'd with the nice Speculations of the respective Parties and the People to con their hard Words and to think themselves mighty knowing in Religion In this thousands of Volumes are written and the Opinions and Pictures drawn by former Ages enquir'd into and curious Criticisms made about every Line in the Study of which Divines employ their Time and Talents In this the Preachers multiply Sermons giving Stones for Bread and the People have itching Ears Ever learning and never be able to come to the Knowledge of the Truth like Physicians and Patients that should love to talk and hear respectively elaborate Discourses about Receipts of Physick the Receipts being plain enough of themselves without ever applying effectually to use them In this Men employ their eal to maintain their Opinions to form and foster Sects and Schisms to multiply Debates and Controversies to hate and malign those that differ from them to raise Tumults and Rabbles to animate Princes against their People and People against their Princes and to fill the World with Blood and Confusion Now all the Writings of A. B. tend to lead Men to that Theology and Divine Wisdom that is to be had only by deep Humilty of Heart and Poverty of Spirit to be learn'd only in the School of Jesus Christ by denying of themselves and following of him and to take them of from that false and superficial Knowledge of Divine Things which stands in a perfect Opposition to the other It makes the Mind incapable of being enlightned by the Spirit of God it keeps it in a constant Amusement it is that Knowledge that puffs up and makes us think we know something when we know nothing as we ought to know but if any Man love God the same is known of him It is the Wisdom that descends not above but is earthly sensual and devilish working Envy Strife and Confusion and every evil Work It is of this that God threatned he would destroy the Wisdom of the Wise and bring to nought the Vnderstanding of the Prudent Therefore God hath chosen the foolish things of the World to confound the Wise He chose for his Aposles simple illiterate Men and when the Learned came to him he despised their Wisdom sending Paul to School as an Ignorant to learn of Ananias what he ought to do And when Nicodemus came to be his Disciple the only learned Man that came to be converted by him he declar'd to him with Asseverations that unless he were converted and became as a little Child he could not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven to make him understand that his Learning and Wisdom was a Hinderance to it that he must turn away from it to embrace the Simplicity of a Child What he says to him he says to all the Learned that shall ever be in the World Nicodemus was already turned from Evil to Good when he offered to be his Disciple but this was not enough Jesus Christ declares to him that notwithstanding of this he shall not enter there unless he become as a little Child learning the Simplicity of Jesus Christ and detesting the Wisdom and Learning of Men. If the Wisdom and Studies of Men were not Hinderances to them why would he have them Simple as Children The same Spirit
Nothingness and to leave all these things which seem disputable to the Wisdom of God reckoning our selves unworthy to be able to comprehend what he is how he does his Works and by what means he saves Men relying on the Faith that shews us that he does all things in Goodness Righteousness and Truth without amusing our selves with any other thing but to put in practice the things which he has openly declar'd to us by his Gospel which are necessary for our Salvation such as Humility of Heart Self-denial the Love of God and the Love of our Neighbour It is better to exercise our selves in these solid Doctrines than to break our Heads in disputing and desiring to comprehend what is in God or how he governs Men Better let our selves be govern'd by him as little Children than to be inform'd how he will govern us It is to this says he that I exhort all the World knowing well that all the rest is nothing but Vanity and Amusement of Spirit For all the Learning and Curiosities of all the Men in the World cannot save us on the contrary their Doctrines Learning and Sentiments do rather withdraw us from God and our Salvation They either furnish us with means of Self-presumption or they slacken our Care to work out our Salvation Those words of Scripture which seem to say that God reprobates or damns Men cannot be understood but by the Signification of them which cannot be known but by the Light of Faith for if we take these words according to our Sense we should speak Evil of God and believe that he is Furious or Evil which cannot be for he is all Goodness all Peace and Tranquility and therefore he who would not utter Slanders against God ought not to stick to the Terms of the Scripture but in so far as they lead us to love and adore God or to the knowledge of our own Nothingness and Charity to our Neighbour for God has neither said nor taught to us but the things which tend to these Truths Thus when we believe that all Grace and Salvation comes immediately from God as it is true because we are Nothings then we honour God and acknowledge his Almighty Power in making so great things by his Grace of nothing and we must needs love him also by this Consideration and beg that he will continue and encrease this Grace and when we believe that God is so Gracious towards us that as soon as a sinner shall repent and turn unto him he will have Mercy on him this reinforces our Love to him in consideration of the Love he bears us so mercifully to Pardon us In these two Senses we may hold different Opinions about Grace and believe that it comes entirely from God and believe also that Men may have it when they will since God never rejects a penitent Sinner But whether we hold the one or the other of these in terms which do not tend to humble us and to acknowledge the Greatness of God that we may love and adore him it is an evil thing and it is a great rashness for Man to interpret and corrupt the Scriptures by Terms which authorize a Remissness in Vertue For they who will Gloss on the Scripture Words might say that God spoke not truly when he said to Jonas yet Forty Days and Ninevah shall be destroyed for the thing did not fall out according to the Terms which were not conditional but absolute Yet notwithstanding we ought not to surprize God in his Words or in the Scripture Terms but we ought to draw profit to our Souls from them conformably to his Designs who speaks only for our Profit He says absolutely that Ninevah shall be destroyed because the Inhabitants merited this Sentence the Justice of God condemn'd their Injustice but how soon they repented and embraced Penitence his Goodness and Mercy did also pardon them We must not therefore say that God did not speak truly but that he judg'd them justly and that he afterwards mercifully pardon'd them without being nice or grumbling about the Form of his Words or Expressions which are design'd only to make us grosly to understand the things according to our Capacity and Weakness These are certainly most excellent Cautions as to the expounding and understanding of the Holy Scriptures where the most necessary Duties are most plainly set down and obscure things cannot be discovered by human Wisdom but by Divine Faith and by the same Spirit that endited them where we ought not to quibble about Words and Phâ—ases but so to consider them as may tend most to the Love of God and Charity to our Neighbours and a deep Sense of our own Nothingness This is the excellent Rule given by S. Augustine hereafter to be mentioned this is the Method which the holy Fathers observed in interpreting the Holy Scriptures which makes their Writings so full of Unction and how desirable a Blessing is it that they who write Commentaries now adays may be acted by the same Spirit but this is thought too mean and simple for the Learning and Criticks of this Age. XXVII 12. The Clearing of Difficulties about Divine Truths in a few Words is likewise a singular Quality of those Writings The Learned we see still wrangle about them to Eternity writing huge Volumes and confounding rather than clearing them by a Multitude of Words and Distinctions The Doctrines about Grace Predestination and the Free-will of Man have been toss'd unsatisfactorily thro' many Ages Multitudes of Volumes written concerning them and yet the greatest Difficulties still left unresolved both Sides having a Mixture of Truth and Error the one that they might give all to God taking from Man what he had irrevocably given him and the other that they might reserve this to Man taking from God and subjecting to the Caprice of Man that which belongs to the pure Grace of God and from both there do follow Consequences most injurious to God and most prejudicial to the Salvation of Men tho' disclaimed by the most Now in two or three Sheets of Paper of those Writings there is more said for the clearing of those Difficulties than in whole Libraries of Volumes This in the â— and 2. Chap. of the 1. Part of Academ des Scavans Theologiens written upon Occasion of Conferences with and at the Desire of a learned and pious Divine Mr. Peter Noels Canon at Maline a Jansenist who had been Secretary to the famous Jansâ—nius Yprensis and had a great Veneration for this Virgin and her Writings to his Death I shall mention another Instance of this Nature of Mr. Gilleman's Canon and Arch-Priest at Gaunt famous there for some Writings who having ask'd her Judgment of the Doctrine of the Casuists then much talk'd of viz. That a Man may be sav'd by Attrition without Contrition by Sorrow for his Sins without the Love of God telling her that he had writ a large Volume against this false Doctrine she told him
not interpos'd and become a Mediator between God and them who being touch'd with a deep fence of the wretched State into which Man had plung'd himself he ardently prays and interceeds with his Heavenly Father that he would have pity on those his wretched rebellious Creatures and his Brethren that he would be pleas'd to pardon them grant them his Grace tho' most unworthy of it and â—llow them yet a Time of Trial becoming Surety for them that they should detest and abhor their Corruption deny themselves and return to the Love of God His Mediation is accepted and upon the account of his Merits and Intercession Man is pardoned Grace is given him of new and a Time of Trial allow'd him in which he must lead a Life of Penitence and thereby mortifie his Corrupt Nature and return to the Love of God 2. The Time of Trial given to Man at first was a State of Pleasure and Delights but since the Fall of Man the Time of Trial assign'd him is a State of Labour and Toil and therefore God thrust Man out of a delightful Paradice and suffered the Malediction and Curse of his Sin to fall upon the Creatures in a great measure that they all might afford him Vexation instead of Pleasure and so he might have occasion of doing Penitence because he had turn'd away his Heart and Affections from God and set them on the Creature 3. The Son of God having undertaken the Recovery of Mankind out of pure Love and Compassion he provides means and remedies according to the different states of their Maladies The First Command he gives Man as a necessary mean of his Recovery is a Life of Penitence and Labour to eat his Meat in the sweat of his Face but Men multiplying their Sins he multiplied his Commands as so many means to turn them from their Sins and gave them variety of Precepts to make them think upon God in all their Actions and Words so that their Hearts might be in a continual Elevation to him But they cleave to the Letter of the Law without comprehending the Sence of it and turn'd away yet more from the Love of God placing their Affections on the Creatures the Riches Pleasures and Honours of this Life pleasing themselves with the outside of their Rites and Ceremonies 4. When all other means prov'd unsuccessful Jesus Christ tries the last Remedy Men were not capable in their Mortal State of being taught by him in his Glorious Body He had obtain'd of his Father to give them in Spirit good Thoughts and Motions yea Divine and Supernatural Light but all this was not capable to convert them or to make them sensible they were in a State of Damnation because of each one 's inveterate habit to follow their brutish Nature There was need of a Mean visible and sensible to their Corruption to move their Hearts otherwise they had all been lost without a sence of their own Misery all perishing without perceiving it by a damnable Imitation of one another thus all running in the Broad Way to Hell Having therefore obtain'd from his Father Mercy and Pardon for them upon their Repentance Jesus Christ resolves to become a Mortal Man He therefore cloaths himself with our Mortality and bringing along with him his Divine Light to enlighten them and his Divine Love to enflame them he becomes in all things like to Corrupt Man yet without Sin he teaches them by his Word and his by Example how they should mortifie their Corrupt Nature do Penitence and recover the Love of God he charges himself with the miseries and frailty that Sin has brought upon Humane Nature taking on himself all their Maledictions and the Punishments due to their Sins which he did bear and suffer as if he had been the greatest of all Sinners living a Life of extream Poverty Labour Contempt and Pain undergoing a shameful painful and accursed Death and so obtaining Pardon for all who should thus follow his Steps 5. God made his Will known to good Men to the ancient Patriarchs and Prophets by the Organ of the Glorious Body of Jesus Christ But since Men were taught by Jesus Christ in his Mortal Body there is no need to see or understand by his Glorious Body They have received the Light of Truth so that they need not bodily Visions to understand the Will of God Jesus Christ speaks now to them in Spirit and in Truth enlightning Souls with his Divine Light inwardly by his Holy Spirit which operates in Souls disengag'd from themselves and from all earthly Affections acting in them sweetly and powerfully when the Soul is in Peace and Tranquility of Mind It hears then as a soft Wind which surrounding it with Joy makes it see what it ought to do and avoid both for its own Conduct and for that of other well-dispos'd People 4. As to the Present State of the World the Summ of her Accessory Sentiments are 1. THAT all Men have corrupted their Ways and that there are no True Christians in the World truly mortified to corrupt Nature and regenerated in the Love of God and the Spirit of Jesus Christ 2. That the present State of Christendom is a perfect Babel our Language being confounded and the Builders do not understand one another 3. That we have glossed away the Laws and Doctrine of Jesus Christ by our Expositions as much as the Scribes and Pharisees did Moses's Law by their Traditions 4. That we live presently in the Reign of Antichrist and that he rules in Spirit through all the Earth by his Three Antichristian Qualities which he sheds into Man's Nature Injustice Malice and Hypocrisie under a cover of Religion in Opposition to the Three Divine Qualities Righteousness Goodness and Truth which Jesus Christ came to plant in the Hearts and Lives of all his Disciples That Men seduce one another under fair Appearances That Sin is mask'd with Holiness and cover'd with Hypocrisie 5. That the Source of all the Evils in the Church is in the Corruption of the Pastors and Churchmen and that the Abomination of Desolation is in the Sanctuary That all the Degeneracy of Christians comes from the Degeneracy of their Guides 6. That the Wickedness of Man now being Universal and come to a height greater than in the Days of Noah the Sentence of Gods last Judgments is irrevocably past and the Plagues are begun and will continue till that by War Famine Pestilence and other grievous Judgments all the Wicked be consumed from off the Face of the Earth but this shall be done slowly and in a Course of many Years that many may thereby be awakened and brought to Repentance 5. As to the State of Things to come her Sentiments are 1. THAT God will yet once renew his Gospel-Spirit upon Earth and will fill well-disposed Souls with the Spirit that Jesus Christ had while upon Earth and
these Stones with the same Spite against the Fellow Workmen and Fellow Stones which possest themselves and with great Fury should throw them at them and dash them to pieces against each other and so render them unfit for ever entring into the Building This would certainly be such a Babel as that nothing could exceed it The Parable is so plain it needs no Explication 10. To make appear that we have glossed away the Laws and Doctrines of Jesus Christ by our Explications of them as much as the Scribes and Pharisees did Mâ—ses's Law by their Traditions we need but consider that as the Pharisees tho' they retained still the Letter of the Law and were very zealous for it yet their Lives were contrary to it but they could so gloss and interpret it as to reconcile it to their Practice Even so tho' the Lives of Christians be in a far greater Contradiction to the Laws of Jesus Christ and they retain and honour the Letter of them still yet they have learned so to gloss and interpret them as to reconcile their Life with the Hopes of Heaven and the Favour of God and their Belief of their being Good Christians For if they had not put false Glosses on the Doctrine of Jesus Christ there is no Christian who desires to be saved that would live as they do at present for every one would see that he could not be sav'd after this manner and that the Lives of Christians now are quite contrary to those of the Primitive Church and the Institution of Jesus Christ His Words are plain and simple they need no Glosses He tells his Disciples they must not lay up Treasures upon Earth they must renounce all they Possess they must be poor in Spirit take the last Place and deny themselves Now if they employ all their Life in getting and keeping of worldly Goods if they seek after Places and Honours take their Delights and Ease follow their honest Inclinations and please themselves their Life would seem a plain Contradiction to the Doctrine of Jesus Christ but we have learned to Gloss so as to reconcile them It is but the Love of all these that Jesus Christ forbids and we are ready to make our selves believe that our Hearts are not set upon them as if the Bent of a Man's Desires and Pursuit could be towards a thing all his Life-time and his Heart not set upon it Jesus Christ knows well our Weakness and Frailty that we cannot be immers'd in worldly things without loving them more than the Body can lie in Snow without being chill'd by it and that we know not how much our Heart is glew'd to a thing till we be separated from it which is the mean also to wean our Hearts and therefore that we might not put false Glosses on his Doctrine he has explained it by his own Life he himself lived in perfect Poverty Contempt and Affliction was Poor as to Wealth Friends Honour Reputation Learning Greatness denied himself in every thing that we Love and Value and embraced the things that we abhor and dread But this we say was as our Redeemer to suffer and satisfie the Justice of God for our Sins and to merit for us Mercy and Pardon It was so but withal it was to give us an Example that we should follow his Steps His whole Life and Death was a continual Sacrifice to God renouncing all things that sensible Nature takes Pleasure in that we might learn from him how to make thus a continual Sacrifice of our Will and Desires and Satisfaction to God Oh! but we think he knows our Frailty and that we cannot do this and we rejoice that he has suffered thus for us and we hope in his Merits for Mercy and Salvation There is no Salvation indeed but by his Merits but they are apply'd only to those who follow his Example for he tells us none can come after him but they who deny themselves and take up their Cross and follow him and he lived after this manner that he might merit Grace for us to follow his Example so that we have no True Faith in his Merits when we think this impracticable But we have another Gloss yet whereby to indulge and gratifie corrupt Nature Jesus Christ lived after this manner not that we should live a Life actually strip'd of all worldly things that gratifie Nature and Self as his was but to teach us to be as poor of them in Spirit If we have them outwardly in Possession not to have our Hearts set on them and if we be deprived of them to be contented and resigned to the Will of God Indeed Poverty of Spirit is that in which Jesus Christ would have us mainly to follow him and if we be poor in Spirit in the midst of the greatest Abundance we are truly his Disciples But he that is poor in Heart seeks not for Wealth nor Pleasures nor Honours and if he have them they are a charge and burden to him and he takes no more of them for himself than simply serves the Necessities of Nature and that of the least and meanest rather than the best and choicest But the reason why Jesus Christ has given us such an Example and counselled us to follow it is because of our Weakness and Frailty If we can be poor in Spirit in the midst of the greatest Abundance there is no hazard of Wealth no need to abandon it but our Lord knew how hard it was for a rich Man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven He himself could have remained poor in Spirit in the greatest Affluence of worldly things but he knew it was impossible for us to do so too and therefore in Consideration of our Frailty and to give us an Example he came into the World strip'd of all that pleases and gratifies corrupt Nature that he might teach us the safest and surest way to mortifie our Love to the World and to our selves and to become poor in Spirit And that all our Glosses and Explications on this Doctrine and Life of Jesus Christ are false appears by the Fruits of them in our Hearts and Lives 11. That the Reign of Antichrist prevails in the World at present few Protestants do deny that his Empire is more Universal than is generally believed appears from this that the Devil being properly the Antichrist by counter-acting the Designs of Jesus Christ under a Cover of his Religion and being for him and by infusing his Nature and Qualities into Men he has accordingly instead of the Divine Qualities of Righteousness Goodness and Truth with which Jesus Christ came to inspire all his Disciples he has I say shed among the Professors of Christianity his contrary Evil Qualities of Injustice Malice and Hypocrisie under a Cover of Masses Communions Prayers Preachings and the other outward Forms of Christianity This is too evident a Truth to be denied And under this Cover keeps Men in a vain Amusement and makes
God giveth them Light and they shall reign for ever and ever see Isa 60. In a Word she makes appear that all the Holy Scriptures by Parables Figures and Prophecies do point out this Kingdom of Jesus Christ with Men This being the Sum of the Designs which God has over Men. And that this is a just and necessary thing it is unconceivable that God would have created this beautiful World only for this short Life of Penitence only for our Misery only to serve Devils and Men as Instruments of their Wickedness and Rebellion against him and then should abolish this great Work of his Hands That it is most just that all things be re-establish'd in their first State that all things be restored that Reparation be made of all the Injuries and Affronts done to his Humanity and to those who loved and followed him and that all that has been done unjustly be repaired both bodily and spiritually and that on the same Theatre that God having given Man both a Body and Soul there must be likewise a Paradise for both the Presence of God being the compleat Paradise of the one and all this visible World with all things in it freed from all Malignity and God dwelling visibly and bodily with Man therein the Paradise of the other which will endure for ever For God's Recompences are not temporal and finite but eternal as coming from an eternal God who cannot give finite or imperfect Gifts XLI These are the most singular of her Accessory Sentiments and by what has been said it appears that they are neither inconsistent with themselves nor with the Holy Scriptures nor with the necessary and essential Truths of Christianity that they serve to clear a thousand Passages of the Word of God that they tend to promote the Love of God and of all Men and lead us to mortifie our corrupt Nature and to despise this present World A. B. herself did not at first speak or write of these Sentiments but to some Friends and when they had shewn them to others she was troubled knowing that the Devil would take Advantage thereby to make them despise the other Truths necessary for their Salvation even as many of our Saviour's Disciples being offended at a hard Saying of his forsook him and walked no more with him And I would not have offered to give a Summary of those her Accessory Sentiments in this Apology but that they being now all publick in her printed Writings they who have set themselves to give an odious Character of her and her Sentiments to the World will be sure to dress them up in a Fool 's Coat to excite the People to cry out both of her and them Away with them Crucifie them And therefore I have chosen to give a simple and true Narrative of them even of those which seem most singular and extravagant All the Works of God are a Mystery and the most ordinary things the Formation of Man now and all the other Works would seem to us as strange if we were not accustomed to see them every Day Such things are not to be enquired into neither out of vain Curiosity nor from a disputing Humour which begets Presumption and Pride of Spirit for the Divine Mysteries are rather to be admir'd and ador'd than curiously search'd into by our blind Reason Let us make it our great Business to imitate Jesus Christ in Humility and Self-denial if we would be truly enlightned and delivered from all Blindness of Heart God walks with the Simple he reveals himself to the Humble he gives Understanding to little ones he opens his Meaning to pure Hearts and he hides his Grace from the Curious and the Proud Human Reason is weak and may be deceived but true Faith cannot be deceived See Psal 18. 118. XLII Now the Account I have given of the Sentiments of A. B. both as to the Essentials and Accessory Truths of Christianity is a just and true Representation which may be more fully and satisfyingly had from her own Writings And I shall leave it to all impartial Readers to consider whether the Character which some have been pleased to give of her Sentiments as heretical blasphemous ridiculous and extravagant be just and equal and if it be not the Result rather of their Mistakes and Prejudices than a plain and fair Account of her Doctrine and Sentiments The excellent Monsieur Paschal in his Pensees Chretiennes gives it as the most essential and distinguishing Mark and Character of true Religion that it makes its chief Precept and the great and essential Duty of Man to be To love God with all our Hearts and this he says is the peculiar and singular Character of the Christian Religion in Contradistinction to all others And if we shall impartially compare the Doctrine of Christianity as it represented in the Writings of A. B. with the Accounts of it delivered to us in the Systems of Divinity of the respective Parties in Christendom I think it will evidently appear that it is a most distinguishing Character of the former tho' it makes the Love of God the great End of Religion and all the other Duties of it means to bring us to that End and that the other tho' they cannot omit when they give an Account of Christianity to mention this as one of its great Precepts yet they so shuffle and confound Doctrines and give it such a Place in their Systems as may make People lay greater Stress on other things and give them Ground to hope they may be saved without it or without conforming our Lives to the Rules and Life of Jesus Christ which lead to it The End of the First Part. AN APOLOGY FOR M. ANT. BOVRIGNON PART II. An Answer to the Prejudices raised against her Sentiments and Writings I. THERE is nothing more ordinary than for People upon light and weak Grounds to take up Prejudices against the Persons and Sentiments of others and to judge rashly and inconsiderately of them and this is a Fault to which People of all Tempers are subject The Learned the Dogmatical and the Abettors of Parties cannot endure any thing that seems to lessen the Credit of their Sentiments or their Party they presently raise a Hue-and-Cry and do all they can to animate the People Thus the Scribes and Pharisees were full of Spite and Prejudice against our Lord Jesus Christ and inspir'd the People with the same Spirit The generality of Men see with other Mens Eyes and judge with other Mens Understandings they cannot be at the pains to weigh and consider things impartially themselves but they trust to the Skill and Sincerity of those who pretend to judge for them and such for the most part judging rashly and by their Passions lead the Multitude to do so too Yea even Persons of good Inclinations and who have a true Zeal for God and Divine things are apt to commit the same Fault Thus St. Paul before he was
true Man infinitely beloved by his Father full of Love to him and of Charity and Compassion for Man ardently intercedes with God for him that he would have Mercy on him His Father could refuse him nothing that was consistent with his Righteousness and Truth It was not just that he should receive Man into Favour if he should continue still to turn away his Love from God to the Creatures and to himself nor had it been just and safe to have restor'd him presently to the same State of Divine Communion and Joy from whence he had fallen it was necessary he should feel first the Evil of Forsaking his God that so his corrupt Nature might be mortified and he establish'd in the Love of God God then for the Merits and Intercession of Jesus Christ pardons Man upon Condition he turn again to the Love of his God from the Creatures and himself and for this End he communicates again to him his Light and Grace and allows him a Time of Trial wherein he is to do Penitence for offending his God that thereby his corrupt Nature and his Love to the Creatures and himself may be throughly mortified and he return and be establish'd in the Love of God Jesus Christ accepts of the Terms and becomes Surety for Man that he shall fulfil them and applies himself with ardent Love to bring Man back again to God The Delights of the Creatures being that which had turn'd away Man's Affections from God it was just and necessary that he should deny himself to them and make an entire Sacrifice of all those Delights and of his Lusts after them to the Love of God To make which the more easie for him the Earth was accursed for his Sake Jesus Christ coming now to interpose with God to bring him back to his Duty leaves no Means unessay'd to effectuate it of inward Light and Grace and outward Laws and Ordinances according to Man's State and Circumstances When the Corruption of Man's Nature had resisted and bassl'd all those Means yet nothing being able to quench his Love he at last cloaths himself with Man's mortal Nature puts on all his Infirmities becomes in all things like to him yet without Sin and as if he had been the greatest Sinner does Penitence for him denies himself to all Honours Riches Pleasures Sciences Eases Accommodations Self-seeking and Self-will lives and dies in perfect Poverty Contempt and Pain makes an enitre Sacrifice of himself his Life and all things of the World unto his God and this both that by his Doctrine and by his perfect Example he might shew Man what Way to return to God how to do Penitence for his Sins how to deny himself and take up his Cross and to make a Sacrifice of himself and all unto God and by doing all this in Man's Nature to shew him how practicable it was and also that for the sake of this pure and perfect Oblation of himself done from so great Love to God and Charity to Man God might be still moved to have Mercy on Man to grant him his Grace and to accept of his Penitence united to this Sacrifice of Jesus Christ What Jesus Christ has done and suffered for Man on Earth has infinitely heightned his Merits and the Power of his Intercession with God so that he obtains for Man Pardon and Grace and Time to repent and the being receiv'd into perfect Favour with God upon his Penitence as if he had never sinned Jesus Christ has satisfied on his part the Justice of God but they only receive the Benefit of it who follow his Example in denying themselves and taking up their Cross and do thereby mortifie their corrupt Nature and return to the Love of God It is in this Sence that we also must satisfie God's Justice not that we can make any Satisfaction to God proportionable to our Demerits Not that we can merit his Pardon or Salvation but it being just with God not to receive Man into Communion again with him till he do Penitence for his Sins and thereby mortifie his selfish and carnal Affections not that God stands in need of this but that it is absolutely necessary for Man's Recovery we cannot expect Salvation without satisfying in this manner on our part The Satisfaction of Jesus Christ for our Sins may be taken in two Sences by way of Merits or by way of Discharge The First way That he has thereby merited Pardon Grace and Salvation for all who shall follow his Example is most true The Second by way of Discharge That Jesus Christ has so fully satisfied the Justice of God for the Sins of his Elect that nothing is required of them but to believe and rely on his Merits and nothing due from them but by way of Gratitude as if God stood in need of their Services or that they need do for the mortifying of corrupt Nature as much only as their Love and Care for the World and themselves will permit and trust in Christ's Merits for the rest This I say is most false Christ having merited for us Grace to mortifie our corrupt Nature and Pardon and eternal Life if we return to the Love of God Again there is a twofold Substitution or the having one in our stead to satisfie the Justice of God for us There is a Substitution of Self-love and another of Charity or the Love of God The First is when we desire to gratifie our sensual and corrupt Nature and follow our own Wills and Lusts and are very well pleas'd to hear that there is one has suffered for us and satisfied God's Justice so that we are content to believe in him and hope in his Merits going on in the mean time to indulge our corrupt Nature excusing our selves because of our Frailty and Weakness and that we cannot do otherwise but our Saviour Jesus Christ has made an Atonement for all and we hope in his Merits This is a False Diabolical and Antichristian Substitution as A. B. makes abundantly appear through all her Writings The Substitution of Charity is when out of a deep Sence of our Baseness and Undutifulness to God and the Propensity of our Natures to continue so still and to gratifie our corrupt Inclinations we apply our selves by his Grace to deny our selves and to make a Sacrifice of all that 's dear to us to God in leading a Life of constant Penitence but seeing our Penitence bears not Proportion to the infinite Greatnes and Goodness of that God whom we have offended we rejoice to know that there is one of perfect Purity and in full Favour with God who for us has made a suitable Oblation of himself not to discharge us from a Life of Penitence but to obtain Grace for us to do it and Acceptance of it with God and shew us how to perform it To him we flie and for his sake we beg for the Acceptance of our imperfect Penitence and desire it may be united to his Sacrifice and done
when this is not fully done here it continues to be done in the other Life as the Soul is capable to admit it and its Indisposition requires This is a Doctrine very agreeable to the Tenour of the Holy Scriptures which tell us that God will render to every Man according to his Works that no unclean thing can enter into the Kingdom of Heaven that only the pure in Heart only shall see God The Sence of it seems to be imprinted in the Spirits of all Men from the Sence they have of the Purity and Righteousness of God and their Consciousness of their own Impurity The Heathens Jews Turks and Christians have been perswaded of it those of the Antient Church both Greek and Latin It is a Doctrine that most powerfully engages to lead a Life of Penitence here in which the Anguish and Pain of Purification is far less sensible and whereby a Soul may still acquire new Graces and Capacities of Attaining to a higher Degree of Glory whereas the Sufferings of Purification after Death are unspeakably more sensible and the Soul is not capable of advancing to a higher State It affords also great Consolation to truly sincere and pious Souls who seek God unfeignedly but are sensible of the greatness of their Corruption to know that God will not cast them off nor deny them his purifying Grace here and hereafter till he have made them fit Temples for himself to dwell in and will still so support them in the most dolorous Purification with a full Acquiescence in his righteous Will that they would not desire that it were otherwise but will say with Job Tho' he slay me yet will I trust in him I shall conclude this with a Passage of the most learned and pious Dr. William Forbes sometimes Bishop of Edinborough who disproving the Popish Purgatory and owning that the Greek Fathers and many of the Latins were for a State of Purification after this Life tho' he says without Pain he concludes thus Ad Contraversiam hanc tollendam vel saltem minnendam Romanenses Opinionem suam de Purgatorio punitivo quum nullis certis Fundamentis nec in Scripturis nec in primorum saeculorum Patribus nec in priscis Conciliis nitatur ut supra demonstratum est pro Fidei Articulo nec habeant ipsimet neque aliis obtrud in t Protestantes etiam quibus Opinio ista improbatur quidem Jure Meritoque Hereseos tamen aut Impietatis aperte eandem ne damnent Senientiae vero communi Graecorum atque etiam quorundam Virorum doctorum in Latina Ecclesia de Purgatorio expiatorio quod solum Purgatorii Nomen proprie loquendo meretur in quo sine Poenis Gehennalibus Animae Sanctorum quorum quasi media quaedam Conditio est in Coelis quidem sed in Coelorum Loco soli Deo noto magis magisque usque ad Diem Visionis Dei clarae fruentes Conspectu Consortio Humanitatis Christi sanctorum Angelorum perficiunt se in Dei Charitate per fervida amorosa Suspiria ut supra dictum est nutri pertinaciter obluctentur Sua enim atque ea quidem haud exigua probabilitate minime destituitur There are others who give unjust Representations of her Sentiments concerning Predestination Grace and Free-will I shall therefore give a just Account of them from her own Writings and in her own Words and no Reader needs think strange nor load her with Reproaches upon that Head if he find that in some things they differ from the Doctrine which he has been accustom'd to hear there are such differences of Sentiments upon these Subjects even among Persons of the same Communion X. As to the Doctrine of Predestination she says That God did certainly create all Men for Salvation and none for Damnation That God being infinitely Good without any mixture of Evil and his Nature Love nothing can come from him but what is Good but if he had created a Mass of absolutely reprobated he would have made Evil things That Predestination to Damnation could not come from God since the Damnation of â—oul is the greatest Evil in the World that this had been to give them occasion to curse him to all Eternity looking on him as very unjust toward them for having predestinated them for Damnation before they had received a Being without having merited or demerited any thing That in Truth and Justice such might have said Why didst thou not leave me into nothing rather than to have created me for an eternal Damnation What had I done before I had a Being to render me thus Miserable For it had been far better I had never been created than to have created me only for Damnation How cruel is it to hear that God should predestinate a Mass of Reprobates This is to proclaim God wicked in the Creation of Man For else he would not have created a Mass of Reprobates to be Miserable to all Eternity do what they will he could not create them for Damnation but out of pure Malice A greater Blasphemy cannot be uttered against God than this For it shocks all his Qualities of Goodness Righteousness and Truth without which he can never do any thing If he had created one part of Men for Damnation he should not have done a just thing since those Reproabates did not merit Damnation before they had a Being and could not in Justice be reprobated without having deserved it Neither could he exercise his Goodness in decreeing the Damnation of any thing since this Damnation is the greatest Evil in the World And how should he be true in reprobating those of whom he says that his Delight is to be with them since they are the Children of Men. This is inconsistent with the original Design of creating Man and the manner of his Formation He made him to take his Delight with him and that Man might love and enjoy his God he form'd him for that End after his own Image He created one Man only and in him all Men. Would he predestinate to Damnation a Creature whom he made to take his Delight with him before he had a Being whom he endued with such wonderful Perfections Was this only to damn him the more profoundly Were not all Men created in one Man for Grace and Salvation He took not two Masses of Earth to create the one of them for Salvation and the other for Damnation but one Mass only with which he created one Man only for Salvation creating in him all the Men that ever were or shall be he created them all in general in the State of Innocence and Salvation and for this End gave abundance of Graces both bodily and spiritual and that equally to all without Exception of any giving to all a Divine Soul and Free-will that they might be capable of all manner of Good And seeing he thus created all Men in Adam he could not have created any for Reprobation but all for Salvation Is
Can any thing fall out against the Will of God and which he has not decreed to fall out As I live saith the Lord I delight not in the Death of a Sinner Let no Man say when he is tempted that he is tempted of God O Israel thy Destruction is of thy self God did not decree that Man should sin nor that he would permit him to sin but took care by all means to prevent it and has spar'd no Mean to recover him from it But Man has wilfully destroyed himself God created him out of pure Love to delight himself in him and therefore to make this Love perfect and compleat he created him altogether Free and Perfect He would not bound nor limit the Will of Man whom he would needs make after his own Likeness to be his Spouse and not his Slave or constrain'd to do his Will as are all the other Creatures But Man was created altogether Free as a little God Sovereign and Ruler over the other Creatures and free to use them well or ill as he would If he had received only a limited Will he would have had no Divine Quality for God to take his Delight with him for that two Beings may find Contentment together there must be a Proportion and Sympathy between them God cannot take his Delight with any Creature of a bounded Will he himself being an infinite God there must be in Man some infinite Quality by which he may unite himself to God and that is an absolute Liberty of willing which nothing can constrain This was the most precious thing that God could give to Man for by it he was made like to God for otherwise he should have been a limited Creature in whom God could not take Pleasure Could God take Delight in a thing so unlike himself Could so powerful a God unite himself to such an impotent Creature that had not Free-will to love him God having no Bounds nor Limits could he take Pleasure in a Creature whose Will was bounded And could a limited Will attain to the Love of a God without Limits This is the only thing that makes Man capable of being united to God We see in Nature the Alliance is not true and agreeable if two Persons be not united in their Wills in God if there be Force Limitation or Constraint on either side the Contentment cannot be compleat This is the Figure of the perfectly Free Union that the Soul ought to have with God and if the Soul were constrain'd or forc'd to this Union God could not take perfect Delight in it Where there is Constraint there can be no perfect Love the Free Consent and Cooperation of two united must necessarily concur to make the Love compleat As God gave this Liberty to Man when he created him so he will never take it from him for his Designs are unchangable all his Works are Eternal and his Gifts are without Repentance Both Devils and Men shall have their Free-will to all Eternity else they could not do Evil for God never retracts what he has once given he will never retake those Divine Qualities the Divine Soul and Eternal Liberty and cannot bound them because he cannot be changeable in his Gifts nor can he take away what he has been pleas'd once to give If it be establish'd among Men to lay no longer Claim to a thing given how much more ought we to hold that God lays no Claim to the Free-will of Devils and Men to whom he voluntarily gave it The Devils and demned Souls will never use their Liberty to do well being so habituated to Evil and in the Element of it as the Holy Angels and Blessed Saints will never use their Liberty to do Evil it being swallowed up in God From hence it is evident that God did not predetermine Man from all Eternity to Good or Evil by any absolute Decree for this is to constrain that which he would have to be Free to ranverse the Order he had so wisely establish'd and to take from man the most precious thing that he gave him If he had made Man a limited Creature he would have predestinated all Men to Salvation so that none of them should have perished For all that God makes absolutely dependent on him is always Good without any mixture of Evil and it can never be that a limited Creature can do Evil since God can create nothing that is Evil. God endued Man with such an unlimited Free-will that he would not only not predetermine him but also not foresee how he should dispose of that Free-will that he might not thereby limit it or oblige Man to do what he had foreseen His Power and Wisdom is as great yea far more conspicuous in forming him thus Free and letting him fully enjoy the Liberty that he had given him than if he had limited him by Fore-sight and Predestination God being Almighty can save or damn as he pleases and no body can withstand him for all are subject to him but he neither does nor ever will do it but in the Ways which his powerful Wisdom and the Love he has conceived for Man have resolved upon whom he would needs create like unto himself by the absolute Free-will he gave him and would neither constrain him to Good nor hinder him from Evil but would have him his by pure Love with the free Consent of his Will that he might delight in him and Man also might voluntarily delight in the Love of his God Thus we see how Sin came into the World and how Man damns himself God neither willed it nor permitted it that he might bring Glory to himself a most blasphemous Sentiment but against the Will of God Man abused the most precious Gift that could be bestowed upon him his Free-will and turn'd away his Love from God and placed it on himself and on the Creature God does not permit Man to do Evil but by all Means restrains him He permits him only to use the Free-will he has given him and having endued him with an immortal Soul and an eternal Liberty he can no more take away this Liberty without destroying his Nature and making him cease to be Man than he can make a Circle to be a Square without destroying the Nature of a Circle God by giving Man Free-will to make him capable of the greatest Good is no more the Cause of Man's Sin and Reprobation than a Cutler would be the Cause of a Lord 's murthering of his Brother because it was done with a Weapon which he had made for him of well-temper'd Steel of a sharp Edge and for good Uses It would be a cruel Malice to accuse the Cutler of the Murther the Malice is infinitely greater to say that God created us for Damnation or is the Cause of it because he has given us Free-will You see saith S. Augustin how much Good is wanting to the Body where the Hands are wanting and yet he makes ill use of his Hands who
to wit from an evil Heart evil Things For the Heart possess'd with self-Self-love cleaving to its Corruption is filled only with evil Things from whence nothing but Sin and Evil can proceed It is a great Errour to think that Man by his Free-will may save himself since he was corrupted by Sin as well as when he was in the State of Innocence This is a great Self-presumption for Men to boast of a Grace and Vertue which they have basely lost by their Wickedness and Sin which has fill'd them with all Evil and depriv'd them of all Good seeing Sin having separated them from God the Fountain of all Good has plung'd them into all sort of Evil which is the Privation of all Good And he can of himself no more recover God than he that walks in gross Darkness can see the Light And being corrupted in all his Faculties he can no more Love God than a blind Man can enjoy the Light and being enclined and habituated to Evil his Free-will of it self will not desist nor change from it So that without the Grace of God Man can do nothing but sin which he does of himself for God does not retract the Liberty that he gave him in Creating him which being now bent to Evil can freely do Evil against the Will of God and without his Concurrence of Permission But he can in no wise do Good without the Grace of God not only that which he received aâ— his Creation but also Grace concurring effectually in all our Actions So that it is Grace alone that works in us all our good Works and our Salvation For Man has nothing of himself but the Liberty to adhere to Good which he received at his Creation and which will never be taken from him Yet this Grace is not sufficient to work out his Salvation if God do not continually give him new Grace For having once resisted the first Grace he would never more recover it having voluntarily abandon'd it and his Case would have been like that of the rebellious Angels whom God justly abandon'd and suspended his Graces upon the first Rebellion of their Will which he might as justly have done to Man if the Love he bare him had not far surpass'd that to the Angels which appears by the Graces he has imparted to him since his Sin for instead of reprobating and condemning him to Hell he gives him new Grace that he may recover again As to the third They do not know the Love that God has for Man who say that their Reprobation proceeds from the Want of his Grace for it is never wanting on God's Part even towards the most Wicked and if it do not produce its Operations it is because the Sin and Wickedness of Man resists it Even as the Sun by his Nature darts his Rays as brightly on the Dunghil as on a Diamond yet the one receives more Splendour than the other because of the Difference of the Objects which receive them the same Sun makes the Dunghil to stink and the Diamond to sparkle yet he gives no more of himself to the one than the other The Property of God is to give continually new Grace to Man to the Sinner and to the Just yet if it do not operate on the Wicked his Sin hinders it the same Grace that makes the Just to shine makes the Wicked more filthy he making Use of it to sin the more It is impossible for him to perceive this because of the Opposition which his Sin makes rendring him insensible of it even as a thick Cloud before the Sun will neither let us see his Light nor feel his Heat The Sun never ceases to shine and give heat in all Seasons and God does not cease always to give his Grace but our Opposition hinders the Operations and Effects of it in our Soul purely thro' our own Fault for if we were faithful in little things he would place us over great things He created Adam in a Grace as bright as the Sun at Noon-Day his Soul beheld and tasted his God But after that by his Rebellion he opposed his Will this Sin set it self against the Grace of God as a thick Wall before the Sun which hindred the Seeing and Feeling its favourable Influences God did not cease to give his Grace to Adam after this Sin as before but the Wall that this Sin had built up between God and him keeps him from seeing God any more or receiving his Grace to operate as before So long as this Sin is between God and our Soul its Eyes are blinded and its Understanding darkned as to Good and it knows not whither it goes and therefore it was said Adam where art thou after he had sinned For having lost the Light of Grace no body knows where he is nor can find the Way to recover it tho' Grace is not wanting on God's part no more than the Sun is wanting in Light tho' he who has a thick Wall between him and it has no more Benefit than if it did not shine It is only by the help of a Candle that he can discern the Objects that are about him so it is only sensible Lights and Grace such as are to be perceived by the Senses that can make him discern inward Good his Heart is so fix'd to the Earth by his Sin that he cannot perceive Divine things but by the help of Material ones And if his Free-will do not choose the Good which he may know by this Mean he can never work out his Salvation Thus the Sinner has always some sensible Grace sufficient to raise him again as Displeasure for his Sin the Disquiet it brings Remorse of Conscience or the Fear of his Damnation which are so many sensible Graces that God gives him whereby to call him back again making him see as it were by the help of a Candle the Miseries that his Sin has brought upon him with a desire to rise again and to recover the Grace of God Those sensible Graces are more than sufficient to work out Man's Salvation after a great many Sins provided his Free-will be effectualy resolved to detest and abandon his Sins with a strong Resistance which breaks down at least some Stones of the Wall that is oppos'd to Grace that he may perceive as it were by a chink some small Ray of that enlightning and warming Grace lost by Sin which will give him new force to break down more and more of this Opposition to Grace if so be the Soul be faithful and force it self according as the Light manifests it self It is thus that the Kingdom of Heaven suffers Violence and that the Violent take it by force for if the Will do not Violence to it self to forsake its Sins when Reason makes it see the Evil they bring and it feels Vexation of Spirit with the fear of Damnation all which are sensible Graces which Sin never deprives him of no more than of his Free will to effectuate
the Apostle says Of our selves we cannot think one good Thought but through Christ that strengthens us we are able to do all things It is true says she if we consider only the Miseries and Weakness of Man corrupted by Sin the Gospel-Law is impossible but not if we have regard to the Power of God's Grace This Jesus Christ intimated to his Apostles when he told as to a rich Man's entring into the Kingdom of Heaven that it was impossible with Men but not with God when a Man shall entirely yield up himself to him to be wholly governed by him God will easily operate in him a Gospel-Life and Jesus Christ has said if you who are evil know how to give good things to your Children how much more will your heavenly Father give his holy Spirit to them that ask him It is false therefore to say that the Gospel-Law cannot be kept since it was given for no other End and Jesus Christ brought it from Heaven as the only Remedy of all our Evils and the only Means of our Salvation and has said I have done these things to give you an Example And God will never enjoyn Man to do any thing but what he will give him Grace to accomplish But such is Man's Wickedness that he would impute to God his own Faults and the Blame of his Damnation on him as if he were severe and cruel by laying on him Burthens of Commands that are insupportable that Man may thus be justified and God condemned tho' truly Man only is worthy of Condemnation For God still imparts his Graces to him and all those Laws are special Instances of his Love to Man that by them he might bring him back to the Love of his God for his eternal Salvation And in many Places of her Writings she shews the Possibility of Obeying God's Commands and the Blasphemy of the contrary Doctrine from the Design of them and the End for which God gave them Open your Eyes says she to see this Light of Truth That never any Body will be saved who dies without the Love of God and that no Body can love God if he do not hate himself These are the Sentences which God has often confirmed to me and given me Assurance that they are true and that all the Laws and Commands which God has given to Men are only so many Means to make them return to his Love Now the whole Doctrine of the Gospel is nothing else but so many Means to withdraw Man from Sin that he may recover the Love of God And when this Law teaches him Poverty of Spirit it is to shew him that Covetousness has withdrawn him from the Love of his God and that he cannot return to it without leaving off to covet earthly Goods And when it teaches him to be humble of Heart and to chuse the last Place it is because he had lost the Love of God by loving himself esteeming himself worthy of Honour and Glory tho' he be worthy of nothing but Shame and Confusion And he not knowing this stands in need of a Doctrine contrary to his Errours and Ignorance to make him return to the Love of God which he had lost by his Pride And when Jesus Christ declares that he came not to do his own Will but the Will of him that sent him it is to teach Men that to fulfil their own corrupt and perverse Wills they have left off to do the Will of God and to love him and that if they do not renounce their own Wills to follow the Will of God and thereby to return to his Love they cannot be saved Behold how Jesus Christ has brought Physick for our Diseases being desirous to cure them by Remedies contrary to our Infirmities and yet these Ignorants would gloss away the Gospel-Law as if it were impossible to observe it as they say it is impossible to keep the Commandments of God tho' both these Laws be nothing else but Remedies for our Diseases Christians she says are guilty of Ingratitude when they say they cannot keep the Commandments of God nor the Laws of the Gospel since all these are only true Means to recover the Love of God For all the Commandments are no other thing but Means to loose Mens Hearts from self-Self-Love and the evil Inclinations that Sin has brought into their Nature All the Commands import no other thing in Substance but that Man must always resist his Self-Love refusing its Desires because being corrupted by Sin it can desire nothing but what is Evil or tends to an evil End which because Men did not well know God would shew them in particular what they ought to do and forbear that they might recover his Love Now tho' he has given his Commands because of our Frailty yet Man is so ungrate as to say it is impossible for him to keep those Commands because of that very Frailty for the Help of which God has given his Commands as Supports to his Frailty He is Evil in that wherein God is Good and takes for Burthens the Helps that God has given him because of his Frailty For if he had not had any frailty God would never have given him any Laws since the Love he bare to God was a Law to it self and had no need of any other Guide or Directour The Summ of her Sentiments in this Matter is that all the Laws of God are given to Man as Helps of his Frailty as Warnings to shew him what Way he has stray'd from God and as indispensable and necessary Means to recover and bring him back again to the Love of God even as if a Father should give his Son who was become an habitual Drunkard or lewd Person strict Commands absolutely to forbear such Conversation and such Houses which would infallibly intangle and keep him still in his Sins that Jesus Christ has in his own Example as a Man shewn us both the Necessity of this and how possible and easie it is to observe them That no Man can observe them by his own Strength but only by the Grace of God that we are first Children before we are Men and our Falls and Stumbles ought not to discourage us but we must get up and go forward and depend upon God and he will be with us as the Child that is learning to walk must not be discouraged by its Falls but must get up and go forward and hold more closely by its Mother That they who are truly regenerated may live in Obedience to God without Sin but are not impeccable may fall from that State and yet recover it again by the Grace of God that to say the Commandments of God are impossible is to deny the Merits of Jesus Christ the Efficacy of his Intercession the Power of his Grace the Usefulness of his Example to assert the Force of the Devil and corrupt Nature beyond that of God to accuse God of the greatest Cruelty in giving us Laws which it
the Grandeur of Charity or the Love of God that of Reason and that of worldly Empire and Honour Alexander and others have excell'd in the last and seem Great to the Eyes of Flesh Archimedes and others have excell'd in the second and seem Great to the Eyes of Reason Jesus Christ appear'd in none of these Grandeurs had neither Learning nor worldly Greatness and was of no regard neither to the Eyes of the Flesh nor those of the Great Philosophers and of Reason but O! how Great was he in the Eyes of Charity how Meek and Humble and Patient and Self-denied in a Life of absolute Poverty Contempt and Pain for the Love of God and Men. Now all the Writings and Actions of A. B. tending to draw Men into this Kingdom of Charity and the Love of God which is of a quite distinct Rank and Order from that of humane Reason as well as of worldly Greatness it was no wonder that she put no great Value on the one more than the other they being both unspeakable Hindrances in the way to it and the second more than the third She shews that there is in the Soul a Principle for above humane Reason and that is Divine Faith which does not consist in believing only with the understanding the Twelve Articles of the Creed which may be done by a humane Faith as we believe the recital of some History when a Person worthy of Credit relates it this gives not to the Soul any Divine Vertues which God only can operate in us Faith is a Divine Light which God infuses in the Soul which makes us to know and desire Eternal things and despise Temporal It is not a natural Quality as our Reason but a Divine Quality which proceeds from God as the Beams do from the Sun as nothing can make us see the Sun but the Sun himself It was communicated to all Men at their Creation lost by their Fall renew'd by the Merits and Grace of Jesus Christ When it shines in our Souls it warms them with the Love of God and Men who bear his Image and Likeness and produces Charity And this Charity regulates all our Life and gives weight and measure to all our Actions For Divine Faith is always living and operating It partakes of all the Divine Qualities Righteousness Goodness and Truth So that he who has Faith in his Soul cannot be Unjust nor a Liar nor a Deceiver nor Wicked nor seek his own Interest his own Glory his own Pleasure or Satisfaction seeing all these respect time and earthly things Humane Reason is an Inferiour Principle that may indeed convince us that there is a God the Author of Nature who made and sustains all things but this cannot produce in our Souls Faith and Charity Vertues derived immediately from God and not from Nature or the Understanding of Man which is a frail Creature limited to Earth and Time And to think to know or comprehend God by the natural Understanding is a greater Folly than the Heathens committed in worshipping the Sun All Men being now void of humane Faith take up with a humane Belief and divide and dispute and quarrel and hate and despise one another without knowing wherefore and without perceiving that the Folly they have in themselves is more to be despised than what they require in their Brother The active Exercise of our Reason when depriv'd of the Light of Faith serves but the more to confound and darken us it keeps us in a vain Amusement makes us neglect the necessary means of obtaining Divine Faith blows up the Heart with Pride makes us despise the most Divine Truths when they do not accord with our Principles and value our selves beyond others tho' humble ignorant Persons are more to be regarded as being more disposed to receive the Light of Faith than those Learned who have drunk in the Doctrine of Men. She blesses God that preserv'd her from this for then she should have been uncapable of receiving that of the Holy Spirit Jesus Christ call'd the Simple and Ignorant to be his Disciples and Apostles it was they whom he train'd up to instruct and teach others the way to Salvation When a Learned Nicodemus came to him he told him that unless he became as a little Child he could not enter into the Kingdom of God He founded no Colleges nor Academies to train up his Followers in all sorts of Learning but taught them by Word and Deed to deny themselves in all earthly things and to take up their Cross and follow him True Religion is preserved or received by the same means by which it is at first instituted and established They who say in another case that Christ being more faithful than Mâ—ses in all the House of God who yet left not a Pin of the Tabernacle unmade and therefore he surely could not be wanting in ordering what was fit for his Church may examine their own Measures by this Rule She says The Schools and Doctrine of Men have corrupted the true Sence of the Scriptures and by their Learning authorize all sorts of Sins that it seems the Schools are expresly instituted to forge Cases of Conscience capable of leading Men to Hell For what need is there to Gloss the Gospel and the Life of Jesus Christ They are clear Truths which Jesus Christ taught by Word and Deed that we must be poor in Spirit humble in Heart desirous to suffer Persecution for Righteousness sake and to do to others as we would have them do to us but to corrupt all these things the Learned make Glosses that it is not against Poverty of Spirit to labour or trade that we may get Money and make some Fortune in the World and to flatter Men the better to their Ruine they add by Word that we must possess Riches as not possessing them which is a great Deceit for Men are not now so dispos'd as those of the Old Testament who receiv'd Temporal Goods from God as a Blessing to employ them to his Glory not having their Hearts any ways wedded to them as those of our Time who incessantly covet Riches desiring still more and more It is an infallible Truth that all who would be saved must love God with all their Heart And if we ask those Divines if it be not lawful for a Man to love his Father Mother Wife Children Kinsfolk Friends yea his Country Money House Honour Divertisements Meat Drink Cloaths and every other Creature they will answer yes because they love them themselves and yet imagine they fulfil the Command of God of loving him with all their Heart and to disguise this Lie the better they will say We must not love all these things inordinately giving us to understand thereby that our Hearts may be well divided into so many different Affections without sinning which has so authoriz'd the neglect of the Command of loving God with all our Heart that no Body thinks it is needful They live and die in
Profession of this new Worship and are joined to those Persons and their Opinions Now she establish'd no new Worship nor new Exercises nor Laws nor Rules that savour of a Sect but only by her Life and Writings call'd on People to return to the Love of God and to imitate the Life of Jesus Christ in which State they were not and without which they could not be saved In her Letter to M. Reinboth Superintendant in Holstein I am very far says she from making a new Church as some maliciously slander me for I bring no new thing and Novelties are very displeasing to me I am careful therefore not to introduce any but I labour to advance in a Gospel-Life and to practise it And all my Writings and all I said formerly to well-disposed Persons aimed only at this and I forbear now to speak to them because I found it was unprofitable Your Preachers wrong me greatly when they cry out that I draw their People from them for in the ten Months I have been in Holstein I have not made Acquaintance with so much as one Person not so much as with my Landlady so that I give them no ground to say or think that I strive to draw People to form a new Church or teach a new Doctrine seeing that which Jesus Christ left us is the most perfect and the last that God will send unto Men. No new thing needs be invented but we should labour to perfect our selves in it and to put it truly in Practice instead of Disputing about it for all these Disputes are raised by the Devil to bring Hatred Divisions and Discords amongst Christians whereas the Church of God should be united in Peace and Love in the meek Spirit of Jesus Christ and it is now divided in as many Parties as there are different Sects which is lamentable and disturbs the Peace of Christian Souls and makes that they do not love one another tho' Jesus Christ has so earnestly recommended to them to love one another They are all partial and only love the Party which they have undertaken to stand by or defend This proceeds from an Antichristian Spirit and not from the Spirit of Christ XX. They libell'd her that she despised Sermons Sacraments Pastours Priesthood and all Government which were all most horrid Calumnies This says she in her Letter to Dr. Nieman Superintendant in Holstein is a gross Calumny for I wish with all my Heart that both Church and State may continue in Vigour for otherwise there would be no Knowledge of God in the Land nor Commonwealths maintained Seeing Preachings and Sacraments preserve amongst Men the Memory of sacred things and States keep their People in their Duty by Justice or else there would be nothing but Confusion and the Good would be destroyed by the Wicked if there were no Government and Magistrates to rule and govern them I indeed despise the Abuse of Churches and Sermons and Sacraments but not the Use of them nor the Essence of these which are established by God as is also Government and Magistracy And there is a great Difference between the despising a thing in it self and the Abuse that is made of it For it is one thing to say that every Sect abuses the Holy Scriptures and another to say that the Scripture is of no Worth or to despise it because many abuse it Now it seems Buchardus would make People believe that I despise all these Holy Things when I despise only the Abuse of them as true Christians ought to do who lay to Heart God's Honour They ought to lament when they see Men to degenerate as to the Love of God that they seem to hold meerly to the Bark of the things ordained by God without squaring their Lives by them They say I despise the Sacraments and other Offices of Piety while I believe there is no body that esteems them more than I do For the Quakers accused me by their defamatory Treatise That I had an abominable Doctrine sending Persons to Churches Sermons or Sacraments or other outward Solemnities desiring to infer from this that I had not the Spirit of God since I still esteemed those outward Devotions and also incited others to make use of them as Means to approach unto God Your Preachers may read what I have written in that Advertisement upon this Head so that I need not enlarge my self farther here but will satisfie them as to what they say That in effect I despise the Sacraments and other outward Devotions because I do not go my self to the Church nor to the Sacraments and they will needs reject all that I say in the Praise of Holy Things because I do not observe them my self to give an Example to others and would infer from thence That I speak with Dissimulation in praise of Holy Things and not sincerely as I think in my Heart This convinces me that they no ways know me For if they only knew me outwardly they would sufficiently see that I am sincere and not at all feigned or dissembled so that if I had in my Heart a Contempt for the Sacraments and other outward Devotions I would openly declare it by Word and Writ for I have overcome the World and am not afraid to tell the Truth of what I know I have indeed written against the Abuse of the Sacraments and other outward Solemnities but I never spoke against the things themselves seeing they are good and have often serv'd me as Means of Union with God But if I do not go now to the Church or Sacraments it is not out of Contempt of Holy Things but because I have no longer so great need of outward Means of Union with God as I had formerly when the Conversation of Men and the Diversion of the Cares of temporal Affairs did divert my Attention from God I retired then to Churches and approached the Sacraments that I might be the more recollected and united to God But since God has given me the Grace to find this Recollection in my little Chamber and to entertain my self in Spirit with God in Solitude I have not thought it so necessary to use these outward Ceremonies which sometimes would serve me for a Distraction to my inward Recollection This is partly the Reason why I have left them off but this is not all For if I had the Freedom to go to Church I would go to it on the Days commanded and would receive the Sacrament at the Times appointed Since I am under the Ordinances of the Roman Church Jesus Christ teaches me to obey the Laws both of God and Men as he himself did on Earth obeying Caesar and other Superiours tho' they were sometimes evil but their Ordinances good as I have particularly shewn in the said Advertisement But I cannot go to Church without hazard of my Life and it is not lawful for me to expose my self to so evident Dangers and Necessity has no Law There are Persons in the
Esay accuses them that they had said Let us eat and drink for to morrow we must die we have made a Covenant with Death and with Hell we are at Agreement for we have made Lies our Refuge and under Falshood have we hid our selves Malachy It is in vain for us to serve the Lord we will call the Proud Happy c. This was not true in the Sight of Men but it was true in the Sight of God who saw that there were no living Impressions in their Hearts of the Divine Providence of a happy or miserable Eternity of the great Happiness of Vertue c. There are generally two sorts of Principles and Sentiments in Men which do widely differ from one another one by which they reason and discourse and preach and write Books and teach Doctrines and this is their speculative Principle The other is that by which a Man acts and governs both his inward Affections and his Life This last only is a Man's true Sentiments and Principle tho' for the most part this is unknown to the Man himself S. Paul before his Conversion and e'er he was enlightned by the Holy Ghost would have been highly offended with any that should have call'd him a Blasphemer a Persecuter of God and good Men and the Chief of Sinners as imputing to him Crimes and Sentiments of which he not only thought himself innocent but that those very things were Vertues in the Sight of God tho' when God opened his Eyes he found he had been truly such So strange is the Blindness of corrupt Man Therefore when God would deliver Men from Death he stops not at the outward Appearance and what Men say and at their dead Reasonings and Sentiments who may tell him We teach Vertue we preach good Works we recommend Mortification of the Old Man we detest Security and Presumption c. while in effect their Lives are regulated by quite contrary Principles and their Hearts live in another Element and therefore he warns them of that which is hid within them and which they do not yet perceive and tells them that tho' they profess to know him yet by their Works they deny him being abominable disobedient and to every good Work reprobate Now it is according to this Measure that A. B. speaks of Men and Parties and of their Sentiments When a whole Society lives according to Principles the contrary of which they affirm with their Mouths it is certain this may be imputed to that Society When the greatest part of particular Persons in that Society have certain Sentiments as to flatter themselves that they are in the State of Grace or predestinated to Salvation it is certain that the Society in the gross may be said to have these Sentiments If while they live in a worldly and carnal Manner yet they commonly believe they shall be saved by the Use of the Ceremonies and Sacraments this is to be reckoned the real Sentiment of the Society in gross tho' the Speculations of some particular Persons and Doctors do not say so It is the People that makes the Church and not a small Number of learned Heads It is the living and inward Principles Inclinations and Dispositions of the Spirits and Hearts of the People that makes the Sentiments of the Church and not some vain Theories of the Learned which are oft-times dead and barren in their own Hearts When in a Society some particular Persons teach expresly evil Doctrines as the Justifying of horrid Murthers or that we may be saved without the Love of God and direct Souls according to these Doctrines if the whole Body of such a Church knowing this do not openly and loudly extirpate such a Doctrine by their Councils or other proper Means undoubtedly such a Society and particularly they who preside in it are reckoned by God as if they themselves authoritatively taught and maintained these detestable Maxims Now if what A. B. says as to the Principles Sentiments and Evils of Parties or Persons be examined by these Rules it will appear that she imputes nothing to them falsly XXV Another Accusation brought against A. B. is that she gives wrong Explications of several Passages in the Holy Scripture as her applying that of S. Paul We know in part c. to a greater Degree of Knowledge and Illumination than God will give in this last Age of the World Her understanding the Words of our Saviour Joh. 12. 23. of his glorious Appearing in the End of the World when the Context shews it is meant of his Death and Sufferings her singular Exposition of the Lord's Prayer as containing things that we are to obtain only in Perfection when Christ comes to reign in Glory We see what Expositions the Apostles give of the Scriptures of the Old Testament and the Fathers of both the Old and New which oft-times seem very different from the Sence that naturally offers S. Augustin's Rule already mentioned has Place here That whosoever gives such a Sence of the Scripture as serves to promote the Love of God and our Neighbours which is the great End tho' it cannot be made appear that the Pen-man of the Scripture did so understand it in that particular Place he does not err damnably nor does he make a Lye But that other remarkable Rule he gives serves fully to remove this Accusation That as to all the Sences that are given of the Holy Scripture which are not repugnant to the Truth it is to be believed they were intended by the Holy Spirit That when many Sences are given of the same Words if it appear from other Places of the Scripture that they are agreeable to the Truth and to Faith there is no Danger For perhaps the Author of those Writings did perceive the same Sence of them and certainly the Spirit of God who wrought by him foresaw without doubt that this would occur to the Reader and the Hearer yea took care that it should occur For what more liberal and bountiful Provision could be made by God in the Divine Oracles than that the same Words should be understood in many Sences all which the other no less Divine Writings might confirm Agreeable to this we have a Divine Maxim of a pious Writer of the last Age That according to the State that Man is in so he understands the Holy Scripture if he be as yet in the State of Nature he explains it of Natural Things if he have ascended higher he understands it of more sublime Things and the higher State he is advanced to he still finds so much the more sublime Testimonies of things in the Scripture Inferiour things are the Image and Similitude of the superiour If a Man therefore be in the lowest Degree the Scripture proposes low things to him but if he be placed in superiour Degrees it points out to him higher things When Paul says Not in Rioting and Drunkenness not in Chambering and Wantonness c. Rom. 13. 19. this concerns
it I take Cant for a multitude of Words without any True and Divine Sence and not flowing from an inward Life and Spirit and of this there is but too much in the World But the Writings of A. B. are of another Temper and no Body will nauseate them upon this Head but they who have a secret Disgust for the Holy Scriptures God's Ways are not as our ways When we write we seek our selves we strive to discover our Reason and our Learning and study what may please the Curiosity the Fancy and the Niceness of others The Holy Writings are most unlike to ours both as to Matter and Manner and Method and Stile they are not written to please the Learned the Orator the Philosopher the Critick the Curious but to bring down every lofty Imagination and to mortifie our Self-conceit to Comfort the Humble and the Afflicted to give Light and Knowledge to the Poor and Simple and to send the Rich away empty They repeat again and again the great and necessary things of God's Law to mortifie our Niceness and Curiosity and to beat them in upon us by all means while we think it enough to know these things tho' we are not so happy as to do them Now Writings that partake so much of this Spirit will not be despis'd on this Head by any sincere Christian XXVII Some endeavour to render her Sentiments ridiculous concerning the State of the Blessed in the Life to come and they say she establishes a Mahumetan Paradise Eating and Drinking and Generation in the Kingdom of Heaven making the Earth to become that Heaven and that it shall be a Place of all sensitive Delights Vnto the pure all things are pure but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure but even their Mind and Conscience is defiled I would gladly ask such if Adam had continued always in the State of Innocence perfectly Pure and Holy whether they would have called his State a Mahumetan Paradise and a sensual Life If there were no Concupiscence in Man's Nature but a most ardent pure and habitual Love of God the Beauties and Delights of all the Creatures would serve to enflame the Soul still the more with the Love of God There needs no more but to understand her Sentiments to be convinced of the impudent Falshood of their Reproaches She says then That the Earth and all this visible World being wholly renewed and restored to that glorious State in which it was at first formed of which in the First Part shall be the Seat of the Kingdom of God with Men for ever where Jesus Christ God-Man will reign with the Blessed both as to his Divinity and Humanity That Heaven as to the Soul is the Presence of God and we are in Heaven when we are in God and God is in Heaven as he is in the Souls of his Saints as Augustin interprets Our Father which art in the Heavens but as God has given us both a Body and Soul he has given us also a Paradise of both the Soul can have its compleat Paradise in the Presence of God but the Body must have a material and bodily one like it self For this end the Earth and all this visible World and all that therein is were created and for the same Reason God would have become Man tho' Man had never sinn'd that he might live with him both bodily and spiritually and to make his Happiness compleat And therefore he being unchangeable in his infinitely Wise and Good Designs he will certainly make not an imaginary but a real divine and corporeal Reparation of all things to last for ever for his Recompences are Eternal and will purge away from all the Creatures the Malignity and Corruption that Sin has brought upon them And in this State every individual Saint being restored in Body and Soul to the State in which Adam was in his greatest purity before the Woman was formed out of him shall produce his like of himself alone through all Eternity from a Principle of the Love of God and by an ardent Desire that there may be still more Creatures to love and praise the Divine Majesty This then shall not be a corrupt lustful and shameful Propagation like to that of this corrupt World but altogether Pure Holy and Glorious as we see in a manner an earthly Figure of it still in all the Plants and Trees In the Resurrection they neither marry nor are given in Marriage but are as the Angels of God in Heaven Now what is there in all this unworthy of God or unsutable to the State of the Blessed or contrary to the Holy Scriptures or to the Nature of things It is certain none of the Works of God shall perish but all shall be restored to their primitive Perfection The Scripture tells us there shall be a new Heaven and a new Earth Whose Habitation would the Earth have been if Man had never sinn'd and if the Earth had never been accursed And whose Habitation shall it be when it is renewed and made a new Earth When Men fancied all the Works of God to be shut up as it were in a round Sphere and the Earth to be its Centre and the Planetary and Starry Heavens so many firm and solid Orbs moving round about it and the Empyreal Heaven above all this Sentiment about the Earth might have been thought absurd But in the Age we live in wherein is made known the vastness of the Universe and that all the fix'd Stars are probably Suns and Centres of different Systems of the whole and all the other Planets as well as our Earth among which it moves replenish'd no doubt with variety of living and intelligent Beings we have reason to admire the Providence of God in giving Discoveries to a simple unlearned Woman of the State and Habitation of the Blessed sutable to what is now known of the Frame of the Universe which is also fully confirmed from the Holy Scriptures as was shewn in the First Part and does so clearly demonstrate the unchangeable Wisdom and Goodness of God who having created Man in a Pure and Happy State and the Delights and Beauties of this World for his Accessory Felicity and the Devil by his Craft and Subtilty having perverted both and made this Earth for many Ages nothing but Scenes of Wickedness and Misery yet God by his infinitely Wise Conduct and Providence brings about at last the perfect Renovation of Man and of his Habitation the Earth and of all the Creatures and makes it an Eternal Paradise of unspotted Purity and Bliss Whereas on the other Hand it is most unaccountable how infinite Wisdom and Goodness who changes not after he had form'd Man and this World in so excellent a State and both are corrupted by the Devils should continue the Earth for so many Ages to be the Theatre of their Wickedness and then entirely destroy it Might it not then be said as she expresses it That God
promises that if our Eye be Single our whole Body shall be full of Light and if it be Evil it will be full of Darkness For tho' a Soul have not in it self the Holy Spirit yet it shall have the Understanding enlightned to discover him in others provided it behold them with a single Eye without Dissimulation or Surprize but in the Simplicity of a Child as Jesus Christ says we must be in if we would enter into the Kingdom of Heaven They who see me write know well that I do it without any Study or humane Speculation and that it flows from my Spirit as Water flows from its Fountain and that I do nothing but lend my Hand and my Spirit to another Power than mine And God gives yet a more sure Testimony by imparting to me his Righteousness Truth and Charity For these things cannot come from Nature which being corrupted can produce no Good nor any Divine Vertues because I am come of the Corrupt Mass of Adam as all the rest of Men there could not be in me any Righteousness Truth and Charity which are all Divine and Supernatural Vertues which cannot enter into the Soul of Men but by the Work of the Holy Spirit This gives me a sufficient Testimony that I am led by God since the Devil and Nature have nothing of those Vertues And therefore we cannot find a surer Evidence that a Soul is led by the Holy Spirit than when it is possest of the Righteousness Truth and Charity of God For if we desire to see Miracles for a Proof we may be deceived since the Devil can do Miracles or things which seem Supernatural but he can never have in him the Righteousness Truth and Love of God The Good Spirit and the Evil may be known by the Qualities which they have The Spirit of God has in him a Peace and Sweetness that comforts the Soul and draws it to an inward Quiet But the Spirit of the Devil disturbs the Understanding disquiets it and robs it of Tranquility and Rest The Spirit of God acts sweetly and strongly in Peace and Tranquility of Mind All that comes from the Spirit of God is always accompanied with the Qualities of God which are Goodness Righteousness and Truth And that which comes from the Spirit of the Devil carries always the Qualities of the Devil which are Malice Injustice and Lying The Evil Spirit may sometimes move to do a good thing to draw Evil out of it but that seeming Goodness can never be accompanied with Righteousness and Truth which are the inseparable Qualities of God which the Devil may sometimes separately make use of to deceive Men aping the Works of God but he can never do a thing that is Good Just and True altogether since this appertains to God only who cannot be divided in any of these Qualities God does not speak to me by Voices Thundrings and Lightnings as he did of Old to the Prophets or as he spake to Tobit by Angels in the Likeness of Young Men or as he spoke to Jacob in the Vision of a Ladder upon which Angels did ascend and descend or as he spoke to Joseph in a Dream saying to him Take the Child and the Mother and flee into Egypt For I durst not rely upon all these things in which the Devil and the Fancy of Man may mingle themselves and make such things be seen and heard as if they came from the Spirit of God But I fix on the solid Truth of God on his Righteousness and on his Love because in such things the Devil can have no hold I have sometimes had Dreams and Visions coming from God as I may afterwards make appear by Experience but I do not rely on these Dreams and Visions unless the same things that I have seen and dream'd be confirm'd unto me by a secret Notice Intelligence after the manner that I converse ordinarily with God For so soon as the Soul is free of all Image and delivered from the agitation of its Passions and the Imagination ceases to operate then I hear the Voice of God and his Reasoning not with my Ears but with my Understanding And after this manner he makes me see and hear all that I need to know both for my own Conduct and that of others which many have experienc'd and found that I have told them the most secret things of their Hearts which neither Men nor Devils could know Never amuse your self with Discourses Visions or Revelations made to you or others if you do not perceive assuredly that they are accompanied with the Qualities of the Good Spirit of God or otherwise you will be easily deceived Remark always if what you say or do be accompanied with the Righteousness Goodness and Truth of God and then you shall assuredly hear God speak to your Soul For if you walk in these Qualities you will be in God and the Devil can deceive you no longer by Illusions or false Imaginations as he will easily do so long as you do not possess those essential Vertues of the Righteousness Goodness and Truth of God in which you ought always to walk if you would not be seduced by Satan The Devil can give Visions Ravishments or supernatural Extasies to Sorcerers yea make them foretel things to come being a subtile Spirit and foreseeing afar and by conjectures what will come to pass and he may make them fall out by the means of his Sorcerers who being powerful and numerous may by their Power and Authority bring about what has been Fore told Therefore it is fit to receive nothing for Truth but the things which lead us to a more strict Union with God and Denial of our selves These things are always Good even tho' they should come from the Devil himself we cannot be deceived in believing them I can never have the least doubt as if it were an evil Spirit that communicates himself to my Understanding for the evil Spirit could not in my Judgment produce so good and so constant Operations such as the Love of God and the Hatred of ones Self Moreover he could not separate the Soul from the Pleasures of this Life nor remove from it the coveting the Riches and Honours of the World nor give it a full Contentment in the want of all humane Consolation nor yet Joy in Hardships and Contempt All these things cannot come from the Devil for he is too opposite to all these Vertues and leads ordinarily to all sort of Evil tho' at first he cover them with Vertues The End of his Operations make appear sufficiently the Deeds of the Author and make known the Workman by his Works Thus you see how certain Marks she gives whereby to distinguish true from false Enthusiasm the Conduct and Inspiration of the Spirit of God from the Illusions of the Devil or Ones own Imagination and how Men may preserve themselves from being impos'd upon by the last That where a Soul is
a rich Merchant And that she might avoid that Stroke she separated her self from the World and from all Creatures and about the Eighteenth Year of her Age having put on the Habit of a Hermit she left her Father's House without taking with her so much as a Penny forsaking Wealth Accommodations Delights and all temporal Things only for the Love of God The abandoning of all which was so well-pleasing to God that he wonderfully guided and preserved her and delivered her out of the Hands of wicked Men and committed her to the Care of such as were truly Good who were ready to be helpful to her in all things XIV That I may not be too tedious as to the Testimony which others give concerning the Piety and Sanctity of Antonia Bourignon I shall only propose some Remarks as to those Three principal Vertues 1. Faith 2. Charity 3. Hope For if there can be sufficient Evidences brought whereby it can be made appear that A. B. did possess these there can be then no doubt but that she was Holy and Pious That this may be made appear it is not needful to examine each of these Vertues particularly by it self because they always go together There is no doubt then yea we may be assured of it that he who possesses one of these Vertues does possess them all Faith then is the Subsistence of things hoped for and the Evidence of things not seen Or Faith is that Divine Light infus'd by God into Man at his Creation by which he conceives things Divine and Eternal which by the natural Understanding are unconceivable In this Sense Faith is communicated unto all Men for it is that true Light that enlightens every Man that comes into the World But this Light is so darkned and hindred to encrease by the Love of the Creatures and of temporal Things in which Sin consists that Faith being without Life and Spirit becomes dead and ineffectual To make appear therefore that any has Faith it is not enough that he is endued with this first innate Light because in that Sense all Men have Faith while in the mean time all are not Holy But here we speak of the Faith which all have not but they only who do not resist this Divine Light nor strive to quench it and who they are that follow it and walk in it and whose Faith worketh by Love must and ought to be made evident by their Works that it may appear to be living and not dead This was the Faith in Abel Enoch Noah Abraham Moses and the rest of the Holy Men spoken of Heb. 11. who seeing the invisible God contemned all visible Things suffering all manner of Reproaches Persecutions and Torments that they might ever see and enjoy him and this with so great Resolution as the whole World could not divert them from their purpose or separate them from the Love of God because they knew certainly that the Hope they had would never make them ashamed XV. Now that in A. B. Faith did thus work by Love with an assured Hope of enjoying God appears by all her Life as has been already shewn And that we may have the greater Evidence of this we need read only the Account of her Life given both by her self and others Among innumerable Instances it is very remarkable that A. B. took upon her the Care of governing educating and instructing in the Christian Religion many poor Orphan Girls in an Hospital and that without any Tie or Obligation or any other End but the Hope she had of bringing up these Orphins in the Fear of God and of forming them to be true Christians employing in this Office all her Industry her Goods and the Strength both of her Body and Mind In which Work of Charity she continued for Nine Years confiding so firmly in God that tho' she was toss'd with infinite Afflictions her Refuge was in him alone and that with such an assured Hope that she was never confounded nor frustrated of her End In such Works of Charity A. B. continued even to Death but with this Caution afterwards that having found by Experience that most of the Poor and other Men also did abuse Alms and the other Offices of Charity to encourage themselves the more in their Sins she did dispence the Gifts of Charity more warily enquiring first if they might promote the Salvation of her Neighbour which ought to be our great aim and being once perswaded of this she spar'd neither Money nor Travel nor her own Life where she could contribute for the Salvation of others But where she saw that her good Works could contribute nothing to this she endeavoured to live in as much Retiredness and Quiet with God as was possible that she might work out her own Salvation with fear and trembling being thus truly helpful to all when a few had rejected her Help The Malicious therefore have no reason to accuse A. B. of Avarice or Cruelty because she did not distribute her Goods indifferently to all the Poor for this did not spring from so evil an Original but from true Charity that she might not concur by the Poors abusing of her Alms to the multiplying of their Sins and so to the aggravating of their Damnation This proceeded also from the Care she had that the Goods which God had committed unto her as to a Steward might be faithfully distributed XVI It was premised in the third place that we ought to admit the fore-mentioned Evidences for proving a Person to be Holy and a Lover of God as good and valid so long as the contrary is not made appear Now as to the Holiness of Antonia Bourignon and her Love to God that the contrary is not yet made appear is evident from this that no body could ever yet discover that her Life and Actions were at any time blameworthy even then when to follow the Vanity of the World she lived for some time distracted from God But from hence we ought not to conclude as some malicious Persons have done that Ant. Bourignon and her Friends do affirm that she neither sinn'd in Adam nor in her self which is most false For A. B. declares in many places that she as well as other Men was born of the corrupt mass of Adam and did sin in him And not only so but that turning aside from God unto the World she sinn'd in her self tho' she never did any thing that is blame worthy before Men. For she was fully perswaded that every turning aside from God unto the Cretures is a Sin that deserves Damnation XVII The Fourth Evidence to wit that of our Conscience as to the Sanctity of A. B. is most abundant for many Persons of all Parties of Christians of all sorts of Ranks and those most Pious do decalre that they have felt such Operations in their Souls by the Presence the Words and Writings of Antonia Bourignon that they were sufficiently convinced in their Conscience
that A. B. was Holy and in the Love of God and that to such a Degree that this Love seem'd to flow from her into them and other well-disposed Souls because many are brought by her to abandon their own Wills and the Creatures that they may Love God only and subject themselves wholly to his Will And I am perswaded that her Writings will have such Operations in all those who shall read them with a sincere and hearty desire to find the saving Truth and to endeavour to walk in it in so far as they know it Unless they be so far possest with Prejudices as that they will admit of nothing for Truth but what is consonant to their formerly receiv'd Opinions looking upon every thing that differs from them or seems contrary unto them as Lies and Error This is as if one looking always through a coloured Glass by which all Bodies would appear to him of the same Colour should imagine and affirm that other Men who look with the naked and single Eye are perfectly mistaken when they say that they see clearly that every Body has its own distinct Colour XVIII Unto these Four Evidences of the Sanctity of A. B. this Fifth ought to be added to wit the wonderful Works that A. B. did and the extraordinary Divine Lights that God communicated to her To reckon up all these we behov'd to narrate her whole Life and to adduce all her Writings which are full of such wonderful Works and Light Therefore let every one that loves the Truth apply to these Writings and which soever he shall be pleas'd to peruse he will by them be sufficiently convinc'd of this matter But that some Instance of this may be given it is to be considered that this ought to be look'd upon as a great Miracle in A. B. that she so generously fought against her corrupt Nature that she wholly subdued it not by her own Strength which could do nothing but Evil but by the Grace of God through which the weakest can do all things This Miracle ought to be more esteemed than raising the Dead giving Sight to the Blind and such like which serve only for this present Life and therefore may be performed by Men who are not Holy But to overcome corrupt Nature is an infallible mark of Holiness for the obtaining of which all other Miracles ought to be done otherwise they avail nothing but on the contrary do much hurt Among the innumerable Divine Lights communicated to Antonia Bourignon this is the chief that she had explain'd the Truths of the Gospel more clearly and efficaciously than any has done hitherto demonstrating that an Obedience to them is absolutely necessary for Salvation and rescuing them from the Glosses and false Expositions by which the Learned have so perverted the Truths of the Gospel that almost every Christian promises Salvation to himself although he do not walk according to these Truths XIX Since then it seems to appear sufficiently from what has been said that A. B. was Holy and in the Love of God it will be now fit to consider the Second Question proposed to wit If she was moved by the Spirit of God to write and to enlighten others For answer to this Question there needs nothing be adduc'd but what has been said as to the First Question For it A. B. was Holy and in the Love of God she would not have committed so great a Sin as to pretend that she was moved to write by the Spirit of God if it was false or if she was not certain that it was most true But that I may answer something in particular to this Second Question it is to be considered how we may be assured that any Writing is endited by God In order to this let us enquire how it appears that the Holy Scriptures were written by Men led by the Spirit of God as all Christians do believe XX. That we may proceed aright in this Enquiry it is to be remarked that God gives unto Men Breath and Life and all Things for in him we live and move and have our Being Nevertheless he has given to all Creatures the Faculty whereby to continue in their Being or to exist For God is Eternal and his Gifts are without Repentance therefore his Works do never perish besides they are endued with a Power of multiplying themselves and producing their like It is true many things perish but these are not the Works of God but Corruption and Vanity brought into the World and yet coming into it by Sin and Lust But besides these Faculties of preserving themselves and producing their like God gave to Man the Liberty of turning himself to God that he might be govern'd and ruled by him or of acting by the Strength already given him without asking new Strength from God If he do so he departs from God the Author of all Light and Good and then such a Man of necessity becomes Miserable and is sunk in Darkness as appear'd in the Fall of Adam and is to be seen daily in those who follow their own Wills that is who act by the Strength once given them and will not ask new Strength from God nor yield up themselves to be govern'd by him But if a Man yield up himself to God and ask help from him in every thing he goes about he will find God ready to help him Even as one in a very close Chamber is in the Day-time immediately enlightned by the Sun how soon he permits the Windows of the Chamber to be opened and the more Windows there are opened he receives the greater Light XXI From what has been said it appears that when we say that the Holy Scripture is endited by God we understand thereby that the Holy Men who committed it to Writing did so wholly deny their own Strength whether innate unto them or acquired by Diligence Learning and Meditation that they willingly acknowledged that thereby they could do no good nor any thing that was acceptable to God but did so entirely yield up themselves to be govern'd by God that they no longer lived to themselves but God did live and operate in them Now that we may be assured that the Holy Scriptures were penned by such Men we must examine what Operation the Holy Scriptures have in our Souls When then we experience that the Thoughts of our Hearts are manifested by them which can be done by none but God who alone knows the Heart and if this Holy Scripture be a powerful Mean for loosing our Hearts from the Love of Temporal things and drawing them to the Love of God and of things Eternal For the Word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any Two-edged Sword piercing even to the dividing asunder of the Soul and Spirit the Joynts and Marrow and is a discerner of the Thoughts and Intents of the Heart overthrowing every Imagination and Thought that exalts it self against God So that an Unbeliever perceiving
things and entirely resign'd unto him It is not for those Scessers then that I have written this Abridgment but for those who desire in the Simplicity of their Hearts to be helped on in the way to Eternal Life Jesus Châ—ist is the way and we are made believe that his Life is unimitable The first Christians followed him in a Life of Poverty Reproach and Pains in which now we think he neither can nor ought to be followed Here 's an Instance of are in this last Age of the World who as she declares to all that 〈◊〉 is no Salvation without following the Example aâ—◠〈◊〉 of Jesus Christ so she made him her constant Pattern and this her great Work from the Eighteenth Year of her Age to her Death and thereby encourages and invites 〈◊〉 all to deny our selves and take up our Cross and follow him Give her then of the Fruit of her Hands and let her own Works praise her in the Gates AN APOLOGY FOR M. ANT. BOVRIGNON PART IV. CONTAINING An Abridgment of her LIFE To which are added Two Letters concerning the Preface to the Snake in the Grass and Bourignianism Detected by different Hands I. MRs. Antonia Bourignon was born in the Town of Lisle in Flanders the 13th of January 1616. baptiz'd in the Parish of St. Maurice and nam'd Antonia her Father was John Bourignon an Italian by Nation and her Mother Margaret Becquart born near to Lisle they lived in a married State Thirty One Years having Four Daughters of which Antonia was the Third and One Son all of which died in their Childhood except the eldest Daughter who lived till the Thirty Sixth Year of her Age and was twice married She died Anno 1647. Her Mother in July 1641. Her Father married again in October being more than Sixty Years Old and died April 1648. And Antonia remained the only Heiress of her Mother her Sister having died without Children II. When she came into the World her Mother thought she had borne a Monster because her whole Forehead was covered with black Hair even to her Eyes and her upper Lip was fastned to her Nose and so her Mouth stood open they conceal'd her for some Months and the Hair fell off of it self and the Lip was untied by a Surgeon and she encreast in Comliness yet her Mother could not forget the Aversion she had conceiv'd and could not love her as she did her other Children but slighted her from her Infancy and could hardly look upon her the other Children also treated her rudely without her Father's knowledge who then loved her best of all his Children But his Affairs kept him still abroad except at Meals III. This rough Treatment made her retire from childish Plays and be much alone God then drew her powerfully to himself as soon as she had any use of Reason all her Thoughts were serious and her Reasonings seem'd not to proceed from a Child and having been instructed by her Parents when about Four Years of Age of the First Principles of Christianity and of all that Jesus Christ had done and suffered for Men she was desirous to be inform'd in what Country the Christians lived and profest a great desire to go thither and when her Parents mock'd her and told hâ—â— she was in the Country of Christians she said that could not be for Jesus Christ was born in a Stable and liv'd in Poverty whereas they all love to have fine Houses and fine Furniture and much Wealth and therefore she concluded they were not Christians and that she would go into the Country where the Christians do live but no Body understood this Language but turn'd it into Raillery and so she was constrain'd to hold her Peace IV. Finding so little Satisfaction in the World she turned her self unto God by Prayer and he being always ready to be found of them that seek him with their whole Heart especially little Children she from her Infancy had daily Conversation with God he speaking inwardly to her Heart and she thought this Divine Conversation was a thing common to all Then every thing serv'd her for an Occasion to Address to God Thus for Instance remarking that her Father was surly to her Mother and oft-times transported with Anger against her after having endeavour'd to appease him by her childish Embraces she would retire apart and considering how hard a thing it was to be married to a troublesom Husband would say to God My God my God grant I may never marry and she beg'd that instead of being married he would give her the Grace to become his Spouse Her Prayer was so well-pleasing to God that he granted her the full Accomplishment of it giving her from her Infancy the Gift of Chastity and Continence in so perfect a manner that she often said she never had in all her Life even by Temptation or Surprize the least Thought unworthy of the Chastity and Purity of the Virgin State V. Her Sister was much addicted to the Vanities of the World and could not look upon her Retiredness and Aversion from them without Indignation and Displeasure and among her Companions she made all this pass for an Effect of Stupidity and Dulness This made her quit her first Simplicity to follow for some time the Vanities of the World not that her Heart was set upon them but to shew that she had enough of Spirit and was not a Fool as her Sister would make them believe Thus the Devil laid Snares for her to entrap her and the sweetness of her Humour gain'd her the Love of the Young People they converst with beyond her Sister Thus she continu'd to Dress to frequent their Company to recreate her self with them in their Plays Dances and other youthful Divertisements tho' in all Honesty if that may be call'd Honesty which turns away the Heart from God however it past for such in the World Thus she greatly pleas'd her Parents particularly her Father who deny'd her nothing whereby she might appear with Advantage in the World Her Parents were anxious to have her married being Rich and having but Two Daughters and many Young Men would have had her for their Wife but she could never resolve to marry having an Aversion to it Yet she took Pleasure in the Conversation of the Youth till they urg'd her to marry and then she withdrew from them and would discourse with them no more She began also to take Pleasure in the Praises and Esteem of Men because they said she was fair and lovely whereas her Mother had still call'd her ugly and despis'd her on all Occasions VI. But as the World took place in her Soul God withdrew from it by degrees so that she felt no longer that Devotion or Pleasure in Prayer or Solitude which formerly gave her so much Contentment This made her Melancholly and the more she endeavoured to divert it by Company the more it encreast For her Soul was never at rest
founded upon this that there was nothing more just than to bewail the Fault of ceasing to love so Lovely a God Yet she confest that she had run too far to an Extremity in her Mortifications and that so great that she would never tell it but to one and would never advise any to do as she had done but only to yield up themselves to God and suffer themselves to be exercis'd by him and by the Events which he sends them X. Thus she spent whole Nights in Prayer oft repeating Lord what wilt thou have me to do And being one Night in a most profound Penitence she said from the bottom of her Heart O my Lord What must I do to please thee For I have no body to teach me Speak to my Soul and it will hear thee At that Instant she heard as if another had spoke within her Forsake all earthly things Separate thy self from the Love of the Creatures Deny thy self XI She was quite astonish'd not understanding this Language and mus'd long on these Three Points thinking how she could fulfil them She thought she could not live without earthly things nor without loving the Creatures nor without loving her self Yet she said By thy Grace I will do it Lord. But when she would perform her Promise she knew not where to begin finding her self strongly engag'd in the Love of all earthly things which she did not observe before and knew not how to be disengaged Having thought on the Religious in Monasteries that they forsook all earthly things and the Conversation of the Creatures by being shut up in a Cloyster and the Love of themselves by subjecting of their Wills She ask'd leave of her Father to enter into a Cloyster of the discalceated Carmelites but he would not permit it saying He had rather see her laid in her Grave This seem'd to her a great Cruelty for she thought to find in the Cloysters the True Christians she had been seeking but she found afterwards that he knew the Cloysters better than she for after he had forbidden her and told her he would never permit her to be a Religious nor give her any Mony to enter there yet she went to Father Laurens the Director and offered to serve in the Monastery and work hard for her Bread and be content with little if he would receive her At which he smiled and said That cannot be we must have Money to build we take no Maids without Money you must find the way to get it else there is no entry here This astonish'd her greatly and she was thereby undeceiv'd as to the Cloysters resolving to forsake all Company and live alone till it should please God to shew her what she ought to do and whither to go XII The more she entered into her self the more she was enclin'd to abandon all and to retire somewhere without knowing whether her Heart was disengag'd from temporal Goods from worldly Pleasures from all Creatures Yet she did not find her self altogether free nor entirely united unto God for she was apt sometimes to turn again to what she had left She ask'd always earnestly When shall I be perfectly thine O my God And she thought he still answered her When thou shalt no longer possess any thing and shalt die to thy self And where shall I do that Lord He answered her In the Desart This made so strong an Impression on her Soul that she aspired after this but being a Maid of Eighteen Years only she was afraid of unlucky chances and was never us'd to travel and knew no way She laid aside all these Doubts and said Lord thou wilt guide me how and where it shall please thee It is for thee that I do it I will lay aside my Habit of a Maid and will take that of a Hermit that I may pass unknown XIII Having then secretly made ready this Habit while her Parents thought to have married her her Father having promis'd her to a rich French Merchant she prevented the time and on Easter Evening having cut her Hair put on the Habit and slept a little she went out of her Chamber about Four in the Morning taking nothing but One Penny to buy Bread for that Day and it being said to her in the going out Where is thy Faith in a Penny She threw it a way begging pardon of God for her Fault and saying No Lord my Faith is not in a Penny but in thee alone Thus she went away wholly delivered from the heavy Burthen of the Cares and good Things of this World and found her Soul so satisfied that she no longer wish'd for any thing upon Earth resting entirely upon God with this only fear least she should be discovered and be oblig'd to return home for she felt already more Content in this Poverty than she had done for all her Life in all the Delights of the World XIV She knew no way nor whither to go She went out at the Gate that leads to Tournay and came thither about Ten a Clock then past into the Province of Hainault and coming through a Village called Bassec where were arriv'd that Day a Company of Soldiers who were playing in the Market-Place when she had past by them and come to the end of the Village she met a number of Children at their Play who looking on her began to say it was a Maid and crying this so loud to one another the Soldiers ran to know the Fray and then taking Horse they overtook her in the Fields and stopt her asking who she was and whither she went She was surpriz'd but looking before her she saw a Church and hoping there might be some good Pastor there to deliver her she said she was going to the Pastor who would satisfie them The Commander brought her to the next Village Blatton to the old Mayor's House promising to have her to the Pastor's when once his Men were lodged There he thought to have abus'd her by force or enticement but she told him resolutely that he should first kill her or she him and that she believ'd the Earth would open to swallow him up The old Mayor and his Wife defended her and he threatned to burn the House and call'd his Men to Arms about it The Maid of the House got out at a Window and told the Pastor who coming into the Chamber where the Captain was raging like one mad gravely rebuked him and taking her by the Hand he with his Chaplain led her through the Soldiers into his Lodging the Captain sinking into an Astonishment against the Wall without stirring for the Pastor was a grave and vertuous Man of great Age whose Words had struck the Captain and taken away all his Strength and Spirit But when this was over he came with his Men to the Pastour's House to search for her and not finding her and being made believe she was gone they gallop'd toward Mons thinking to overtake her XV. The
beware of her said she was guided by an evil Spirit that one such was plague enough in a Community And told her self that the Devil conâ—ducted her that he transform'd himself into an Angel of Light that there needed no other proof than her living without a Director and she would ruine her self if she did not submit to their Direction They pressâ—d her by so many Reasons that she doubted in might be true She had recourse to God but her Spirit being toâ—t with divers Passions she discern'd nothing being wholly in Darkness She went to the Archbishop who being perswaded she was guided by the Holy Spirit thought she ought not to take the Direction of Men. Pere du Bois confirm'd the same She rested upon this yet begg'd leave of the Archbishop to read the New Testament that she might discover her Errors by confronting her Sentiments with the Gospel She no sooner began to read attentively the Gospels than she perceived such a Conformity with her inward Sentiments that if she were to set them down in Writing she should write such a Book in Substance as the Gospel She left off to read more because God taught her inwardly all that she needed and that his Conduct and the Gospel were the same thing XXVI The Archbishop with the Consent of his Council judging the Undertaking to be from God gave her his Blessing and Permission to begin such a Society at Blatton where a Widow-Woman had offered a piece of Ground for which she afterwards paid her and there was a House begun but not finish'd because of the Death of the Pastor G. de Lisle and the Churchmen applied with all Vigour to stop it as they did He ask'd her Whereupon they would live She said upon their little Garden and God would provide for the rest That he never fail'd those who serv'd him truly and if they serv'd him ill far better that all be dissolved than to deceive the World by Hypocrisie He ask'd If she would make Vows She said None He said Each ones Love was not so strong as to make them persevere freely She said They who have it not will not come And if they lose the Love of God when they are there it is far better they return to the World than to disorder others or make them lukewarm XXVII She had communicated to Pere du Bois upon his importunity a Writing wherein she represented that God had made known to her that all the Evils of the Church came from the Churchmen and that they must amend if they would turn away God's Wrath. This Paper was quickly spread abroad of which she complain'd to Pere du Bois who said he was oblig'd in Conscience to do it All the Churchmen and Religious Orders were so far from amending there Faults thereby that it fill'd them with Hatred and Revenge against her uttering many Reproaches some of them declaring that if they could have her they would drown her XXVIII The Jesuits learning the Design she had of re-establishing a Christian Life in a Community set on the Archbishop with so much Earnestness and so many Calumnies against her that they entirely chang'd him and he retracted his Permission She remonstrated to him his Sin in being so easily perswaded by Men to change his Resolutions and to oppose what he knew came from God and forewarn'd him that for a Punishment he should die very shortly as he did about Six Months thereafter Pere du Bois perswaded her to go to Liege where she would obtain her desire but before she return'd the Jesuits had constrain'd the poor Maids to promise by Oath not to follow her and even not to speak to her Two of the best of them Mary Malapert and La Barre the younger died shortly after through the Anguish and Affliction of Spirit in which they put them A. B. says of Mary Malapert that she was the purest Soul that ever she knew and the only Person she ever knew in the World in a State of compleat Regeneration and Union with God which she enjoyed without knowing it well her self not but that when she enjoyed actual Conversation with God she was then most certain of it but when she return'd to her Directors they knew so well to distract her by outward things by constrain'd Rules and clouds of foreign Thoughts that she knew not where she was nor the true State of her Soul And one of the three things for which A. B. always bless'd God was that he had preserv'd her from the Direction of Men. XXIX Having after this staid for some time at Blatton and then by Pere du Bois's Advice with the Countess of Wallerwal who living in Caelibacy and designing to employ her Wealth to the Glory of God desired to see her where she met with nothing but Distraction she was call'd back to Lisle by the Sickness of her Mother who long'd to see her before she died She found her sick to Death who bless'd God that he had granted her desire and foretold her what grievous Afflictions were to befal her After her Mother's Death she resolving to retire again her Father and Friends urge her that all the Laws both of God and Man do oblige her though she had been in a Desart or a Cloyster to come and assist her aged Father in his Affairs She was perswaded so to do and so ordered her Hours of Recollection and the Times of managing his Affairs that she did all to his Contentment Yet tho' Sixty Years of Age he would needs marry without his Childrens knowledge a poor Maid for his Fancy without either Wit or Vertue A. B. staid with them four Months to acquaint her with the Affairs in which time she suffered grievously by her She resolvâ—d to retire and desired of her Father some of her Mother's Goods for her Substance which he utterly refused It is well known that the Laws and Customs of the Low-Coâ—ntries are quite different from those of England or Scotland particularly in this Matter of the Goods of Husband and Wife for the Goods of the Wife being either the Portion given her or any other Goods given her or purchas'd by her self the Husband has nothing but the Use and Profit of the Portion during the Wife's Life and she may dispose of and trade with her other Goods as she pleases and at her Death the Propriety and Profit also of her Portion and all her Goods do belong to her Children or other Heirs and none of them to the Husband A. B. related to her Sister what had past and that their Father said all their Motherâ—s Goods belong'd to him Upon which her Sister's Husband resolvâ—d to oblige him by Law and accordingly presented a Bill to the Magistrate But he being a Man of Wit and Credit drew them into a Process in which they could not get Justice for during it her Brother-in-Law fell sick and died upon which she desisted from that pursuit and retir'd to a little
Life by Motives and Principles of Religion but by her own Humour she resolved upon a Celibate Life only because she would not be crost c. But the Doctor sets this in a false Light as he does every thing else that concerns her The true Case is this when she was a Child it troubled her to see her Father sometimes so rough to her Mother and when he was in Wrath she would run and embrace his Knees to appease him and then would retire and pray that God would never suffer her to marry but that he would take her for his Spouse This was before her turning aside from God to divert her self with the Vanities of the World In the 18th Year of her Age she was struck with a deep Remorse for her straying from God and led a Life of most severe Penitence for Seven Years so that other Considerations did then affect her and draw her to a State of Celibacy As for the Doctor 's immodest Insinuations upon this Occasion I shall leave it to his own Conscience to check him for them but for the other Reason he gives for her Celibacy That she undervalued all she saw and could find none of Merit enough to deserve her c. it s purely his own Invention without the least Ground given for it in her Life or Writings or any manner of way and will be judged by every enquiring Reader to be a malicious and wilful Calumny 3. A Third Evidence against her Sanctity is says he her Disobedience to her Parents contrary to whose express Commands she was importunate to go into a Cloyster and when that would not do stole away from her Father's House privately He exaggerates this matter greatly but is not aware of one Reason he brings which determines the Case clearly on her side If the Case had been says he about turning Christian she ouâ—ht to have done it even without a particular Revelation whether her Father would or not The Case was the very same with her and a particular Command from God to strengthen it She saw she could not become a true Christian without abandoning the World and that while she was in her Father's House she could not sufficiently disingage her self from it and therefore resolved to obey Jesus Christ who bids us forsake Father and Mother and all that we have for his sake Our Lord called James and John the Sons of Zebedee from waiting on their Father and they forsook all and followed him 4. The Doctor triumphs greatly in his Fourth Instance her suing her Father at Law to divide his Goods with her after his Second Marriage which does not agree he says with common Measures of Grace and good Nature because it proceeded from an inordinate Love of the World and could not be managed without great disrespect to her Father The Doctor 's Passions make him so disingenuous in every thing that relates to this Virgin that it will nor be thought strange to tell that he is manifestly so in this Instance Mr. Poiret's Reply to this being so full in the fore-mentioned Letter to a Friend I need only adduce it for her Vindication and this the rather because the Doctor thinks that the Reason why he who continued her Life takes no Notice of this Passage tho' she gives an Account of it herself was because he knew not how to justifie it It is not true says he M. Poiret that I had any Interest to defend the Life and Actions of Mrs. A. B. by a Legacy which she left me as the Narrator says she did not leave me in Legacy to the Value of a Penny But there is nothing more contrary to Truth as well as to Justice and Charity than what he says of the Law-Suits of Mrs. A. B. with her Father and Step Mother I pray God he may not have acted maliciously against his Knowledge in the Judgment that he would have the English and Scots to make of her Civil Actions whose Civil Laws are different from those of her Country It may be it would be a Crime in England or Scotland for a younger Daughter after her Mother's Death to require by Law of her Father the Goods of her deceas'd Mother But in France where among Citizens in the matter of Succession there is no Distinction between Son or Daughter elder or younger it is the Law and Custom in many Places That after the Decease of the Mother her Goods are takâ—n from the Administration of the Father and put under other Curators to be after equally divided amongst the Children And in Mrs. A B's Country the Law is That the Widow-Husband cannot marry again until he first divide with the Children of the first Marriage and give them their Mother's Goods and to refuse this is to violate Law and Justice now this is what the Father of A. B. did whose Injustice our Doctor thinks fit to justifie and for this end to suppress change and falâ—ifie the Circumstances of the Affair against the Truth of what he had read of it To render Mrs. A. B. faulty and impious against her Father he speaks nothing of the Laws or Customs of the Place tho' they were expresly mentioned in her Acâ—count of the Affair according to which the Father is the Breaker of them and the Daughter would have them observed He say the Father would have maintain'd her in his House but he does not tell that his new Wife whom he had taken clandestinly tho she was but a poor Girl without Wit or Vertue studied to waste and consume the Goods of A. B. persecuting her for the Four Months she staid with her Father in so continual and cruel a manner as cannot be expressed Mrs. A. B. saw and experienced that this was inconsistent with her Recollection and contrary to the will of God He says that Mrs. A. B. was picqued because her Father refused her Money but does not tell that her Father was then in a most plentiful Condition that as for her self she had not a Penny that she ask'd only what was necessary for her That he irritated by his Wife was so cruel as not to assist her with a Penny when she was dangerously Sick that for want of Convenience she was obliged to lie under a Roof when the Snow and Cold deprived her even of the Nights rest so that Strangers were mov'd to give her Alms. He would have it to be understood that she entered into a Law Sure against her Father of her own head and therefore says that her Sister was already dead and that her Brother-in-Law perswaded her to proceed hoping afterwards to wheedle her out of it all which is false Her Married Sister was yet living and lived Five Years thereafter and about Four Years after her Husband The half of the Mother's Goods belonging to the Sister and her Husband they resolved to require their Father to deliver them to whom they did not appertain and it was only by
way of Concomitance and Adjunction that Mistress A. B. interven'd in it it not being Just that she should wrong her Brother-in-Law and Sister by refusing her Assent to this Affair and it appears that she came in but accessorily for how soon her Brother-in-Law died she wholly desisted from it So that the Question comes to this If in a Place where the Laws require that a Father before he marry again leave the Goods of the deceas'd Wife to the Children that he had by her a Daughter of more than Twenty Years of Age persecuted by a Mother-in-Law who wastes her Goods does commit a Crime when after having asked in vain but only simple Necessaries from her Father who is in a plentiful Condition she consents that her elder living Married Sister and her Husband should apply to the Judges to demand their own Goods which are wasted and a Portion for this Maid while they constantly refuse to allow her the least share for the necessities of Life so as to leave her generally without any Help even in her Maladies how dangerous soever they were or might be No Man living hitherto not even any of her greatest Enemies had so much as a Thought to give her the least Reproach for it and this is the Reason why he who continued her Life had no ground nor thought of making any Apology for this Fifteen or Twenty Years after this a certain Doctor lifts up himself to accuse her for this of Impiety and an inordinate Love to the World and that she had neither Law nor Reason on her side and glories publickly in this fine Discovery which ought rather to fill him with Confusion before God and Men considering the Artifices wherewith he hath disguised and perverted the Matter of Fact God's forbidding to meddle with other Mens Matters and the wretched Injustice with which he takes part against the Right of oppressed Innocence Having given an Account of the just Reason she had to resume the Sure after her Father's Death he thus concludes As there was nothing in this but what was according to Divine Natural and Civil Equity and since Mrs. A. B. affirmed that she acted in this by the Will and Motion of God and against her particular Inclination and in short since the Effect makes appear that she made use of her Goods for the Glory of God and the Advantage of the Poor in the Erection of a Hospital which subsists to this Day and to which she left all her Goods What is here in all this that deserves not to be esteemed in the Judgments of all good Men So far M. Poiret The Doctor is unjust when he would have it pass for an Invention of M. Poiret's That she was commanded by God to pursue her Right and that she should need it for his Glory c. He knows that M. A. B. declares that she was expresly mov'd to it by God And the Sincerity that appears in all her Life and Actions and that Poverty of Spirit which she still possessed in the midst of Abundance may convince any unprejudiced Person of the Truth of her Declaration and that she was not acted by an inordinate Love of the World That this was not inconsistent with her Abstractedness from the World as it appears by an excellent Resolution which she gave on another Occasion the Extract of which you see in the Third Part of the Apology N. 23. p. 227. So he who continues her Life does sufficiently evince it in the Place cited by the Doctor tho' not with that Justice and Candour that might be expected from a Narrator by some Reflections upon God's Dealing with her in that Matter such as that this happened after he had made Trial of her hearty Sincerity by a twelve Years actual Disingagement from the World that it was against her Will but by God's express Command that she resumed her Goods that she possess'd them in a most real Disingagement and employed them in God's Service only and concludes with this Illustration of the Matter If we had not seen Abraham pass three Days with Peace and Tranquility of Mind in the Resolutions and actual Preparations to kill his Son if we had not seen him ready to stab him and putting the Knife to his Throat we could not have known and he himself could not have certainly known whether his Affections were so disingaged from his Son as to give him wholly to God But after this Proof God gives him back that which he might afterwards possess according to God It is such an Abandoning of all that God requires of all true Christians tho' not of all after the same Manner after which he restores unto them their abandonâ—â— Goods or not as he sees fit and if he give them they are a Charge to them who possess them then when their Disingagement is true they possess them then as Goods which are not theirs but given them of God that they may employ them for God only who allows them to take of 〈◊〉 their simple Necessaries and no more all the rest ought to be for him and on his Account This is what truly befel M. A. B. who on this Occasion receiv'd and dispens'd God's Goods with an exemplary and unviolable Fidelity and spared no Pains to maintain what was God's because he had declared that such was his holy Will The other Branch of the Doctor 's Accusation as to Coverousness in her suing her Right to the Isle of Noordstrand is no less unjust than the former and his Account of it is not fair nor ingenuous M. de Cort left her sole â—eiress by his latter Will without her Knowledge or Consent when he was far distant from her in Noordstrand and when she testified an Aversion unto it her own Goods being a Charge to her already he told her with Grief there was none else that â—e could trust with it for if he should leave it to the Fathers of the Oratory they would not pay his Debts it to his Relations they would destroy one another with 〈◊〉 Suits The Doctor might have taken the true Narrative of it where it was to be had and not from M. Baylâ—s Dicâ—â—onaire Critique if he had given her own Defences against his malicious Accusation when it was brought against her with the same Spite and Fury by Benjamin Furly the Quaker he might have spared all his Insults or the Reader would have found them to be very ridiculous Her Defence is to be had at large in the Place cited on the Margent in her own Words the Substance whereof in short is this That it could not be Covetousness that acted her in that Business of Noordstrand since she was told it was burdened with Debts more than it was worth and was therefore refused by his Blood-Relations when she proffered it unto them with the same Conditions she her self held it That she had given sufficeint Testimony of her Detachment from the World when at the
many vocal words others to Speculations or Meditations of the Spirit which they call Mental Prayers But believe me it is neither Words nor Speculation that makes Prayer But TRUE PRAYER consists in the Conversition of Spirit that Man has with his God when his heart speaks to him and asks the things that he has need of or blesses him and thanks him for his Favours or praises his Greatness Goodness Love and the other Qualities which Man observes in his God This Elevation of Spirit or Conversation that he has with God makes up true Prayer without which there can be no true Prayer tho' they call by this Name many divers things which it were impossible that Man could do continually as Jesus Christ has said that he must always pray and never faint 17. He could not have appointed Man to do impossible things as continual Prayer would be after the manner that they would understand it For if to pray a Man behov'd to be always in Churches all the other things necessary for the support of Life would perish and Man would die for want of them And if to pray he must be always on his Knees the Body could not suffer this continual Fatigue And if he behov'd always to meditate fine Speculations in his Spirit he would break his head or if he must speak Prayers continually he could neither sleep eat nor drink So that it is not to be believ'd that God demands of Man any other continual Prayer but that of the Conversation of his Spirit with God which may be done continually while working drinking eating writing yea even while sleeping seeing he who has entertain'd his Spirit with God all the day long does certainly rest with him while sleeping because the Spirit having walked with its God while awake it reposes it self likewise with him when sleeping And usually the vital Spirits are full of that which they love and that which has been seen and heard in the day time is represented unto the Spirit in Sleep So that he who converses with his Spirit elevated unto God by day loses very little of the same Conversation during the night and even sometimes God communicates himself unto him by Dreams 18. By which it appears that it is very possible to pray continually as Jesus Christ has taught us yea there is nothing more easie and agreeable For my part I could not live without this continual Prayer and Death would be more sweet to me than to be one hour out of it because all sorts of Pleasures without this Conversation are to me Vexations and mortal Afflictions For this cause I abide always in it and I do not think that you have seen me go out of this Conversation to delight in other things By which you may see that it is very possible to pray always and never to cease and that it is even good and pleasant seeing he who is in this continual Prayer is never melancholy which you may also have observed as to me amidst so many different Events and occasions of Grief 19. Give your self therefore to this Continual Prayer and by it you shall overcome both your inward and outward Enemies You shall have Joy and Peace in your self and you shall learn all that you have need to do and avoid Do not apply your self to contemlate the great Wonders of God or his Conduct towards Men nor the other Mysteries of God or of Religion but practise this Continual Prayer according to your need speaking to God continually If you are in Temptation beg his Assistance if you are in Ignorance beg Wisdom from him to fulfil his Will if you are weak Strength and if you receive his Graces bless him and thank him for this Favour done to you a Sinner And thus you shall have continual matter of having your Spirit lifted up to God in which TRUE PRAYER consists By this you shall habituate your self by degrees to speak unto God and to converse with him in Spirit and at last he will speak unto you and you shall be here united unto him looking for a perfect Unity in Eternity Which she wishes you who remains Your very affectionate in Jesus Christ A. B. From the place of my Retreat Apr. 7. 1671. LETTER III. That the Spirit cannot rule where the Flesh rules That to him who has mortified the old Adam in himself it is most easie to imitate Jesus Christ and that it is difficult only to him who would live according to his Natural Inclinations This is the 7th Letter of the Third Part of La lum nee on tenebr My dear Child 1. I Do not wonder that your Friends say It is impossible to imitate Jesus Christ so long as they live according to their Natural Inclinations for it is a certain Truth that a natural Man cannot live according to the Spirit of Jesus Christ He must be regenerated and the old Adam must die in him for the Spirit cannot reign where the Flesh reigns seeing they are two sworn Enemies and cannot agree together no more than Heat and Cold This it is that makes Thunders and Lightnings in the Air when the Cold and Heat meet together the same befalls Souls cold in Charity when they feel themselves touch'd by the Arrows of God's Love or the heat of his Anger 2. If it be said to a carnal Person that he ought to love God with all his Heart with all his Soul and with all his Strength you shall see him presently break out in Words and throw out as it were fiery Flames of Anger to maintain that he loves God while in effect he loves nothing but himself And if it be told him that he cannot love God while he loves himself and the transitory things of this World he well let fly like Claps of Thunder against him who lays before him this Truth because he neither knows nor conceives it and his natural Inclinations cannot take pleasure in loving that which they do not see nor feel such as God and eternal Things which are invisible to his Carnal Eyes 2. We must of necessity die to the Flesh that we may live to the Spirit otherwise we shall never comprehend Spiritual things There are two Natures in us the one is Divine and other Humane The Divine Nature loves things Eternal and the Humane Nature loves things Temporal The Divine respects nothing that is earthly and the Humane respects nothing that is heavenly because each of these tend always to their Centre The Divine part in Man aims and tends to Divine things and endeavours to serve God who is its Principle from whence it comes and the Humane Nature aims and tends always to Earth from whence it takes its Original and cannot be pleased in any other thing This is the Reason why they who live according to their Nature say That it is impossible to imitate Jesus Christ which is most true as long as they will needs continue to live according to their Nature For it was corrupted by
Works is a dead Faith in which while they remain they will never obtain Salvation seeing a living and operative Faith is necessary which cannot be recovered but in the imitation of Jesus Christ for otherwise no body can recover the Grace of God which he has merited for us for those only who will embrace the Gospel Law for it only teaches us how to return to God and points out all the things which have withdrawn us from him 18. If the Gospel Law did not tell me that I must be poor in Spirit I would never have known that the Goods of the World could withdraw me from God and if the same Law did not tell me that I must be humble in Heart I would have remained in the Pride in which Nature begot me and if the same Law did not teach me that I must deny my self take up my Cross and follow Jesus Christ I would never have known that the Love of my self drew me away from the Love of God or that my natural Inclinations did incline me to Sin I would never have done Violence to them that I might take the Kingdom of Heaven by force but having learned in the School of Jesus Christ the Truth of my Duties I will follow them and walk in the Light that he has purchas'd for me by his Sufferings and will not lean upon the Opinions of blinded Men who take Lies for Truth for I know well that for me the Gospel Law was made and that without the observing of it I cannot be among those whom the Father has given unto Jesus Christ and for whom he prays unto his Father I hope you also will be of that number my dear Child that having been in this World united in the Spirit of Jesus Christ we may be united together with him for ever Which she wisheth who remains Yours wholly in God A. B. Amsterdam Jul. 15. 1670. LETTER V. A Traveller to Eternity minds not earthly things To a Child of God who did not sufficiently comprehend that the Cares of this Life were an Hindrance to the Perfection of the Soul and was troubled to hear me say that it behoved me to tarvel alone to Eternal Life seeing he was desirous tobear me Company Shewing him that all the things of this World are vain and when we make it our Business to acquire them or to please Men we are not to look for an Eternal Reward This is the Twelfth of La lum née en tenebr Part iv My dear Child 1. I Know that you are troubled to hear me say that I am all alone in the World since you desire to accompany and follow me Your Desire is good in this but my Proposition is true that I am all alone in the way through which God leads me You ought not to be troubled to hear the Truth but rather to discover what must be done to accompany me I TRAVEL TOWARDS ETERNITY and I see all the World travelling towards the Land of their Banishment which is this miserable World after which every one aspires for I have not yet found one Person who seeks nothing but eternal things only 2. All Men of sound Judgment say that they aspire after things Eternal while their Thoughts Labour and Studies are taken up about what respects the Earth and Time Is it possible that they can have such a Blindness of Spirit as to believe that they desire eternal things when they despise them â—or â—e who seeks after the Goods of this World gives a sure Evidence that he despises Eternity Since it gives a full Satisfaction to the Man who desires it and he can no longer desire any other thing For all that is Temporal and Transitory seems to him Dung and Filth of which he makes use of the least â—e can and would flee in the Air towards Eternity without any wise touching the Earth if his Body were not of so 〈◊〉 Matter and obliged to take such gross Food for its 〈◊〉 But they who travel towards the World are still desirous of Silver and Gold that by this means they may make themselves to be served and honoured that they may take their Delight in Eating Drinking Walking commodious Apparel in adorning their Houses with fine Moveables and rich Ornaments that they may satisfie their Five Natural Senses of Sight Hearing Smell Taste and Feeling 3. So that it is no wonder that a Person who travels towards Eternity finds herself alone in the way since all the Men that we see now do so desire and seek after all these things studying and labouring with all their Power to obtain them and they will not despise or forsake them for all the Reasons that can be told them They would indeed have Eternity without resolving to forsake temporal things tho' Jesus Christ tells us That we cannot serve Two Masters without being unfaithful to the one or the other They wrest this Passage according to the Sensuality of their Inclinations and they will needs follow them and have eternal Life also which is impossible Therefore I do not understand Men now neither do they understand me and for this Cause we cannot stay together 4. I must indeed out of necessity be among Men But as soon as it shall be possible for me I will leave them to follow the way that God points out to me and leave them to follow those ways which they will needs choose for their Damnation I will not say my dear Child that you walk in this way of Damnation since you have an effectual Desire to be saved and to accompany me But you are yet travelling towards the World which is not as yet crucified in you you do not yet know how one must die to it in all things I am therefore troublesome to you in RESOLVING TO WALK ALONE and you give me more trouble to oblige me to follow you in travelling towards the Earth and Temporal things where I cannot accompany you without continual Strife and Debates for there is not a temporal Action or Word which is not blameworthy in this way that leads to Eternity For I should no sooner hear you speak of things which respect the Earth only but I would reprove you for them as idle Words and unprofitable for Eternity And if by your Actions you should labour for earthly things I would complain of your Employ and reckon your Labour to be vain 5. You see how I would be a Burthen to you and you would be insupportable to me And therefore our Journey would be melancholly and troublesome both for you and me and worse than that of two Persons who did not understand one another by Signs nor Words Nevertheless your Company does not offend me for I love it because of the good Desires which you have neither will I reprove you by way of Correction or Reproof but out of good Inclination for your Perfection which I love as my own But your Nature will feel Troubles thereby which perhaps would be insupportable to
you or would wrong your Health 6. For I YIELD IN NOTHING TO NATURE knowing well that it is corrupt and begets all sort of Sins which kill the Soul and make it lose a Blessed Eternity Of necessity we must contradict it and deny all its Desires or otherwise it will lead us to all sort of eternal Miseries which few Persons do conceive For we see every one follows his own Will without thinking that he does Evil for they do not sufficiently perceive that our SELF WILL BRINGS FORTH ETERNAL DEATH as in Truth it does which I see by the Eyes of Faith And Jesus Christ has also taught us it when he says that he who does not deny himself cannot be his Disiple I cannot find more express Terms to make Man understand that he must not follow his own Will but absolutely deny it all that it asks Nevertheless we see that the best enclin'd now adays think themselves happy that they can follow their own Will which is always enclin'd towards earthly and tempoâ—al things and never towards Eternity which is unto it invisible and incomprehensible 7. For this Cause I can never Accompany one who travels towards the World and follows his own Will I must still wâ—lk alone so long as I shall not find others being like a desolate Widow who has no Companion nor Consolation in this World which is even very grievous to Nature Because it is always sociable and is pleas'd with the Society of those like to it which I have not as yet met with in this World having being always obliged to travel alone for I have found none to joyn my self unto tho' I have still sought after them and inform'd my self where are THOSE SOULS WHICH TRAVEL TOWARDS ETERNITY without having hitherto discovered any 8. I have convers'd with the Religious and Devout Persons of our side and have found them all seeking after earthly things for if they study and preach it is to recommend themselves to Men or to get their Living And secular Persons who are engag'd in the Practice of Physick or in Merchandizing do all to gain Money or to acquire Honour and Pleasure in this World So that none of those can accompany me in the way to Eternity and therefore I must walk alone or turn backward to the way of the World Which I will never do choosing rather to die alone in the way of Salvation than to follow a croud in the way of Perdition seeing the great number of the damned would never ease my Pain but rather encrease it by the encrease of the number of damned Souls Therefore I will continue in the way to Eternity tho' I should travel ALONE in it even to Death choosing rather to be alone with Jesus Christ than in a great Company with the World and Hell I know indeed my dear Child that you do not desire to follow the World or Hell but in effect you still follow them so long as you yet seek any other thing than Eternity You think you will not seek any other thing since you have resolved to quit the World But believe me so long as you yet seek to please Men and that you are afraid to displease them you are still in the way of the World And so long as you take pleasure here in the Honour or Prosit of the World you cannot relish the Delights or the Repose of Eternity And if you have yet an Esteem for Wealth it is certain you are not come to the Knowledge of eternal good things for these make one always to despse earthly Goods finding them to be vain and unworthy of our Love 9. By which you may certainly discern if you are in the way of Eternity or in that of the Earth and Time according as your Aims and Designs tend unto the one or the other This is a general Rule for ALL Men of the World by which they may measure if they are in the way to a BLESSED ETERNITY or in that which leads unto a MISERABLE ETERNITY by examining if their Cares Desires and Affections are towards earthly things or indeed towards things Eternal 10. Not that one must live in Idleness in this World for he ought continually to labour in it to accomplish the Penitence that God has enjoyn'd us But our Labour ought to respect Eternity the Glory of God the Salvation of our Soul or that of our Neighbour and all that is without this is Evil. For if one labour for this World he receives here the Recompence of his Labour and therefore he has no more to pretend to for Eternâ—ty For otherwise God would not be just seeing he who has laboured that he may gain Money having gain'd it has received the Reward of his Labour and has no Right to pretend to any other thing for he desired no other thing If you labour that you may get an Office and you obtain it your Labour is well rewarded by the obtaining of that Office If you labour in Traffick and Business that you may gain Money and if this succeed according to your Desires you must not look for any other Recompence but the Money that you have gained If you study that you may accomplish your self before Men you are rewarded by the Praises which they give you and the Esteem they have for you You see all that a Person can pretend to who labours for the Earth and for Time God cannot in Justice give him a Blessed Eternity when his Labours have no other End but the Earth towards which he travels all the Days of his Life as we see all Men do now and they think themselves Wise and Happy when they dextrously seek after their Advantages in this World For he who does it not is despised by them and look'd upon as a Fool. 11. This is the way in which all Men do travel wherein it would be impossible for me to follow or imitate them for I look upon all these things as Follies and Amusements of Satan For what can it profit a Man if he attains to some Office or Benefice or that he has heaps up Money that he may take his Delights in this World Death puts an end to all and the Praises of Men which he has acquired by improving himself are nothing but a blast of Wind which drives away the Ashes of our Corruption by forgetfulness out of their Memories And the poor Soul finds it self deprived of eternal Glory which it can never recover after this transitory Life which is the only way to a blessed or miserable Eternity It is a Folly and Deceit to hope for it He must content himself with the Earth which he lov'd and with Men whom he desired to please 12. Behold my dear Child what Recompence the Earth and Men can give them for all the Services which they shall render them nothing but the Pain and Sorrow of being forced to abandon them and Remorse of Conscience for having sought after earthly things and travelled towards a
acts any thing that is base or filthy with them If you should see any without Feet you would confess there is much wanting to the Perfection of the Body yet you would not deny but that he who should use them either to hurt any one or to his own Dishonour makes an ill Use of his Feet With our Eyes we see the Light and discern the Forms of Bodies Yet many act Evil with their Eyes and make them the Instruments of Lust Yet you see what a Defect there is in the Face without the Eyes Now where these are entire who is the Giver of them but God the Giver of all Good Wherefore as you approve of those in the Body and without regarding those that misuse them give Praise to God that gave them So it is necessary that the Free-will without which no one can order his Life aright must be both Good and also the Gift of God And you must confess that those rather are to be condemn'd that make ill Use of this Good than that he should be Impeached who gave it Since then in the Body you grant the Eye to be a Good which yet if it were wanting there would be no Hinderance to our living well How can that seem to you no Good without which none can live aright For there is nothing that I do so firmly and intimately feel as that I have a Will and that by it I am moved to do this or that And I see not why I should call it mine if the Will wherewith with I do will and not will is not mine Wherefore to whom must it be attributed if I commit Evil thereby but to my self For since God hath made me and I cannot do any thing well but by the Will it doth thence sufficiently appear that the Will was given rather for this End by the good God And unless that Motion were voluntary and in our Power whereby the Will is turned hither and thither Man would be neither worthy of Praise when he lifteth it up to Things above nor of Blame when he wresteth aside as it were a certain cardinal Point of the Will to Things below Neither were he to be admonished that neglecting these temporal he should seek to gain Eternal Things and that he should refuse to live ill and chuse to live Well But whosoever thinks that Man is not to be admonished to this ought not to be suffered among Men. XII But if Man have Free-will can be do Good of himself without the Grace of God or if he turn away from God can he recover again without God's Grace or is God partial in his Grace denying it absolutely to some and bâ—stâ—wing it on others In all this these are her Sentiments As to the first God is the Author of all Good and Man can never do any Good of himself but by the Grace of God with which God requires that Man by his Free will should co-operate that he may give him more Grace To conceive how God gives his Grace to Man and how he must co-operate therewith we need but consider the Order that he has placed in Nature as to the human Body It is he who forms it independantly from the Creatures so that Parents cannot add one Hair to the Head of their Infant Yet he brings no Men into the World but by the Co-operation of two Persons who are so united as that two Bodies are made one Flesh as Hearts and Wills ought to be one in Christ Jesus for the Forming of the Holy Church God might have created all Men of the Dust of the Earth as he did Adam or made them generate as Fishes but he wills this Conjugal Co-operation to maintain his Charity among his Creatures and produces no Men by any other Way tho' he be Almighty Even so he gives his Grace to Man that he may love him and work out his Sâ—lvation It is he alone who gives this Grace and Man contributes nothing to it nor has ever merired it Nevertheless this Grace liberally given will never produce its â—â—â—ect without the Consent of the Free-will of Man and his Co-operation tho' he can add nothing to Grace which comes immediately from God as does also the Generation of Men. But the Ordinance of God will still stand and Man ought not to ask the Reason of it or to say that the Grace of God ought to operate alone or which is worse to say that Man can do Good of himself These are Sayings as rash as presumptuous whereby Men would give Laws to God and would have his Grace to operate alone And to attribute to Man the Power of doing Good without being prevented by his Grace is a Pride surpassing that of Lucifer who would only equal himself to God whereas Man who would do Good of himself preferrs himself to him and will not take him for the Co-operator of his Good but will assume the Power of doing it by himself That we may conceive how all Good comes from God and that Man can do no good of himself we are to consider that Man being created to enjoy God and to enjoy all his Works is made up of many several Faculties Capacities or Vessels as it were fitted for receiving and being filled with their respective Goods from God and the Creatures and is endued with a Free-will whereby he may turn these Faculties to their respective Objects or turn them away from them as he pleases We may conceive this as to spiritual things by considering the Case as to bodily things Thus his Eyes are formed to receive the Light and all the Objects which it presents The Light surrounds him he opens his Eyes and receives it or he shuts them and keeps it out and walks in Darkness or he encompasses himself with a thick Wall that he may not behold the Light or he does that which makes them blind and so his Darkness comprehends it not Has he reason to boast himself because he opens his Eyes and beholds the Light as if he were the Author of it or had given himself the Power to behold it or to accuse the Light when he shuts his Eyes against it or makes himself Blind The Delight and Good he receives is not from himself but from the Light nor yet the Power of beholding it and the Evil or Privation of it is purely owing to himself Even so God's Delight is with the Soul as the Light is to shine into the Eyes if it turn to him he fills it with Good if it turn away from him it is all Misery and Darkness As to the second if Man now by his own Free-will can in his corrupt State do Good and turn to God she says There is no Good but what comes from God and no Good can proceed from corrupt Man more than pure Wine can come out of a filthy Vessel full of Uncleanness The Scripture tell us a Man takes out of the Treasure of his Heart that which is in it
the Love of all sorts of Creatures and yet think to be saved for their Divines have found out Philosophical Reasons to maintain this Yet she says what she has written of the Learned is not that she will despise Learning or the Study of Sciences and Languages Since all these things may serve for the Glory of God when we will apply them to those Ends and moral Vertues give Advantage to divine Vertues For a well bred Person will still be more docile in the Practice of true Vertue than one ill-bred and one of good Learning will be more able to understand and receive true Vertue than a rude and ignorant Person so that what says she makes me fear that few of the Learned and of the Great shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven is that I see in effect that very few of them are humble in Heart and that it is impossible speaking naturally that they should not esteem themselves more than another as having more ground for it And unless by Divine Vertue a Learned Person know the Misery and Ignorance into which Sin has plung'd him he can never be without Self-esteem and Presumption of Spirit which things God resists and does not give them his Grace for of necessity they must be humble in Heart to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven But because this Sentiment concerning the Nature of humane Reason is so contrary to the common Opinion of the Learned I shall here briefly represent it in a Light and Method conformable to our ways of reasoning and enquiring into things as it is most rationally and fully accounted for by M. Poiret in his Treatise De Eruditione to which I refer those who desire to enquire farther into it for full Satisfaction 1. The Original Ends of God's creating Man being to enjoy him and all his Works the one as his Essential Happiness and the other as Accessory he therefore gives him an Immortal and Divine Soul and a Material Body and endues these with sutable Faculties capable of enjoying this twofold Happiness the one material and sensible his bodily Senses by which he might take in the Beauty and Delight of all the Creatures and the other Divine and Spiritual his Understanding by which he might be capable of enjoying God and Divine things and of receiving his Light and Love 2. Those Faculties are passive and do not by any activity of theirs produce their Objects but only are laid open and turn'd to them to receive them Our Eyes do not form the Light but only passively receive it and the Beauties of the other Creatures and in the Night tho' we open and turn them about never so earnestly we meet with nothing but Darkness So is it as to our spiritual Faculties and their Objects 3. Those respective Objects when they are present to their respective Faculties do make so strong and vivid an Impression on them that in their Absence we are capable of forming to our selves in our Minds Images and Pictures of them and of compounding or dividing or comparing these Pictures together and of forming Propositions and Consultations about them and according as these passive Faculties have received due and vivid Impressions or faint or none at all from their respective Objects we are accordingly capable of forming true or false Pictures of them And this is the active Faculty which we call Reason 4. The Knowledge we have by the Impressions from the Objects themselves in our passive Faculties is a loving solid real Knowledge making us enjoy the Object and the Delight and Happiness it can give us The Knowledge we have by the Exercise of this active Faculty of our Reason is a dead dry barren superficial Knowledge that communicates nothing to the Soul of the Delight and Reality of the Objects themselves We see what a difference there is between beholding the Sun and forming to our selves Idea's and Pictures of him in his Absence the first enlightens warms delights directs us lets us see the Beauty of all the Creation the other affords nothing of this and if we had still been Blind and never seen the Light even the very Pictures of it we fancy to our selves would be false as well as superficial Now it is just the same as to the spiritual things the natural Man perceives not the things of God they seem Foolishness to him His Idea's and Reasonings about them are like a Blind Man's Reasoning about Colours and tho' they were never so Just yet they cannot make him Happy nor to enjoy the Object themselves no more than a Man's drawing the Pictures of Light Fire Meat and Drink can enlighten warm and nourish his Body Our Souls must be turn'd to God and taken off from all other things And blessed are the pure in Heart for they shall see God The Knowledge we have by Reason then is a superficial barren and dead Knowledge does not bring to the Soul the true and living Knowledge of God They who give themselves up to it do really deny God make their Reason their God are guilty of a more dangerous Idolatry than they who worship the Sun and how universal this Evil is now in the World he that runs may read The true and living Knowledge of God is to be had only from God our divine Faculties must be turn'd to him and turn'd away from other Things that they may be enlightned by him they are in our corrupt State more dead and defiled and vitiated than the weakest or most blinded Eyes and Reasoning will not recover them more than it will give Eyes to the Blind Physick is indispensably necessary to heal them and the Laws and Life of Jesus Christ transcribed into our Hearts and Practice is the only Remedy for them XIX They accused her that she designed to form a new Sect and Party and so to encrease the Divisions and Schisms in Christendom whereas no body did more deplore the Divisions of Christians than she She saw that Schisms and Sects served only to destroy true Charity the Love of God and Men and brought in nothing but Hatred Envy and every evil Work under a Cover of different Forms and Opinions She desired nothing but to reunite Christians in one in the Spirit of Jesus Christ and to have obtained that would have been willing to have spent to the last Drop of her Blood She protested a hundred and a hundred times that she would establish no Party nor draw any after her but send all to Jesus Christ and to the Practice of the Doctrine of the Gospel She shunned the Conversation of Men and liv'd always shut up in a Chamber she wished never to see any Body provided they were all united to God To set up a Sect is to leave a Society and a certain publick Worship where Persons were once Members and to establish another to which they draw by human Motives as many Persons as they can and acknowledge them as Members of it when they make a verbal