Gospel with such high and divine words words not of counsel as many think but of command in cleer and express terms testifying his will words addressed not onely to the Religious but to all Christians Be ye perfect saith he even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect What can be said more or spoke in more express terms How would we have more cleerly expressed what this perfection ought to be then to say you must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect This perfection consists in the union of the soul with God and this union is made and accomplished by pure and perfect love the love of God coming from God above which alone hath power to give God to us and to unite us to God All Christians in generall are called to the union which is made on earth by grace and in heaven by glory Whence I first infer that as all christians are called to this union of the soul with God so are all obliged to that love which makes this union that is to say to a love pure holy and worthy of God a love express'd and lively represented by the mouth of God in these words Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart his words so express it that they speak all the perfection of love so generall that they oblige all to this love I infer secondly that the perfection whereunto the Religious are called is not different from that whereto all christians are obliged wherein many deceive themselves The reason is clear and the deduction of it is easie For if perfection consists in the unity of the soul with God an union wrought by true love and all christians as well as the Religious are called to this union made by grace upon earth and in Heaven by his glory Finally if it be commanded to all christians and to all men as well as the Religious to love God with all their heart that is perfectly and as much as they can in this mortall life by the ayd of grace it followeth evidently that these two estates which appear so unlike are alike in the same obligation of seeking perfection though by different wayes In fine who can doubt so manifest a truth no man can be ignorant that the Commandement of Love is common to all men of what estate soever they be No man can deny but that Love is the bond of perfection so St. Paul calleth it There is no difference then but in the way and means that we are to take to arrive to this perfection There are divers and we must esteem all and regard them with respect But if it be a question to make choice of some way to arrive to this love and if we must have Lawes and Maxims to conduct us thereunto and to conserve us therein it is certain we cannot find them more pure more divine and more assured then in the Gospel where the Son of God himself as Authour of Christianity showes us the way gives us the rule and proposes to us the maxims which we ought to keep to guide us to this love which he commandeth to live in this union and to arrive to this perfection whereto we are called and therefore Christians living according to the rules of the Gospel shall infallibly arrive to this high perfection and enjoy this most desirable union So St. Paul speaking of Christianity In Iesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing nor incircumcision but a new Creature and as many as follow this rule grace be unto them and mercy Under the name of Circumcision he teacheth us that nothing in the World no estate is worthy to be esteemed but that of a new Creature Christianity onely giveth us the grace and power thereof wherefore that is the rule whereof the Apostle here speaks Whence we learn the eminency of the state of christianity above all others We see then how true it is that we are all without exception obliged and called of God to love and to perfection This and more which might be said on this subject is true and yet notwithstanding it is certain that christian perfection is as the Sun proposed to all christians in generall the Precept of Love is equally given to all men and consequently all are obliged to the same perfection which is all the Argument wherewith I would undeceive such christians as would exempt themselves from both This granted it rests onely to consider the qualities of love it must be pure perfect and indissoluble the three properties of love in Christianity Pure for it regards nothing but God if it regard any thing else it is not for God nor according to God whence it comes that that which regards pure love doth separate us from our selves from all our interests and alienates us from all creatures as far as they obstruct our love to God This love makes us regard nothing but in the belief that God is there present by his immensity we neither tast nor feel them further then as they bear the presence of God for God being in all things the soul that loveth him enclines to him seeks him and finds him every where This love must also be perfect God saith so expresly We must love him with all our soul and with all our strength There is no need of explicating these words they are too cleer and evidently shew us that God will have us love him with all that which we are that is perfectly This love must lastly be indissoluble no force must separate us from God no violence must tear this love from our hearts no creature in heaven or earth no fear of death or of the loss of all we enjoy no good either present or future must separate us from this love which must be in us more powerfull then death more indissoluble then unity Now making use of all that we have said and reducing to practise all the proposed truths we shall find what we sought in this tract we shall see that by a necessary consequence we are all obliged to divorce and separate our selves truly and strongly from all that hinders us from loving God perfectly We are obliged to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect this perfection is not without the true love of God this love cannot be in us but in as much as we are separated from our selves the world and all Creatures Whence we learn that a Christian obliged to the love of God and to perfection cannot arrive to this estate which he seeks and is commanded him if on the one side he be not wholly subjected to God and on the other altogether separated in spirit conduct and love from all the Creatures Therefore he must apply himself earnestly to this exercise of subjecting himself to God and devesting himself of himself for it is certain the soul can never acquire this divine spirit nor arrive to Evangelicall perfection if she stay in her selfe obey her own will and follow
makes of them Iesus Christ wills his Apostles speaking to them of sufferings to receive them without fear and with esteem and wills that they be unto them sweet and pleasing Because saith he the hairs of your head are numbred and not one of them shall fall to the ground without the will of your Father He said that God is our Father to engrave in our hearts a respect confidence and love He sayes that our hairs are numbred and that he keeps an account of them to perswade us that Gods care of us is great and that he hath a care of us even to the least things In brief he saith that a hair shall not fall to the ground without his order to shew that all the losses privations sufferings all events loss of goods of honour of life happen not but by the order of God who is our Father What greater reason to esteem sufferings and to conduct our souls to peace and repose amidst the perplexities of the world then the assurance of Iesus Christ It is enough for a Christian if he be a Christian when Iesus Christ sayes to him Fear not for a hair shall not fall to the ground without your Father how full of love and consolation are the words of Saint Paul to the Ephesians I beseech you that you walk worthy the vocation wherewith ye are called The Reason he adds There is but one Lord one faith one Baptisme one God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in you all These words are sufficient to establish us christianly in the spirit of suffering and to make us to bear all with sweetness peace and tranquillity of spirit even with esteem and respect We need no other object for our eyes nor other thought in our heart but there is but one Lord this Lord is God this God is our Father this Father is above all In these words we shall learn in what respect subjection and esteem we ought to be in all the contrarieties and sufferings of humane life Secondly We may look upon the state of Christianity and examine what is the essence of the true spirit of piety we shall find that sufferings is the principall its life and its continuance and its maintenance My Son sayes the wise man going to the service of God keep thy self just and in fear and prepare thy soul to temptation adding Take all that shall be imposed on thee suffer pain with patience and humility St. Paul more clearly describes this when speaking of the persecutions he had suffered he adds And all those also who will live godly in Iesus Christ shall suffer persecution which must be understood of all sorts of sufferings both inward and outward For the life of a Christian is no other then the life of Iesus Christ the spirit of Christianity This is the spirit of Iesus or in the common phrase the spirit of grace Jesus was alwayes in humiliation and sufferings he loved from all eternity seeing that from all eternity he was resolved to be man he is reinvested therein becoming man humiliation and sufferings were the centre of his life It is enough to honour pains humiliation and sufferings to say that Iesus Christ hath born them and as the Christian must be the image of Iesus Christ so must he bear with Iesus Christ all sorts of commotions pains humiliations and sufferings As we have born the earthly Image of the earthly Adam let us also bear the image of the heavenly saith the Apostle meaning that we must reinvest us with his Vertues that our life may be an express image of his life which appearing alwayes in desertions lowness and sufferings so ours must be but the same state of sufferings What honour is it to a Christian to weare the Livery of Iesus Christ what happiness to follow his steps we are his members he is our Head were it not a shame to see the body decked with flowers bathed in delights and the head crowned with Thorns we are his Brethren and must possess one heritage with him is it not reason then that we should be like him and imitate his conflicts if we would participate of his Triumphs We are co-heires with Iesus Christ saith the Apostle if we suffer with him that we may be also glorified with him Whatsoever it be the Sonne of God hath so ordered it in Christianity that he that will follow him must renounce himself and take up his Crosse. They are deceived who think to attain true piety with delights who refuse all sorts of pains and mortifications who take care for peace repose and health who onely study to frame to themselves an easie life and seek for ease in their labours and quiet in their spirits and think thereby to make a great progress in perfection No no! vertue walks onely amongst the thorns and amidst the travails of the spirit of flesh and the vices of the world She must tame her self by watchings and mortifications and the happiness of a Christian is onely in the Crosse. It is the Livery of the Children of God the mark of their election the Plummet of their fidelity and the onely way of Heaven for saith St. Paul We must enter into the Kingdom of God through many tribulations The third reason is that the grace of Christianity can operate no other effect then annihilation and suffering for to be in grace is to be subject to graces and to be in the Kingdom of grace that is to be in the Crosse. For so much as the soul hath of grace so much she must have of the Crosse. The Fathers of the Church call the life of a perfect Christian a hidden Martyrdom which is easie to conceive if we consider that the spirit of Christianity consisteth in a crucifying love a love like that of the spouse who cryes I charge you O ye Daughters of Ierusalem if you find my beloved that you tell him that I am sick of love love which pierceth the soul which transports and transforms it into its object Iesus love which combates sufferings and triumphs over death Behold this combate of love God loves us gives us his love makes us suffer to prove the faithfulness of our love the soul that suffereth because she loves willingly throwes her self into sufferings and defies all labours that in her sufferings she may express her love Iesus did so at the evening of his death when he went to sacrifice himself upon the Altar of the Crosse when he said to his Apostles To the end the World may know that I love my Father and do as he hath commanded me arise and let us go hence whence he went to the Garden of Olives to deliver himself willingly into the hands of his enemies where he shewed that love was the cause of his sufferings his sufferings the marks of his love Howsoever it be to be a Christian and not to love God cannot stand together and
him and to have as much conformity in our actions to those of Iesus as there is between the head and the members of the same body So that this imitation must not be indifferent but most holy and perfect All as many of you saith the Apostle as are baptized into Ie. Christ have put on Christ that is ye bear his Livery and as the Doctors interpret it ye are made like unto him ye imitate his vertues and are followers of his life and actions For it is but reason that where the head is there the members should also be and that there be a resemblance and conformity of the one to the other To imitate then the Sonne of God implies two things the one is that we do what he hath done the other that we do it with the same spirit and dispositions wherewith he did it He was humbled for us he shewed his love and clemency towards us Let us also learn of him to be gentle and humble of heart He was obedient even to death the death of the Crosse let us imitate his obedience preferring the accomplishment of his divine Ordinances and holy will before all things even our own life He was born in a stable layd in a manger he took poverty for the companion of his life he condemned the World and despised its pride shewing us that all is vanity and a meer nothing in the eyes of God Let us do the same and though we are in the World condemn its vanity in a word so use it that all our life interiour and exteriour may be a continuall imitation of the life of Iesus This is the true piety that a Christian must exercise the onely meanes to be perfect In this imitation and resemblance consisteth the perfection of the soul as well in the state of grace as of glory We know that when we appear we shall be like him we shall see him as he is saith Saint Iohn If then we shall be like him in glory we must also be like him in grace for glory is nothing but grace consummated grace glory commenced But we must not rest here it is not enough to do barely what the Son of God hath done we may deceive our selves herein believing we do much when we do nothing of value because Iesus Christ being man as we are and conversing amongst us no doubt but we may find some conformity and resemblance to him even among the wicked in the common states of men many suffer and are oppressed many poor and humbled many sequester themselves from the pomp of the Court and live in the obscurity of a solitary life many fast and pray and do almost all the exteriour actions that the Son of God exercised upon earth He was man as we are we are men as he was but this does not perfect us this is no imitation of him the reason is because it is not enough to do as he did but we must do it with the spirit in the dispositions and by the principle that he operates which few persons mind It is not enough to do but we must do it by a principle of grace not of generall grace comprised under the common and generall name we give to all the gifts of God which is an usuall way of speaking but of grace which giveth us Iesus Christ communicateth to us his spirit and puts us into the holy dispositions of his soul. So that doing all things by this principle we perfectly imitate the Son of God so far that our naturall common actions are withdrawn from their meanness and elevated and united to those of the Son of God after a particular manner as being operated by the same principle and with the same dispositions This manner of acting is peculiar to the state of Christianity and in all circumstances conformable to the state of grace for by Christian grace we are new creatures creatures in Iesus Christ as the Apostle saith and consequently we have a new being and life Which if we have we must also have new inclinations another goodness and all our actions must be conformable to this new estate seeing that according to the ordinary maxims the work is according to the being Now as the being we have by Christian grace is wholy divine elevated and entirely in Iesus Christ it followes that all our actions must be elevated and done in Iesus For this the Son of God humbled himself to all practices and exercises to ennoble and sanctify them for according to the Fathers Iesus entring into the waters in the day of his Baptisme by his touching them he sanctifies the waters of our Baptisme and as Saint Augustine saith he sanctified the world and blessed it by his conversation So by the use he hath made of humane nature wherewith he hath clothed himself and of all the exercises and functions proper thereto he sanctify'd ours shewing that we may imitate him seeing he became man to be the rule law and model of our actions and not onely imitate him but express and represent him to the life and be so many Christ's as members of the Son of God We must be one with him and consequently must not operate but with him and in his person not in our own For this cause he gives us his spirit whereby we act or to say better he acts all in us It follows that they are not so much our vertues as those of Iesus in us Herein appears the great difference between Christian vertues and morall or humane For instance The love God requires of a Christian must not be that of a Pagan who loves them that love him nor that of a Politician who loves according to his humour or interest much less that of a Iew who loves not but out of an hope of reward promised or a fear of Iudgments The love of a Christian must be the same with that of Iesus that is he must love with the same love wherewith Iesus loves he must love with the love of Iesus as he must live the life of Iesus Walk in charity saith Saint Paul as Iesus Christ hath loved you The Son of God himself in the Eve of his passion speaks thus to his Apostles I give you a new Commandment that ye love one another as I have loved you To love is no new Commandment this law was imprinted in our hearts from the beginning of the world but the manner of loving is new we must love by the same love wherewith Iesus loved us his love must be in us O how great is this love how pure how free from self-interest how strong and powerfull since according to the Apostle it is the same love which made Iesus to be born and die for us even then when we were his enemies and sin raigning in us The Son of God gives us a cleer testimony of this truth speaking to his Father I have declared to them thy Name and will declare it that the love
must make choice of including all the Excellencies of Christianity whatsoever is to be said of the rest is to be deduced from these The first estate wherein we are established by the grace of Christianity is that which we receive in Baptism where we are consecrated to the most holy Trinity The excellency of this estate consists herein that the most holy Trinity by this Sacrament of Reconciliation giving us at once a new being and a new birth it sanctifies and consecrates us by an Unction altogether extraordinary and divine and by this extraordinary consecration draws us from our selves separates us from the common Tempests of the world to dedicate and refer us wholly to his honour and glory to call us to a holy conversation which we ought to have with divine persons as the beloved Apostle saith That our fellowship may be with the Father and with his Son Iesus Christ that by this society we may become worthy and capable of the effects of grace and divine communications to be with God and possessed of God That which makes this favour most admirable is that the most holy Trinity doth vouchsafe to apply it selfe to the accomplishment of this work in a very particular manner it sanctifies and consecrates us not after that ordinary way wherewith it acts and performs all other works common to the three Persons but in this work of grace and sacrament of life it consecrates us in a manner wholly singular and full of mysteries altogether great and full of love The Father sanctifies us giving us his Son the Son becomes incarnate suffers and riseth again for us the holy Ghost works in us Iustification infusing into us the abundance of those Graces the Son merited for us Thus the three Persons by distinct operations proper to every person effects in us this work of graces and love in this manner Thus the most holy Trinity applies it selfe wholly to us after an extraordinary manner and proper to this Sacrament to consecrate us to their glory and honour a consecration so high and mysterious that it contains all the Truths of Faith whence the Fathers call Baptisme the Sacrament of Faith This is the first dignity whereto the Christian soul is advanced but this is not all Let us go on and penetrate further into this mystery of Love and we shall see that this consecration O miracle of the infinite bounty of God! places us in God and is the cause of Gods being in us not after the manner that he is in all other things nor by any gift or created grace but after a wholly extraordinary way which gives him to us and causes him to dwell in us Here God doth disclose his heart to us the Father shews and gives us his Son the Sonne gives and applies himselfe to us in the Spirit and in the grace of his Mysteries and both together making one profusion and communication of their love send and give us the holy spirit Thus the three divine persons dwell in us consecrate us and fill us with their presence and abundance of graces That which is admirable in the excesse of this divine Love making this grace and estate singularly eminent is that there is not any other Creature not the Angels themselves are advanced to this Dignity it is reserved only for Christians who are consecrated to the most Holy Trinity after so holy and mysticall a manner It would require a large Discourse to teach us to comprehend such rare advantages but let us content our selves to consider first that all creatures are referred to God but a Christian not onely referred but consecrated as if you should say that he belongs more to God and is more holy then all other creatures O how beautifull is this truth worthy to make us lift up our hearts to God! Secondly we know that both Angels and men in the state of Innocency were replenished with the graces and gifts of God but the Christian in the state of Christianity is not onely filled with divine gifts and benefits but with the most holy Trinity it self which dwels in him and consecrates him after the manner we have declared Thirdly all creatures even Angels themselves behold God in some of his divine qualities as the Seraphins in his love the Cherubims in his knowledge the Thrones in his stability and so the rest but the Christian by a happy advantage beholds and relates to him in the extent of all his greatness not onely as Creator but as Father Saviour and Sanctifier not only as God considered in his Nature and divine Essence common to the three Persons but by a happy reflection he distinctly beholds the three divine Persons and refers himself to God as the Father as the Son and as the holy Ghost Thus by one speciall and singular Grace communicated to him in Baptisme he is consecrated to the most holy Trinity and made the Temple Throne and Residence of the ineffable immense and adorable Trinity What can be more said CHAP. II. How holy the life of a Christian ought to be consecrated to God by Baptisme WE cannot say too much upon this Subject which contains so many excellencies of the soul and such extraordinary favors of God and when we have said all we can we must acknowledge it is far short of the Subject We know that God works great matters in the souls of his Elect that his love mercies and divine liberality are as incomprehensible as ineffable which being so what can be added to the love that God expresses to the world in the mysterie of the Incarnation What more can be hoped If according to the mysteries of our Faith we believe God gave his Son to the world making him like unto us to make himself more capable of being mercifull unto us we cannot doubt but that the same God of love will shew himself bountifull in all things else since he hath made such an extraordinary communication of his love and of himself in thus giving us his Son it cannot seem strange if now after so divine a gift he bestow on us his graces to exalt us to so holy a being an estate which consecrates us to make us capable of possessing God Nothing is impossible to him that can do all things we ought onely to consider a perfect knowledge of the truth of Christianity and a disposition to receive all that God will give us It were to be wished that all Christians did follow the light of Faith as they are obliged that being guided and illuminated by this heavenly Pharos they might know the dignity and excellency of these mysteries that knowing them they might adhere to them that adhering to them they might become capable of that grace which they include and God will communicate to us that we may thereby profit as Christ wills who offers his gifts desiring we should receive and use them according to his intentions This counsell we ought to follow in all these mysteries Let us begin by
saw him but did not enjoy him few persons knew him he was not then seen but in his lowness as sayes the Apostle in the likeness of sinfull flesh In the Eucharist we see him by Faith a light as true and more infallible then that of the Sunne it self we do adore him in his greatness in the state of that glory which he hath in the bosom of his Father we handle him we touch him we eat him After this manner he is ours he will have us to be his he is in us and we in him we live of him and for him as he lives for us and the life that he lives in us is so divine that he composes it to the life that he leads in the bosom of his Father Now what more solid union what more intimate society what more divine commerce can be imagin'd what greater can we require of God Secondly During his life here he taught and redeemed Man-kind he dyed and merited for them but he gave nothing or if he gave it was little in comparison of the liberal profusions which he makes of himself in this ineffable Sacrament where he merits no more for it is not the time but gives himself to Christians and with himself all the treasures of grace and holiness This is a Sacrament of Communion and communication whereby the Sonne of God communicates to every one of us a life of grace the seed of glory In a word he communicates himself here as he communicates himself to the Saints in the state of Glory yet after a different manner and conformable to the diversity of the states of the Church militant and Tryumphant Add to this that in the time of the Incarnation Iesus Christ was upon the earth without power covered with our infirmities living in our weakness subject to the empire of death Now we possess and enjoy him in the bosom of his Father in the extent of his power having in his hand the conduct of Heaven and Earth Then he was in the World in poverty and privation but in this Sacrament of Love and communication he enjoyes the fulness of his greatness and is onely here that he may communicate them Thirdly Here on earth during his mortality he was seen but sometimes and that successively for some saw him in his infancy and no more others in his youth some felt the effects of his power in working of miracles many were witnesses of his death and sufferings All this past and was seen but in a small part of the World in Palestine in Ierusalem all the rest of the World was in darkness and saw not this beautiful Sun nor enjoy'd this agreeable light But in the Mystery and Sacrament of the Eucharist Iesus as given to all the World all the people of the Earth enjoy him from the East to the West from the North to the South there is no Nation where the Christians possess not Iesus Christ and in him all the estates and severall Mysteries of his life all that he is and shall be eternally Iesus in his life on Earth was in the quality of a servant as he saith of himself He came not into the World to be ministred unto but to minister also he was subject to Angels to men even to the very devills when he gave them power over his life in the time of his sufferings But in this divine Sacrament he is as in his Empire and in his Paradise we there adore him as our spouse governing his Church like the Sun enlightening our souls like a Prince establishing the Kingdom of his grace and the power of God in our spirits we there acknowledge him as a propitiation for humane kind rendring to the eternal Father the honour that is due to him In brief in this Mystery of Love we behold Iesus Christ as in the throne of his greatness where he receives throughout the World the adoration of his people and the duties of our souls In this manner the Earth is made a Heaven and we have our God with us and in us Let us consider these truths that so we may profit thereby and let us see what this divine bounty will work in us which makes such an abundant communication of it self in this Sacrament CHAP. IX The Design of Iesus Christ upon Christians in this most high Sacrament of the Eucharist WHat think we God requires of us for so powerfull a work of his Love What design can he have upon Christians in so divine a communication so generall a profusion of his gifts First he will change us a happy change for us for he changeth us into himself according to Saint Austin I shall be changed into thee but thou shalt not be changed into me Secondly he does thus change us not so much by a gift or created grace as by his holy humanity and the power of his divinity Thirdly the Son of God effecting this change out of the excess of love make use of this means to unite himself to us and to assume a new power over us as of a thing that belongs to him For having by his body taken possession of our member as his and made us members of his body flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone by his divine sacrament of union love and unity he assumes power over us by a right to him for ever When we shall consider these three Circumstances what can we think or say but that God will have us no longer men but gods He will have us to go out of our selves to be in him and cease to be that which we are to be what he is O how great is this How cleerly doth the holiness of the Christian estate appear seeing then this benefit is so heavenly and the communication so divine and wonderful in this ineffable sacrament we are by consequence obliged to make uses conformable to the thing it self and to the designs of God of which I shall propose some First That your sole contentment be to be with God who takes such pleasure to be with you that all things be unsavory to you that all the pleasures of the world be contrary to your heart renounce all lying and vanity Let even your smallest entertainments and ordinary actions be in him who is in the bottom of your heart who testifies such a singular love unto you This practice and affection will not be difficult if you be truly disposed to vertue for being vertuous it will be hard to take recreation in any created thing not in the least unprofitable word because a perfect Christian takes no pleasure but in God and that which is of God for being a member of Iesus Christ as such he is to act holily he must live of the spirit of Iesus Christ no way recreate himself but in him and in holy and vertuous things Secondly Recollect and form often in your soul a great and continuall desire that God be in you all that he ought to be and that
you cease to be all that you are Have a great desire to loose your self and to go out of your self and that your being be annihilated and consummated in that of Iesus who is in you This is the point whereto you must arrive if you will that God should possess you Thirdy Desire and require that Iesus Christ destroy in you all that is contrary to God that he establish in you the Kingdom of God that he take from you the dominion which self-love the vanity of your nature and your inclination usurp over you and the creatures Fourthly Resign your self to the will of Iesus Christ who by this adorable sacrament of Love will receive you into himself and place you in his life and his being Abandon then your self to the desire that he hath to possess you a desire as great and perfect as the Love wherewith he gives himself to you is infinite Pray him to destroy in this present life the being that you use and abuse that by the power of his spirit and love and by the vertue of this ineffable sacrament he may make you what he is that is to say Love Life and Truth Behold what God requires of you if we regard intentively the essence and the excellency of this mysterie if by the spirit of Faith we weigh the effects it produces in us it will be easie to acknowledge them and soon shall we be constrained to confess that this sacrament of Love doth appropriate us wholly to God draws us from our selves and the world and separates us from the commerce of creatures that we may be knit in heart and spirit to Iesus Christ despising all things for his love and glory so shall be verified the word of the Son of God to his Father in the excess of his Love speaking to him not onely of his Apostles but of all good Christians They are not of the world even as I am not of the world This is the spirit of Christianity the excellency of this divine estate That we may the better remember this you shall see in a little Picture First the grace and spirit of Christianity consecrates us to God and imprints in us a character of the power of Iesus Christ to whose Empire we must be subject for ever and must undergo to all eternity both in heaven and earth the state of service and subjection to the spirit grace and conduct of Iesus Secondly The grace of Christianity makes us the children of God by mercy and gives us right of inheritance to the greatness and true glory of Iesus Christ. By this grace we have no more part in the world because it is the heritage of the true children of Adam but we have right to the Possession of God who is himself the heritage of his children Thirdly This grace draws our spirits our hearts and our affections from our selves and all creatures to unite us to God it gives us right to enter into familiarity and alliance with the Son of God who making himself man by the Incarnation would be amongst us to the end that we might be with him He enters into society with men invests himself with our miseries infirmities to communicate to us his life his spirit and greatness Thus by the grace of this mysterie we go out of our own Interests to enter into the Interest of Jesus Christ whereof the Apostle speaking of the things of the world he saith I count them but dung that I may win Christ. Fourthly In brief by the state of Christianity we are advanced to the participation of God who will be all in us that we may be in him and Jesus Christ by his body and blood which he giveth us in the Eucharist doth elevate and unite us to God makes us live by his life communicates to us all that he is that he may be all things to us that the world may be nothing to us Thus the grace of Christianity unites us to Jesus Christ replenishes us with his life and spirit makes us another himself and therefore obliges us to go out of our selves and the world to be in Christ Jesus I know we must be in the world and make use of the world so long as it shall please God to continue us in this place of captivity but we must not be of the world we must live here as in a place of passage and make use of all in the world as of a winter garment ready to put it off when the Sun of righteousness shall come to his meridian when it shall please God Let us use all the creatures as a necessary medicine to the present state of our infirmities and occasions but let it be withall loathsom unto us as violating our Love which desires nothing but God which takes delight in nothing but God which aspires to nothing and hopes in nothing but God The conclusion of the first Part What the life of a Christian ought to be Behold here the Excellencies of Christianity which we have proposed in few words as having no further design nor intention in this volume then to shew that the life of a Christian ought to be conformable to the state of grace and dignity whereto he is advanced by Iesus Christ. Now to enter into this knowledge it suffices that we see what we are This is that which I design'd to demonstrate in this first part proposing as in a little Tablet the essence dignity and eminency of the grace of Christianity which I have done briefly expressing onely the principal Truth of this subject leaving the rest to the piety and consideration of those that would profit thereby Now if we look back with the eye of Faith upon that which hath been said we shall clearly see what a Christian life ought to be and shall know that the design of Iesus Christ informing his Church hath been to consecrate to appropriate to himself and to unite himself divinely to our souls and to separate them from themselves and from all creatures that by a happy revolution he may be in us and we in him we may live in him and of him as he lives in his Father of the life of his Father that so he may restore us to his Father and re-unite us to himself from whom we were separated by him by being our own and having relation to the Creature Herein is comprised the perfection of a Christian life whereof we cannot speak more then in the words of St. Paul ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God a passage which contains an apparent contradiction If we are dead how can our life be hid in God who is the true life If we are in God who is the life of our souls how are we dead The Apostle meanes that our life is life and death our life is a life of grace which is the true life of souls and much better then the soul is the life of our bodies and the proper
end is no other then God whom man must possess Thus by Creation man is not onely in a capacity to love God a most singular favour but hath also for his end the possession of God himself Whence we must conclude that as every thing seeketh its perfection and by a naturall and necessary instinct runs to its last end to enjoy it and repose there so man being created to possess God his ultimate end carries an instinct that drawes him to God and by the same Law whereby he is naturally obliged to seek perfection he is obliged to love and seek God in love and possession in whom consists his perfection This instinct is naturall and proper to him as it is naturall to a stone to tend downward and to fire to mount upward whereby it is evident that we must promise our selves not onely in Heaven the fulfilling of this Law but we must begin it upon earth and from the first use of our reason observe this precept Indeed this capacity of Love is fulfilled and perfected in Heaven onely in the state of glory but we must begin to love here We must resign to God who is our end if in the end we will possess him for whatsoever a Man soweth that shall he also reap saith the Apostle To this God invited us by the benefit of Creation to this he obliges us by an eternall Law a Law which he hath engraved in the Center of our being a Law which can by no meanes be defaced during our life a Law indispenceable For man was onely created to love God and hath no capacity more naturall then that of Love his onely business both in Earth and Heaven is to love God and possess him wherein consisteth perfection Considering these truths it is impossible to conceive to what blindness the corruption of times have reduced the spirits of men who being born for Heaven onely spend all their thoughts on Earth and separating themselves from their God are so strongly fetter'd to the Creature that they know not what perfection is believing they have power to dispence with so holy a Law But can this Law of Love be blotted out of our hearts Can we despise it notwithstanding the many reasons that oblige us to it Is there any thing more reasonable then to love them that love us what greater love could God testifie to us then to make us capable to love him and to create us to possess him even nature obliges us hereto this benefit is an act of Love God loving us to be beloved again we can do no lesse in acknowledgement of this benefit of love but perfectly love him we can never deny we are obliged to this acknowledgement if we would not be convinced of ingratitude nor can we acknowledge it but by loving him God who is all fulness and self-sufficiency can receive nothing of us but love and therefore by the same Law whereby we are obliged to acknowledge him our Creator we are obliged to love and consequently to be perfect since perfection cannot be without love God himself hath engraved this design imprinted this Law of Love in the Center of our souls and bottom of our hearts Therefore as Thomas of Aquin observes the form of our heart beares the image of this Love it is large at the top and pointed at the bottom open to Heaven shut to Earth to shew us that we live onely for Heaven that our heart the seat of Love is open onely to receive and bear the influences of Heaven and not capable to have any besides him who reignes in the Heavens and the form of our body straight and tall tells us that Heaven onely is the object of our sight the subject of ous love The soul by its most sensible inclinations is carried on to this love By the same necessity that the part loves the whole the sonne his Father man is obliged to love his God by Creation his Father his all and were it not that the soul ruines these motions by strange love whereto she tyes her self she would feel her self so powerfully attracted thereby that she would not be able to restrain the violence or to stop the course thereof This is so true that do she what she can though she do suffer her self to be transported with the love of Creatures to the prejudice of the love of God yet can she not root out these resentments of God so deep this Law of acknowledging her God is engraved in her being For when she hath loved all but God she sees that she hath loved nothing she knowes that there is neither firm content assured repose nor true perfection but in the love of her Creator Now though we would disingage our selves from this Obligation yet is it impossible for God who wills that we love him maketh use of all things yea even of our self-love to attract us to his love In loving our selves we love naturally what is good our own good Now God is not onely the true Soveraign good but by creation he would be the onely good of our souls that we might love him in this quality for what is more to man then God The Lord is my heritage and my portion saith David If naturally every thing loves his particular good why should not a man be obliged to love his God who is his true his onely good and if he be obliged to love him he is by consequence obliged to possess him and in possessing him to be perfect which is the scope of this first Motive The second Motive CHAP. V. That Man in as much as he is a Sinner and the child of Adam is obliged to seek God as the only remedy to his evils WE are Criminals the children of death guilty Laesae Majstatis Divinae the World understood aright is but a Prison where we are detained during the excution of the Sentence pronounced against the children of Adam the Offender we being such have forfeited our right we are deprived and made unworthy of all sorts of graces forfeited our priviledges for as children of Adam as sinners as culpable before God we have no more any right our selves to our life to our actions to the world or to any creature but having lost all by Sin we are left wholly to the Iustice of God who by reason of our offence hath reason to dispoyl us of all the gifts of grace and nature and to do with us as pleases him according to the rigour of his equitable Iustice. Moreover as children of Adam we are so miserable that we may truly say there is nothing more unworthy more unprofitable more uncapable then man his unworthiness is so great that he cannot think one thought of God be it never so little if God of his mercy doth not infuse it into him he is unworthy to present himself before his Creator to appear before the Throne of his soveraign Majesty even to demand grace and pardon for his sins This unworthiness arrived
goodness the soul being a capacity of God as also continually regarded by him who sees her yea he sees her and he regards her to raise her to himself to fill her and fully and perfectly to possess her in a manner worthy of God and conformable to his love He will be all things in this soul he will be her life her love her good her confidence her heart her spirit her power and her conduct briefly he will be her All her fulness upon earth by his graces and in heaven by his glory Hence therefore may we take occasion to admire and eternally adore this infinite and inexhaustible bounty which deigns to communicate himself with such an exstreme profusion of himself who by an incomprehensible counsell of his eternall Wisdom hath created man upon the earth onely capable of his divine communications who only is a pure capacity of God who gives him power to receive the abundance of his gifts and to bear the greatness of his Divinity Assoon as we reflect hereupon we shall see the duties of our soul what our care and vigilancy must be For the soul being a capacity of God what remains for her to do but to render her self worthy to possess him and to be filled with him and altogether to abandon her self to his conduct and grace She is obliged to esteem nothing but him to live onely for him being created onely for him and this being the end of her being and life she must have no care upon earth but to suffer her self to be filled with God to be possessed and ruled by his spirit and by his power Thus we are obliged to two things one to have a care and vigilancy to take all away that may separate us from God and make us unworthy of his divine and loving communications The other to have a like vigilancy over our selves over our motions over our desires over our intentions and over our actions that they depend on God and be wholly submitted to his loving conduct Let us yet say this more cleerly if it be possible in two words The soul ought to have no care but that God be in her repose in her dwell in the bottom of her heart fill and possess her according to all the designes that he hath on her This done and the soul living in this care with fidelity God reposing in her as in the Throne of his love will communicate to her what gifts and enrich her with what graces he pleaseth and in fine conduct her in the wayes that he desires the soul having no other desire then that God may be in her and she in God that is after the manner that God ought and will be according to the greatness and excess of his love This is the One thing that is necessary whereof Iesus speaks to Saint Martha the source of all happiness the top of all perfection which Iesus calleth in Magdalen the better part Let us pray to God to place us in this happy estate to make us penetrate his truths Let us give our selves to him to enter therein and banishing all care all thoughts all love let us onely regard Iesus Let us require nothing but Iesus Let us love none but him who loves us above his life Let us cast our selves at his feet like Mary Magdalen and there melt our hearts and consume the poyson that is in them with the beams of this Sun of love that he may replenish us with his grace with his love and with his spirit that we may live onely by Iesus and as another Magdalen seek nothing but Iesus Let us now propose the dispositions necessary to attain so happy and desireable a Being THE THIRD PART Proposing divers DISPOSITIONS and VERTUES necessary for a Christian to arrive to that perfection whereto he is obliged by Christianity CHAP. I. What those DISPOSITIONS are and how necessary they are to the practise of VERTVE IT is now time to enter into the practise of that vertue whereof we treat and that we set our selves on work to acquire the spirit to live the life that God requires of us whereto we were called from the first time that we became Christians To attain this happy estate there is need of continuall Application and travail for we must not think to arrive thereto at one leap but we must bring dispositions suitable to so worthy a subject and labour not onely to attain hereto but also to persevere therein which we must do the more willingly and couragiously in that we are certain this way is the foundation of all our happiness the true way to Christian perfection and makes us live the life of grace whereto we are called The first thing whereto we must bend our study is to know and acquire the inward dispositions necessary to lead us to Christian perfection and to make us live the life of grace which is the true life of a Christian this we are to learn in this third Part. And for as much as this Doctrine is proper for all sorts of vertues we will speak first of it in generall as well that we may the more easily come to the knowledge of the particular as because many seem to seek vertue and frequent the exercises of Christian piety yet think not upon a thing so necessary nor know what this disposition is or wherein the spirit of vertue doth consist which is the soul and form of action So that laying hold onely on the outside of vertue and considering it but as a body without a soul they are deceived in their imaginations and believing they do much they promise to themselves great profit rendring themselves punctuall and taking a great heed to some exteriour practises of vertues which they propose to themselves We see many with much vigilancy every day or week take some vertue to practice they watch if they are wanting to emergent occasions and carefully mark their defaults to accuse and if it be possible to amend themselves but after long practise we see they make small profit because they forget the interiour and put not themselves into the spirit of vertue to practise it with necessary and convenient dispositions To prevent therefore the inconveniences which occur in this subject we must observe that in a Christian life all estates wherein the Christian soul may find it self and all the vertues that she can practise have ordinarily the Dispositions which ought to accompany or precede her and vertue hath a spirit which is as its essence or rather as its soul which as a form doth enliven and perfectionate her The soul that will live the life of grace and will acquire solid and Christian vertues must carefully have regard to such dispositions that she may possess them to do the action which she doth perfectly seeing that in her vertue is exteriour and superficiall She must further acknowledge and seek out what is the spirit of vertue or as some say what is her essence that
in them all that God intended It requires a very quick sight to perceive these snares and a great vigilancy to correspond with the work of God and to act with the purity of God for to this point it must arrive To this end will contribute much the second means we have proposed which makes us renounce our selves and annihilate in us all regard to the Creatures that God alone may be the object the hope the confidence and the whole of our soul. The brightness and beauty of this vertue will hurt their eyes who too much love themselves for they must quit all to possess it they must have neither heart nor eyes for themselves or the creatures and this they cannot digest who esteem themselves perfect enough and think they hold God inchain'd by the chains of their devotions which they love even to idolatry despising and neglecting this vertue which gives us God out of an opinion that they already possess him The sloathful will not regard it because it exacts two much care and vigilance it is for them who love God or who seriously desire to love him to esteem this vertue and to seek it fervently for where love is there the eyes are and we desire not to please but where we love Let us love and we shall find nothing difficult Is it not an intolerable blindness to see so many refusalls as we make to so great a happiness and to make difficulties when God will love our souls when he will replenish them with himself He will provide for them he will conduct them therefore he will separate them from themselves and the Creatures that the heart may be pure and fit to receive him who is purity it self O soul saith Saint Cyprian If thou suffice God let God suffice thee if God love thee love thou him if he regard thee do thou regard him The fifth Disposition CHAP. XII Of Self-deniall and the necessity thereof IT is impossible to be perfect if we be not God's we cannot be God's unless he possess us and replenish us with his spirit To attain this happiness we must necessarily go out of our selves and into a true denial of our selves for as much as we are emptied of our selves and the creature so much shall we be filled of God from whence this maxime so remarkable in Christian piety Abnegation and annihilation leads us to the fulness of God This vertue is almost unknown to the world and which is to be lamented even those that make it their business to follow Piety regard it not and yet there is no vertue more indispensable or more necessary Self-deniall is the first Disposition whereto the creature must put himself before the Majesty of his Creator it is an estate which the soul must be in if it will turn to God In brief it is the centre of Christianity for it is founded upon a true and pure annihilation We know the creatures before the Majesty of God are but as a grain of sand The Vniverse is but as a drop of morning dew and according to the saying of a Christian Philosopher The whole earth is but as a point of a point None but God can say I am that I am All creatures ought to annihilate themselves at his word and to account themselves before this infinite being as if they were not The first use hereof was made by the Angels when in the revolt that was in heaven Saint Michael the Archangel and all good Angels according to their duties re-doubled this Protestation of annihilation Who is like unto God words that made the Angels go out of themselves and annihilate themselves before the Majesty of God words shewing that self-deniall and annihilation is the first duty the Angels rendred to God It is likewise the first thing that man ought to do and the first use of his soul is to annihilate her self before the Majesty of God and to protest he will go out of his being and renounce himself to be what God will have him The Reverence and Religion which men have professed shew this annihilation of the creature before God for from the beginning of the World by an instinct inspired from heaven Altars have been erected Sacrifices and Holocausts offered wherein the being of the thing sacrificed is annihilated as in protestation made by the creature that its being is dependant on God and that he ought to annihilate himself at sight of the incomprehensible and adorable Majesty of his Creator What difficulty can there be in a thing so evident Can there be any creature or spirit so ambitious as to advance it self before God and esteem it self something before his infinite being If then before God man may not esteem himself any thing without losing himself with Lucifer he must necessarily annihilate himself his condition constrains him thereunto whether he will or not Herein appears the truth of what we said that Abnegation is a disposition which no creature no man neither can or must eternally go out of Self-deniall is the first estate wherein the soul that would turn to God and receive the grace of Iustification must be the reason is manifest Man by sin is turned and separated from God to turn unite and apply himself to the creature To go out of Sin and turn himself to God he must necessarily go out of himself renounce himself and all creatures and must separate and dis-unite himself from himself if he will be united to God and be perfectly converted This is to be done by self-deniall whereby the soul renounceth the creature and annihilateth in her self all that she is In a word she goes out of her self to return unto God which she does assisted by grace which draws her back and separates her from what diverts her from God Let us consider this first truth by the principle and light of faith Since the fall of Adam we are not sanctified but by and in Iesus Christ we cannot be sanctfied as children of Adam but as members of Iesus Christ and as the new creature in Iesus Christ. This Principle of faith granted it follows that if we will take part with grace and holiness and be sanctified in Iesus Christ we must necessarily renounce our selves and cease to be to our selves that we may be to Iesus Christ which cannot be but by self-deniall This was the state of Saint Paul at his conversion and the sense of his words when he sayes I live yet not I but Christ liveth in me Thus we must understand these words of the Son of God directed to all Christians If any man will come after me let him deny himself wherein appears how necessary this vertue is to all souls that would follow Iesus Christ and turn to God Thirdly self-deniall is the centre of Christianity Let us consider it from it's birth and we shall find the Son of God founded his Church accomplished our Redemption and will save the World by the wayes of annihilation
from all things without doubt if God operate you shall see all these effects and therefore the soul that will be perfect must narrowly look into all this and have an extraordinary vigilancy to become faithfull and attentive to the operations of God in her on one side to correspond thereto and to labour after the manner God inspires her with on the other to annihilate her self not the works of God for if we oppose not our selves to grace and the effects thereof if we do not annihilate the works of God in us God will certainly work great things in us But alas the wayes whereby we make use of devotion in this age are more capable to drive God away then to invite him into our hearts I shall describe them unto you The soul blinded with naturall love to her self desires to be brought up in the gifts of God she would enjoy him and would love what seems good and profitable to her she fills her self with divers desires she tyes her self thereto and will continually act and attain she puts her self into all employments and motions she seeks them she pleases her self with a satisfaction that her own love takes in things most holy and in the very operation of God she seeks her self therein she elevates her self thereto In this manner she opposes her self to the spirit of Iesus Christ and annihilateth the work of God who would onely live in her onely occupate her spirit onely possess her desiring by the power of his love to annihate in her all that is of her Iesus Christ would take away and this soul will add to God would dispossess and spoyl and she would acquire and possess Thus she hinders and destroyes the workes of God driving God out of her and out of her spirit to cause her own love to raign there her own satisfaction and will a vanity ordinary to such souls as are wholly consumed in the spirit of Adam They therefore who tend to perfection must go with all purity and simplicity they must seek nothing but God and to please God but above all they must be very circumspect and attentive to his inward operations having a great care and fidelity to leave the spirit to act by the grace of God in them As all this is very secret and interiour and often is in the very centre of the soul so must we take heed thereto and besides the vigilance necessary it is good from time to time to practise these ensuing acts First to give our selves to Iesus Christ to live in him and to bear the spirit and effects of this self-denyall after the manner that pleaseth him Secondly to renounce our selves our secret vanity and all that is in us opposite to grace and to the operations of God Thirdly to be attentive to the motions and operations of God in us especially when he acts by self-denyall and privation as well interiour as exteriour to co-operate therewith either by action if it be necessary or by consent of the soul giving her self to God to receive what God shall operate in her when the soul shall feel divers motions or meet several occasions to practise vertue she shall alwayes choose those where there shall be privation and self-denyall as the most assured way and the most acceptable to God most for the honour of Iesus Christ and most conformable to his humane life Fourthly she shall pray to Iesus Christ to vouchsafe to operate and put into her all that he wills and to annihilate in her all that he requireth to prevent in her by his light and love the time of death and judgement whereto he must annihilate the thoughts and judgements of men The abridgement of the third Part. CHAP. XIV Treating of the dependance of the Soul upon God IT is easie to see that amongst Christians even those who think they have vertue enough to fave them many deceive and altogether lose themselves taking the shadow of vertue for the substance apparence for truth like the Dog in the Fable who let go the good morsell he had hold of to catch a shadow these neglect the solid vertues and principall foundations of piety to insist on certain exteriour actions which have no substance but in the air of imagination they exercise themselves in morall vertues and despise the Christian they compose the exteriour and form their demeanour and neglect the interiour they fear to displease men and endeavour to satisfie their kindred and friends but care no more to please God then they fear to displease him they would seem good but care not to be so In a word in all things they choose the most beautifull and best and will have nothing but what is good but for their souls that which is least best contents them they seek but that which is necessary what gives them greatest liberty and satisfaction they embrace with all their heart God who is truth is not satisfied with these feignings and wills that we serve him in spirit and truth he detests a lye and curses those that serve him with the mouth onely if he love he will be beloved and as his love is most pure and perfect he will have ours to be such also Whence it is easie to comprehend that to be a perfect Christian and friend to God requires great qualities He must have a golden key that will enter into the Kings chamber he that will come to a royall feast must be clothed with a wedding garment lest he be bound hand and foot and cast into prison and utter darkness To be a perfect Christian is not so slight a business as some think it it belongs to God only to make a man just it is the work of his hand and greater then the creation of the world at least in this God shews himself more powerfull in his love and more admirable in his mercies Therefore when we speak of a good and perfect Christian we speak of Gods handy-work of a man worthy to be a Saint for to be saved and to be Saint is one and the same thing Now what ought the soul of a Saint to be who must one day see God live with God saith St. Bernard in his Meditations and be eternally in unity with God what must the perfection of a soul be that shall become worthy so infinite and incomprehensible a happiness whereto all aspire that would be saved I leave it to their thoughts who know how to esteem of the works of God and make account of the greatness of Paradise and shall onely tell those languishing and easie spirits with Saint Paul Be not deceived God is not mocked for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he reap also for he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption but he that soweth to the spirit shall of the spirit reap life everlasting Whereupon we must reflect that Christians who are to reap the incorruption of the life everlasting if they will arrive to their
grace There is another principle of misfortune in us which is the love of our souls which lives of the substance of our souls raigning in our hearts and commanding our actions This love acts for it self not for God it is so opposite to God that as another Antichrist it labours onely to destroy the works of grace in us and to ruine his divine love spirit and conduct Hence we see what a misery it is what danger there is in being withdrawn from the conduct of God to live according to our own inclinations according to humane conduct which the Apostle calls the wisdom of this world For what must his life be who submits himself to this sworn enemy of God what must his actions be who hath no other principle nor conduct then his own will onely confident in self-love who onely followes the motions inclinations and thoughts of his reason a reason deprav'd and dim falls irrecoverably I will appeal to man himself how often his prudence reason and conduct have deceived him Into how many errours have his inclinations and his passions precipitated him let him but consult his own Conscience I beseech him to see whither he goes and that in good time he renounce humane wisdom and his feeble reason as much as God requires it to follow the foolishness of the Crosse the conduct of grace for there is no other way of perfection nor meanes to arrive at God but by the power and humility of the Crosse and by the conduct of Iesus Christ our way and our life If we would know what this conduct of God is wherein it consists we must consider it two wayes The first generall and common to all when all that a Christian does is according to the rule of the Law of God Thus we say the actions of men are all submitted to the conduct of God when they are done according to the Law and conformable to his will and the maxims of the Gospel So David lived when he said Thy word is a Lamp unto my feet and a light unto my paths For the Law of God proposeth the right end the just meanes and measure of every action in particular and of all in generall The true Christian must have no other conduct of his actions then this divine Law given by God to be the rule of mans life and principle of his actions he must follow the knowledge and maxims which Iesus Christ taught upon earth as a watch-tower and light to the spirits of men who being left to themselves walk in darkness and ignorance Counsel is mine equity is mine wisdom is mine saith the spirit of God He then that will live according to prudence according to equity and justice that will follow good counsels must have them from God for true prudence and true justice belongs to God It is true there ought to be prudence in the World but it must be the prudence of God which we cannot have but by observing the Law of God Lord thou hast made me wise by thy word said David who had try'd it We must take counsel for the difficulty of affaires perplexeth all things but this counsel must come from God and be conformable to his divine Lawes So did David alwayes in his affaires of greatest importance Thy Testimonies are my delight and my Counsellors We ought indeed to uphold our selves but it must be by the justice of God not that of men but that which concurs with the law of God for all the Commandments of God are righteousness saith David So the Christian doing all things with this respect and doing nothing against the Law and Maxims of Iesus Christ shall live in the perfect conduct of God a happy estate whereto all Christians ought to aspire and wherein they ought to continue professing even to death they have no other rule or conduct of their actions then the Law of God and spirit of the Gospel a rule wherein they must maintain themselves so powerfully and so inseparably that no creature friend or Interest can make them desire or do any thing contrary to this heavenly conduct There is another conduct of God more hidden and invisible when God vouchsafes by the motions of his grace his inspirations and loving communications to conduct souls to perfection and takes a particular care of them Here the soul must take a great and vigilant care that she quench not in her these lights and resist not this divine and amorous conduct This way is for souls who give themselves to God who are wholly out of themselves devested of and severed from the Creature who have annihilated their desires inclinations and passions who are wholly abandon'd to God professing to live no longer then under the conduct of this divine spirit They who are thus happy must take great care to maintain their spirits in a neere alliance and unity with the spirit of God to do nothing but by his conduct they must take heed they admit not any thing nor receive any other spirit which may separate them from that of God In brief they must annihilate all that is of the conduct of the Creature if they will live in a perfect conduct and an intire resignation to the spirit of God which is that which is desired in a perfect Christian as being the meanes to arrive at perfection When we consider these truths we shall find it hard to comprehend and impossible to approve the method of those who would get perfection attain true Christian vertues and possess God yet in all their conducts study nothing but humane wisdom act nothing but by humane respects speak not without equivocation are nothing but outward ceremonies regard nothing but outward formality aim at nothing but advancement Let them speak what they please humane wisdom is but foolishness before God and the spirit of grace and of Iesus is a spirit of truth simplicity and sincerity Those then that guide themselves by the spirit of Iesus Christ must live and act in the spirit of truth simplicity and sincerity for no other conduct is the conduct of God Let no man abuse himself saith St. Paul if any among you think to be wise in this world let him become a fool that he may be wise for the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God 1 Cor. 3.18 19. CHAP. III. That a Christian must do all his actions for love of God and for God THe perfect Christian must not so much consider what he does as the manner of doing for men consider the face God the heart It is a maxime in Morality that it suffices not to do good actions but we must do them well as the Philosopher saith it is not enough to do just things but they must be done justly meaning that an action to be good and just must be accomplished with all these circumstances which are so necessary that if this fail all the rest will be deficient good if it be true good must
thoughts and dispositions he must onely regard God and have a desire to be in the accomplishment of the will of God in him without having other interest or intention then the good pleasure of God In this disposition which is pure and Christian the soul will never fail to feel the help of her God for those who seek God with purity of heart shall be worthy to possess him In fine we must pray to God continually and in an affaire so important as is fidelity to grace and the employment of our life we must demand of God and that instantly his light to know what he would of us his grace to accomplish it his mercy and particular assistance to persevere in it for he alone who perseveres to the end shall be saved and we know that without the favour and assistance of God we can do nothing After this the Christian who will proceed further and live Christianly must be very vigilant to root up take away and annihilate all that may alienate him from God and draw him from his divine conduct He must alwayes have a watchfull regard of God to make use with purity and fidelity of the graces and gifts he receives of him I say fidelity not one or other but according to the amplitude and state of grace that God communicates to him and with purity of love and esteem of God For we are obliged not onely to be faithfull to grace but also to the manner of grace and to the extent of the operation of God in us So that our fidelity and co-operation must be correspondent and proportionable to the designes of God We may fail in fidelity and destroy the work of God in us three wayes in absolutely refusing the grace God offers as when he said I have called and ye refused I have stretched out my hand and no man regarded or being unfaithfull repressing all the grace we have of God like him in the Parable who hid his Masters Talent under ground or lastly we are unfaithful not running out all the race of God but onely a part straying from him to apply our selves to our selves or the Creature like him who desired he might take leave of his friends at home and see them before he followed Christ. These three states of infidelities God severely punishes He abandons the first and leaves them to their own conduct and counsels protesting that he will mock them in the day of their affliction that is of their death From the second he takes away the Talent and throwes them from before his face confines them to that place of darkness whereof the holy Scripture makes mention a place full of horrour and lamentation Of the third Christ saith no man having put his hand to the Plough and looking back is fit for the Kingdom of God Whence we may learn how much the Christian must suffer who leads a life which we call common who endeavours onely to recreate himself to deceive the time and hath no care or leasure to consider what he does or what may befall him for the small esteem he makes of God and his graces He is assured that such souls must apprehend some great evill for whosoever hath to him shall be given and he shall have more abundance but whosoever hath not from him shall be taken away even that he hath These words shew the wrath of God to Christians who make so little account of his Love and receive his graces so indifferently who as the Apostle saith count the blood of the Covenant wherewith they were sanctified an unholy thing and have done despight unto the spirit of grace words that shew the need we have to be faithfull to God and what a high crime it is to injure in us the spirit of God to destroy his works to annihilate his graces and to prophane his gifts and benefits CHAP. VIII Of Infidelity to grace and how a man ought to live in his Vocation THe consideration of this great evil which draws along with it the peril of our souls obliges us to find out by what way and after what manner we come to ruine and extinguish the operations of God in us and what the principall subject or object is that causes us to refuse his grace and despise his love who loves us more then his own life seeing that Infidelity to the graces of God is the onely evil of our soul this must be a point of which we ought to advise hereunto we must apply the greatest vigilancy of our life To understand so necessary a Doctrine we are onely to consider grace in it's essence and regard what God intends to do in us by his gifts and operations we have spoken of it elsewhere but we will briefly repeat it upon the present subject God by his love operations and grace gives himself to us and possesseth us he wills that we be wholly his as he is ours he is in us and lives in us that we may live in him and by an excessive bounty elevates us to the participation of his divine essence and associates us to all his divine greatness For this he created us and hath given us the capacity to love him and in loving him to possess him and all that he doth in us all the graces that he gives are to no other end but to accomplish all this in us This therefore being granted we shall find that all the motions of grace and operations of God must produce two things in us one to draw us from our selves and separate us from the creature the other to draw us to God to give us to God and to make us one with him Behold in few words the being of grace and designs of God This being considered it will be easie for us to see and know that we annihilate the graces of God and his works when we remain to our selves and adhere to our selves and embrace the creature for in this doctrine of piety we must say that as grace separates us from our selves and the creatures and unites us onely to God so we separate our selves from God and destroy his work when we are our selves and adhere to the creature and consequently we are less Gods the more we are our own so that to ruine the work of God and annihilate his grace is nothing else but to be our selves to adhere to the creature to follow our own inclinations in a word to love our selves This is a powerfull truth which should beget in our hearts hate and horror of our selves and detestation of all creatures seeing the only cause of our loss and love of our selves is the onely Instrument of our ruine This truth we should have alwayes before our eye to put us in mind of the danger it is to follow our own appetites inclinations and wills to adhere to the complacency esteem and love of the creature For it is certain the more we love our selves the more
pleasure and glory He that will examine the precept of love will ingeniously confess that which we say for we cannot love God with all our heart with all our soul and withall our strength but in seeking to please him in all things even the least much more in those which we call indifferent though in truth they are not so as we shall shew hereafter Secondly The Christian must avoid in his actions the multiplicity and confusion which occurs ordinarily in affaires even in those which are good and appear charitable and above all he must exempt himself from that which concerns him not and is not of his office nor suitable to his profession and vocation and especially those which are above his capacity and power This advice is to be weighed and cleared for the most serious may be deceived and the most zealous may lose themselves in their occupations by this way the Devill withdrawes away many souls from vertue and the purity of their vocation It is easie for us to be lost in this snare if we have not a pure regard of God and a continuall vigilancy we fall ordinarily into this evill Sometimes a false zeal of charity transports us sometimes we are seduced by complacency sometimes by curiosity and our own inclination which is much given to change and variety and takes pleasure in all that it employes it self in busies it self therein with much content fastens it self thereto insomuch that the soul becomes at last so disordered that she finds no more repose in her spirit no more attention in her self but feels her self wholly estranged from God even in the most holy exercises of her vocation Being in this condition she is disquieted and this disquiet causes a distaste and alienation from vertue whereupon losing the reins she more and more abandons her self to exteriour things and infallibly loseth her self if she have not a care to withdraw her self in good time and if God preserve her not and behold her with the eye of mercy The soul therefore that seeks perfection and the inward peace of the heart must be vigilant herein and not suffer her self to be inconsiderately transported under any pretence whatsoever for it concerns her salvation The state of true love and grace alwayes withdrawes the soul from all multiplicity and separates her from all things for so much as she hath of love and grace so far is she separated and estranged from the Creature and the more she is to God the more she flyes and detests all things else the more grace raigns in her the more it separates her from her self and the world Self-love drawes us to the Creature and involves us in a multiplicity on the contrary the love of God separates us from the Creature and puts us into unity This most true principle may serve us as a plummet to sound the depth and interiour of the soul He who is subject to grace and hath but any pure love needs not to be perswaded to this because the love of God and grace makes him hate fly and detest both the World and the affaires of it and assuredly he will shew it by the effects for he cannot do otherwise Whence it will be hard to approve the opinion of those who would be truly devout and perswade themselves they have true Christian piety yet charge themselves with cares with affaires and trouble perplexing themselves in thoughts desire and bringing about divers designes To convince and enlighten them if they be capable we must resume our principle and onely say to them that the love of God speaks unity and the love of our selves multiplicity Thirdly There are many actions necessary in many affaires wherewith we cannot dispense for that they are necessary and wherein our nature and spirit may be satisfied and content But we must renounce this pleasure and content for God must have all our actions and to do Christianly and purely we must do it onely for his good pleasure so that if we mingle with it other pretences or contentments it is not purely for God but we share with God and we rob him of all that part that we take therein But if the actions we do be naturall as to eat sleep and the like we must not fulfill them by the instinct and appetite of nature which forces us to satisfie both her necessity and pleasure but we must perform them out of a pure desire to do the will of God which obligeth us to this necessity this desire must be exclusive as to any other instinct and will For in actions naturall and necessary there is great difference between the rule and end of the action The rule is humane and naturall the end must alwayes be supernaturall as for example We do some necessary act as to eat sleep or the like the necessity is the rule but God must be the end of this action for he is the end of all the actions of man both free and necessary and we are obliged to direct all our actions to their supernaturall ends it is the advice of St. Paul Whether ye eat or drink or whatsoever ye do let all be done to the glory of God This truth is most evident for if God were not the end of such actions it must necessarily be that man himself is the end thereof which would be a kind of Idolatry and errour to affirm We must then conclude and say with the Apostle Whatsoever ye do in word or deed do all in the name of the Lord Iesus giving thanks to God and the Father by him In all lawfull actions therefore we must regard the rule and the end of necessity which must be no other then the good pleasure and pure will of God But if in these actions there should happen some displeasure as if they should be contrary to our Honour or if they be full of bitterness then we must couragiously embrace them and with an affection and love ready for the displeasure which might happen offering our selves to God to be filled with bitterness as often and as long as it shall please his divine Majesty So in all the actions of man wherein he may take pleasure or displeasure in what manner soever they are we may frame three acts The first is an act of obedience making such an action very naturall and necessary by submission and obedience to the pure will of God who hath ordained all things after the best manner that best pleaseth him The second is of abnegation renouncing the pleasure or accepting the displeasure which may be therein The third of resignation giving our selves up to the will of God to be in a continuall suffering of displeasure if it shall so happen and that for as long and in what manner it shall please God For the soul must have no will but to accept the will of God Fourthly we may fail yet in the use and research of things not onely lawfull but also vertuous by adherence and
Christians have a new being a new life which honoureth and imitates the new life of Iesus in his holy humanity springing from this as its source and principle For as the word unites it self to our nature in the Mystery of the Incarnation replenisheth and dwells in it as in his proper body consecrates and elevates it to all the Grandeurs of his divine Filiation so the same Iesus unites himself not personally but by a new Grace and after a singular manner proper to the state of Christianity consecrates us dwels in us and advanceth us to the communication of the rights goods and greatnesse of his filiation and would have us O excesse of love to be that by grace which he is by nature which he would have not onely to be accomplished in glory but in grace not onely in Heaven but upon Earth where we are truly Sons of God and in that quality henceforward we enter into alliance with him we have right to his heritage and which is more O that we would consider it he gives us power to call God our Father to look up to him as such to relate to him in this quality in further assurance whereof he gives us his spirit This St. Paul teacheth when he saith Ye have received the spirit of Adoption whereby we cry Abba Father the same spirit it selfe beareth witnesse with our spirit that we are the children of God It is an effect of the mystery of the Incarnation and priviledge and excellency of Christianity Let us deliberate further upon it St. Iohn summing up the graces received from God in the Mystery of the Incarnation ranks this the first for it is the foundation of the rest saying To them he gave power to become sons of God If you would comprehend some part of this great favour think that as there is nothing in Divinity greater then to be the Son of God by Nature so but to be God himselfe nothing is greater then to be the Son of God by grace St. Cyprian admiring in God the title of Father sayes It is an ineffable name containing the Mysteries and Secrets hid from our spirits incomprehensible by our understanding If then to be Father in the Deity be a thing the most mysterious and ineffable that our souls can imagine by consequence to be son of such a Father is a favour and dignity incomprehensible The beloved Disciple causeth us to admire at this great benefit when he says Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God and be such in effect St. Iohn Damascene speaks to this purpose That the eternall Father sent his Son into the world to produce Children that should be such to him by Grace as Christ is unto him by Nature and therefore in pursuit of this Commission the Son of God from the time that he became the son of man hath created by his power begotten by his love and acquired by his merits and given by his Spirit many children to his Father who can breath nothing but glory to his Father and no longer live then by his Spirit and Life But to search with greater admiration into this Truth we must consider the manner by which he creates in us so divine a work We must observe that in Baptisme we not only receive grace and faith by the habituall vertues and gifts of the holy Spirt but are also marked with the Character of God received and owned as his children The manner whereby God effects this is admirable for as the Father hath sealed Jesus Christ with his Seal and made him his Son communicating to him his Essence and making him altogether equall to himself so Jesus Christ doth comunicate to us what he himself is marketh us with his seal makes us and owns us as children and makes us as it were another himself Wonder saith Saint Augustine and rejoyce brethren we are made of Christ. In pursuite of this benefit the eternall Father hath given us the Spirit of his Son which dwels in us according to the Apostle What can we think to be greater If we go further herein we shall find that we are not advanced to this admirable estate of being the children of God by any simple acceptation or by bare ceremonies but by something more reall that passeth into our souls as Saint Paul implies by these mysticall terms Not by works of righteousness which we have done but according to his mercy he saved us It is not for our works saith he that the washing of regeneration and renewing of the holy Ghost that the spirit is given us by Jesus Christ and that Jesus is sent upon this design by the eternall Father three circumstances worthy great consideration To conclude the greatness of this benefit let us observe with Dionysius the Areopagite that we are advanced to this divine estate by a new birth and divine regeneration which the Son of God operates in us in the bosom of the Church our Mother to the honour of God and in imitation of his eternall generation in the bosom of God the Father CHAP. IV. Of the uses the Christians ought to make of filiall adoption whereto they are advanced by Baptism THe Truths that we have treated of are high and would require a large Discourse but that our designe being to prescribe the practice of filiall Piety we will only represent as much as is necessary to manifest what we are and what our life ought to be in conformity to so eminent an estate First then we must take notice that in the Language of the Scripture a Christian is a new Creature in Iesus and according to the word of the Son of God a man if he be a Christian must be born again of God and consequently must have a new being worthy such a birth Now according to the order that God hath established in all things we say that the action and operation must be conformable to the being Whence it follows that the state of a Christian being a holy divine estate that makes him the Son of God as truly by Grace as Jesus Christ is by Nature his actions also and life ought to be wholly divine and conformable to the state of the Son of God This is the Doctrine of the Apostle who saith Be ye followers of God as dear children This Principle granted we must see what benefits we can derive from thence The first is a contempt of this World for it is the heritage of the children of Adam condemned by a determined sentence and a day of execution appointed when by the Justice of God it shall perish in a generall Conflagration Let us then despise this heritage of Adam and seek that of the children of God Heaven or to say better God himself Say with Jesus Christ with a sound heart My Kingdom is not of this world Remember that you must keep the rank of the Sons of God
us with his gifts that by all these endearments and singular favours he might separate us from the creatures and reduce us to a divine society and communication with him Let us consider these two mysteries of our Faith and Love mysteries which give God to us and cause us to dwell with God The last is the mysterie of the Incarnation a mysterie of Love an eternall mysterie for God shall be man and man God for ever a mysterie causing God to live the life of man and man the life of God which between God and man effects an union and society so divine and intimate that he could not do any thing more holy nor desire any more intimate since it is substantiall and personall and shall subsist eternally Entring further into the consideration of this Mystery we shall see evident signs of this holy Communion God makes here a new World as the Scripture calls it a World of Grace and of holiness a World which he governs by a new conduct and providence For whereas before God confining himself within himself spoke not to the World but by his Prophets now by the accomplishment of this Mystery he comes out of himself speaks to us and instructs us by his Sonne Four thousand years he guided the World and his Church onely by his Angels the Interpreters and Oracles of his divine will Now Iesus guides his Church by himself he infuses holy motions into our souls by his spirit alwayes holy he governs all is present with all and is found by all What presence or commerce with God would you desire greater what greater society then that of the word by the Mystery of the incarnation To know it more particularly consider these Circumstances First in this Mystery God lives the life of man and man the life of God a life of society a life humanely divine and divinely humane for Iesus is God and man in Iesus we adore and acknowledge two lives one of God in man another of man in God Secondly by this ineffable union God communicates himself to man and by this communication appropriates to himself all that is of man with such wonderful wisdom that not dishonouring his divine greatness he takes upon him all the lowness of man and subjects himself so really to our infirmities that we say God is dead God is born c. and man by a happy exchange is lifted up to all the greatness of God inthron'd in the bosom of the eternal Father where he eternally enjoyes the proper glory of God Let every tongue confess that in Iesus Christ by that hypostaticall union accomplished in the Mystery of the incarnation man enjoyes the glory of God his greatness light and life Thirdly As for the life and divine mysteries of the Sonne of God we see he presented it to us the space of thirty three years conversing with us as one of us was an Infant in his first appearing laboured in his youth did live and eat with sinners in his wayfaring life He disdained not to succour the infirm in his miraculous life In a word he resigned himself into the hands of sinners a Sacrifice and was offered a holy offering on the Crosse for the sins of the World O wonderfull he died between two Thieves in the company of men so much pleased with the society and commerce of men What Religion ever had the presence of its God so visible what being was ever advanced to so great an honour To none but the Christian is this great favour granted a Commerce so sacred that it makes man God and God man By the ineffable mystery of the incarnation God unites the Earth to Heaven and Heaven to Earth The God of Heaven dwells upon the Earth according to that of St. Iohn The word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us all nature rejoyced at this happiness St. Iohn transported with love and joy representing to the world the truth and excellency of this benefit saith It is the same God that we have heard that we have seen with our eyes which we have looked on and our hands have handled So true is it that God by the mystery of the incarnation is with us and converses amongst us after a society wholly divine and onely proper to the state of a Christian. CHAP. VII Of the uses Christians ought to make of Grace proceeding from the Mystery of the Incarnation IN pursuit of these proposed Truths what may we judge to be the intentions of God but that his will is that we should enter into a holy and divine society with him and that we should separate our selves from all that may hinder or prophane this holy conversation with him since that Iesus Christ thinks of us converses with us by his divine mysteries unites himself unto us and abaseth himself to be as one of us to be among us we ought likewise to think of none but him to love none but him to converse with none but him and like the Apostle dwelling upon Earth to have our Conversation in Heaven Iustin Martyr shewing what Christians ought to be saith Christians are in the body but they live not according to the body they dwell upon the Earth but their Conversation is in Heaven This God requires of us this we ought to be in the state of Christianity this is the use we ought to make of the spirit and grace flowing from the Mystery of the incarnation But alass it is pitty that Iesus being now revealed unto us living with us and amongst us we apply thereto so little of our selves of our thoughts and of our love and busie our selves in things so small prophane and mean even such as are unworthy of man Let us do like him Love made him forget himself to converse with us let us come out of our selves and forget all things that we may raise our selves to him that all our content may be in him Moreover the state of the Grace of this Mystery obliges us to be holy seeing Iesus Christ with whom we converse is holy The Apostle says as he that hath called you is holy be ye also holy in all manner of conversation speaking walking working and whatsoever you do He that lives after any other manner saith St. Cyprian then holily dishonours the title of a Christian and is a reproach to Iesus Christ. Let such as believe not sanctity necessary for all Christians as well as those who live included in Cloysters consider these words We see in the Mystery of the incarnation that the Sonne of God enters into Commerce and society with us dwells with us is cloathed with our humanity God is made man that man might be made God not by simple denomination as God said to Moses I have made thee a God to Pharaoh and Kings in the Scripture are stiled Gods but really and by a being which deifies them For as they are true Children of God by Grace and as truly children by Grace as Christ is
by Nature so they are Gods by Grace as Iesus is God by Nature And if there be any who find this Truth difficult let him consider with St. Augustin that it is no harder for God to make a man truly God by Grace then it was for him to cause the Son of God to become truly man neither is there less repugnance in making man God by Grace then in making God man by the Mystery of the Incarnation Since then by this Mystery of Love God is made man why by an emanation of the same Mystery may not man be God And as by this society union and life which the Sonne of God hath undertaken the nature of man is the highest most divine and greatest communication that God could give so hath it effects wholly conformable to what it is for as the Mystery was onely operated for God's glory and mans advancement so it produceth infallibly the effects of glorifying God in a manner worthy of God seeing man that is God adores God and advances men to such a dignity as to be able to be Gods and Children of God by Grace Reflecting upon so eminent a truth do we not see clearly how holy and perfect the life of a Christian ought to be being called to so high a dignity a Prerogative onely proper to a Christian if a Christian must with all his power lay hold of this estate whereto God hath advanced him he ought also to have a particular care to become worthy to entertain this grace and to dwell with Iesus Christ in a great union and dependance that he may receive of him all the effects of this divine Mystery by whom all must operate in our souls and he must particularly dispose himself to receive the effects and Graces which uncessantly flow from this Mystery of Love and Communications for on this fidelity of our souls and on our union with Iesus Christ depends the foundation of all Good we can hope for And as all the happiness of the Creature consists in his being confirmed to his God and dependant on him more then the beames on the Sun so all the happiness of a Christian is to be bound and united in a most intimate society with Iesus Christ from whom being separated he becomes unworthy of the estate whereto God hath destin'd him deprives himself of all good and can hope for nothing lesse then a world of mischiefs The greatest pain of the damned is to see themselves separated from God banished his company for ever and the happy communion of the Saints In like manner the greatest evil that can arrive to Christians is to feel themselves far from Iesus Christ separated from him from whom they have all and deprived of the desired effects which they might receive by his conversation Let us take heed we fall not into this mischief and since nothing can separate us from Iesus Christ but sin let us shun sin more then hell it self And since nothing deprives us of the fruits and happy effects which we ought to receive of the society and commerce with Iesus Christ by his divine Mysteries but the Love of the World business and commerce with the Creatures Let us strongly endeavour to separate our selves from it and couragiously quit it at least in our affection if we cannot otherwise for the Love of Iesus Christ and let us quit that for the love of Vertue which we shall one day be constrained to do by the necessity of Death The fourth Prerogative CHAP. VIII Of another kind of Society and Vnion of Jesus Christ with Christians by the Sacrament of the Eucharist NExt the ineffable Mystery of the Incarnation we have nothing more worthy consideration in Christianity then the Sacrament of the Eucharist in which God shewes the last touches of his love and makes us most clearly see the designs he hath on our souls Faith teaches us that by the Sacrament of the Eucharist Love transports Iesus out of himself from the throne of his greatness to our baseness causing him to live with us and in us such is the purpose of Iesus Christ as he himself said as the institution of this divine Sacrament to establish between him and us a mutuall cohabitation that by this Mystery of Love he may enter into a true society with us be united to us and continue his life of conversation among us men to the end of the world He doth perform this promise of dwelling with us and in us by this high Sacrament which according to the Doctrine of the Church is an imitation and extension of the mystery of the Incarnacion to every Christian. This mysterie shews the commerce communion and particular residence which God hath in every one of us For as the communication which the Son of God hath made of himself to our nature united to his divine Person by the mysterie of the Incarnation is an imitation and extension of the supreme communication adorable and sacred society in the holy Trinity among the Persons and consequently is the most high and divine communication that God could do out of himself so the Eucharist which is an extension of the Incarnation in every one of us in the most divine and abundant communication that God can do in the order of grace For Iesus Christ in this ineffable sacrament gives himself wholly to every one of us and advances us and by his vertue draws us wholly to him by his power transforms us into his qualities makes us heavenly and eternall like himself establishes his Throne and dwelling in us by this divine mysterie Moreover by this Sacrament of union God is present with us is amongst us and united to every one of us after a manner so admirable and divine that we being not able to give it a name call it Sacramentall as an Union wholly hid from our eyes and covered under the shadow of Faith neverthelesse a true Vnion an Vnion that contains in it self and settles in us the presence of God makes us to be in God and God in us Thus God is altogether upon the earth in the midst of his People by the Eucharist and he is in Heaven in the midst of the Angells and Saints in the throne of his Majesty filling at the same time both Heaven and Earth with his glory presence and grace Briefly this Sacrament of Love gives us God causes us to live with him and of him puts us into a commerce and society with him and that with so much priviledge and advantage as we say that in this Sacrament of the love and fulnesse of God we enjoy Iesus more happily and more perfectly then the world did heretofore in the time of his Incarnation during his mortall life upon Earth I will more clearly demonstrate it that we may the more esteem so great a benefit and the excellency of the state of Christianity whereto we are called by the mercy of God First They who lived in the time that Iesus conversed visibly upon Earth
this love which operates with great things in the souls of the Elect. Let us love him who loves us so much and let us live the life of him who lives in us If we reflect upon these truths justly may we be astonished at the obstinacy and blindness of those who make so many difficulties to resign themselves wholly both body and soul to the conduct of God and absolutely to abandon themselves to the providence love and wisdom of Iesus What can any man yet doubt of the bounty and love of God distrust his wisdom after so manifest a truth Is it possible a Christian can imagin that he is to take care of the creature that humane prudence is necessary where God vouchsafes by his bounty to apply and employ his care wisdom and infinite goodness But only to apply himself to the way of God that is to say with an application worthy of God perfect as God is perfect good as God is good accommodating himself notwithstanding to the commodity and feebleness of the creature If we adhere to these truths it is fit that as members of the Son of God we live subject to his will abandon our selves to his loving conduct endeavouring nothing so much as to please and satisfie him This God requires of us to this all Christians are obliged and therefore to profit by this third Motion let us go out of our selves let us quit the care of our selves a care that nourishes nothing but complacency and self-satisfaction which altogether confides in the disordinate love of our selves Let us resigne our selves wholly to his care and providence of him who uncessantly fixeth the eye of his infinite bounty upon us Let us trust in him who hath a heart all of love who onely thinks of us and be all to him and for him Let us endeavour to have no satisfaction nor complacency but in him seeing he alone according to the Prophet Loves us from eternity calls and draws us lovingly to come to him and to be his If you now require some forms for this Resignation I will propose them CHAP. VIII Practises to help a Christian to live in subjection to Grace and the spirit of Jesus THe Christian who would profit by the Motive we last proposed must weigh the quality he hath in being a member of Iesus Christ for Iesus being his head will unite himself to him appropriate himself to him possess him encline him infuse into him his own being and life guide him on the earth as well as redeem him on the Cross and by a particular bounty love him with the same love that he loves himself and as the head loveth his members 1. To make use of these thoughts the Christian seeing himself so chosen united and amorously drawn to Iesus Christ must make a particular profession and protestation to adhere to Iesus to renounce all humane prudence all care and conduct of himself leave himself wholly in all things to the power providence and conduct of Iesus Farther he must yeild up all the right that God his Creator hath given him to his liberty to his life to his actions and to all inferiour creatures putting it into the hands of Iesus Christ upon whom he must depend in all things protesting that he will use them no farther then as dependant on the conduct intentions and will of Iesus 2. The true Christian must make a strong resolution to rely onely on God all other things being indifferent unto him whence he will endeavour to follow and accept with tranquillity of spirit all that God ordains and to establish himself wholly in this confidence of God in this conformity and relyance on the conduct of Iesus He will study to bear in his heart and soul a contempt of all naturall prudence in making little account even of things that depend on his grace saying to himself that he will onely rely on Iesus who is his All and that whatever happen supernaturall grace which is the light of Heaven will never fail to give him as much knowledge and experience in all things as shall be necessary for him but far more profitably and more perfectly then humane prudence can do 3. As this manner of doing may have great and continuall oppositions so the Christian who desires to please God must endeavour to live with vigilancy over himself and particularly have a great care to mortifie the assaults of Nature the motions of the humane spirit and the applications and agitations of the wisdom of the flesh all which opposeth the spirit of God And because nature useth to insinuate amidst grace and disguising her self dissemble to be what she is not we not knowing it and even contrary to our own intentions to prevent this deceit and to assure our selves in a matter so dangerous yet hard to be discovered it is necessary that the Christian with a great humility and a desire full of efficacy renounce all the motions and effects of nature and give himself with all his heart to the spirit and grace of Iesus After all which he must yet have a great vigilancy upon the bottom and the dispositions of his soul that with a great fidelity he may live in the subjection he ought to the grace and conduct of Iesus To help us in this practise and to see how important it is we must consider that the effect of the grace of Christianity may be reduced to one point The designes of God upon our souls are reduced to one thing onely which it is their aim to effect in us This point which God will do in us is to establish his sanctification glory and Kingdom in our souls This is the end of his design whereto all the effects of his grace and divine operations tend Whence we may infer that if God requires nothing of us nor hath no other design on us but to establish in our souls his empire and the Kingdom of his spirit and grace we also must have no other care desire or application then to subject our selves to the Kingdom of God to live in the obedience and conduct of his spirit and grace And as all the designs of God unite themselves in this one point so the Christian must labour in this point that he may be in all even to the least of his thoughts and actions and smallest motions of his soul subjected to the Kingdom of God Hereby I mean that all the motions thoughts and actions of a Christian must be ruled and subjected to the love power will and conduct of God that with peace and inward content he must receive the effects of God and walk with fidelity in the wayes God requires that God may raign perfectly in him by his love and grace and that he may raign here in all those wayes and manners that is as gloriously as he raigns with the Saints in Heaven proportionably notwithstanding to our present estate and meanness I know not whether a true soul that hath true faith can
they are by grace that which Iesus Christ is by nature This truth granted it is easie to comprehend the necessity of mortification If to be christians we must be re-invested in Iesus Christ that is live of his spirit and follow his motions and inclinations then to arrive to this happiness we must uncloath our selves of the spirit and inclinations of Adam and we must to speak in the words of the Apostle Put off the old man and put on the new man this cannot be done but by mortification which is the more necessary in that the inclinations and spirit of Adam are as much different from those of Iesus Christ as the Heaven is distant from the Earth These two spirits are as contrary one to the other as the animal is to the spirituall according to the Apostle who saith The first man is of the earth earthy the second man is from Heaven and cannot accord together Now to argue by the rule of contraries we must say that to establish the one it is necessary to annihilate the other to plant good we must root out evill so he that would love christianity that is according to the spirit and vertue of Iesus Christ must take away and mortifie the spirit and inclinations of Adam which are in all alwayes contrary to Iesus Christ. The Son of God came into the world as Saint Iohn saith to destroy the works of the Devill The spirit of Adam is a sinner and his inclinations are but concupiscences works of the flesh therefore is the Sonne of God come to destroy them We must also labour and co-operate with him to destroy in us and to root out of us all that sin hath put in us wherein mortification assists us This that Divinity which we call mysticall teaches us which requires that a christian to arrive to that perfection whereto God calleth him passeth through the purgative life in the wayes of mortification annihilation and resignation that by this exercise the soul may purge and cleanse it self from all that is in her opposite to grace and the true possession of God This Doctrine is founded on a Truth which most know but consider not sufficiently That the whole nature and being of man is corrupt all his inclinations turned to evill carrying the centre the source and seed of all vice and imperfection in it Now to order it so as that this nature of Adam this being may be possessed of God replenished with vertuous inclinations and that he may have in himself true charity the seed and principle of all Christian vertues he must necessarily take from it the evill that is in it for the good and perfection cannot be there but in taking away and rooting out the corruption and imperfection which cannot be done without a serious and continuall mortification inward or outward Whence we learn that to acquire christian vertues it is not enough to demand them of God by prayer which we call a demand nor to consider them in mentall prayers and to make good resolutions thereon it is not enough to know them and desire them nor to do acts of them and to produce many practises of them but we must also root out of the foundation of our soul all that which is contrary to vertue The man who desires to live a good christian and aspires to true vertue as the onely way to Heaven must not so much busie himself in the acquisition of vertues by the practise of them as he must labour to root out of his heart and pull out of the foundation of his being all oppositions inclinations and customs contrary to true vertue For as soon as he hath emptied his heart of all that is displeasing to God and contrary to him God will from that moment replenish and possess his heart and liberally extend to him the graces and vertues necessary for him but withall according to the measure in which God gives them to him he must be faithfull on one side to correspond with the grace given him on the other he must labour to render himself more and more capable of the spirit and possession of God he endeavouring to cleanse and purify his heart and God continually replenishing and consecrating it for his own dwelling and sanctifying it by his grace By this amorous combate God always gives and is always augmenting his gifts man receives and in receiving disposes himself more and more to receive more abundantly the sweet bounties of God all which is done in the soul proportionably to her purifying and mortifying her self from all that is disagreeable and contrary to the spirit of God By mortification and the purgative life we not onely understand corporall austerities such as affect the sense as macerations fastings and other exercises which rob the sense of what is most agreeable to it which although they be good and profitable and sometimes necessary yet are they not principall but we apply this Doctrine first to interiour mortifications whereby the soul purifies her heart annihilates her sources therein and pulls away the roots of imperfections and of all that is displeasing to God By this exercise she stifles as much as she can the seeds of self-self-love though hid in every thing she strives to gain a perfect victory over her self her principall care is to annihilate her will her intentions her desires her thoughts and inclinations to those of God choosing in all things that which is most pure most conformable to the spirit of Iesus most opposite and contrary to her own inclinations and unruly affections Hereunto she wholly addicts her self herein she is very vigilant she knows it generally a maxime that the more the heart of man is filled with the creatures and the love and regard of himself the more she is separated from God voyd of his spirit and true vertue Therefore she endeavours to exercise her self in this interiour mortification Another Reason which obligeth us to the spirit and exercise of mortification is that the Devil makes use of our inclinations of our habits of our desires and of our self-love yea he makes use of our selves against our selves and of our nature subjected as well by the sin of Adam as our actuall sins he makes use I say thereof to cast us away and to separate us from God even in things most holy and the most interiour and therefore to avoid the perils and to take the weapons from the hands of our enemie whereof he makes use to undo us we must necessarily pass through the purgative life we must go out of our selves out of the life of Adam to be in Iesus Christ and to live of his life and we must mortifie our selves to make place for God and take from our heart all that may displease him that is opposite to his grace and by this exercise we shall easily arrive to the acquisition of Christian vertues CHAP. III. That the adherence of a Soul to Iesus Christ is the most perfect
must adhere thereto and having adhered to it we must act and do all things in pursuit of this adherence Let us propose an example in common things to facilitate the practice I look upon God I consider his infinite essence I see that in respect of his divine Majesty all creatures are as nothing Having taken and imprinted this thought in my spirit I believe and immediately adhere thereunto saying it is true Then making use of this truth which I believe I despise all that is not of God and that belongs not to God for the act of faith which I performed teacheth me that all the rest is nothing all creatures are nothing before God In like manner amidst my actions making use of the truth that I profess and believe sometimes I despise one thing sometimes another esteeming God onely but accounting all the rest as nothing Thus I act in the spirit of Truth and make use of Faith Let us give an example more common I would form in my self the presence of God by the principles of Faith Hereupon I will rouse up in my spirit the thought of that truth which teaches me God is present every where and thence infer that consequently he is in my heart with the same greatness and Majesty that he is in Heaven amidst the Cherubims and Saints for it is the same God Having conceived this truth I adhere to it and say it is true then making use of it I find my self in the presence of God who is in my heart I hold my self before him in great reverence I walk with recollection of spirit and a sweet application of my soul to God who is present Now I look on him with love next I adore him doing all these actions by the principle of truth This is to make use of Truth The thing is not hard we must onely apply our selves heartily hereunto For according to the measure that we advance and perfectionate our selves in this exercise shall our actions be perfect and performed in the spirit of truth This is a point of much importance I wish I could perswade all christians to it for it is the foundation of true piety and the cause root and source of all good actions CHAP. VII Of the effects that Faith produceth in our souls and of the esteem of God WHen the Apostle saith Faith is the substance of things hoped for he would compare faith to substance and say that as substance is the support of all Accidents so faith is the support and basis of all Vertues and Graces Faith is the first gift of heaven and the eldest of the graces of God she contains and substains all the vertues of Christianity according to the faith in us and the use we make thereof are we vertuous and advanced in Christian perfection As this is the first of Gods gifts so the first care of a Christian must be to compass so fruitfull and profitable a grace This is a talent whereof God will demand a most exact account when we shall appear before the tribunall of his divine justice God gives us not so great a grace but to profit thereby and make use of it It belongs to God alone to give faith to move our will to illuminate our understanding but it is in man to make use of it and to shew by his works the faith he hath received of God In fine what advantage is it to possess faith which is an infused habit and to let it sleep in us to possess truth and to keep it under restraint Faith we say is a supernaturall habit a light of grace we must therefore put it in action and make use of this light to walk forward in the wayes of grace and path of vertue This is the designe of God evident in the mysteries of Christianity the eternall Father sent and gave us his Son the uncreated and essentiall truth to speak to us conduct us in the spirit of truth the Son conversed among men to bear witness as he himself saith unto the truth the same Son of God ascending into heaven sent to us the Holy Ghost the spirit of truth to enlighten us and teach us the truth And why hath God so great a care that we should know the truth but because the knowledge of that might save us and make us free that is that the light of the truth which is the spirit of faith might draw us from vice and sin to lead and confirm us in the acquisition and possession of vertues Look upon a soul guided by the spirit of faith you shall see that immediately she detests ill and embraceth good it is the property of it to engender and form acts of vertue If the soul knows the greatness of God making use of the knowledge of this truth she will presently be carried to a great esteem of God From this esteem springs reverence reverence operates love love brings the soul to God the soul so united by love fears to displease him This fear which is an effect of love brings into the soul a vigilancy not to offend him she loveth but it is to please him in all things This vigilancy forms a purity in the soul this purity renders us worthy to possess God Thus faith summons al the vertues embraces them and binds them all together and as she is mother so is she also nurse of them In brief she is the foundation of the Christian life the nourishment of all good actions This is the meaning of Saint Paul who said The just shall live by faith the reason is plain Faith is a light of truth he then that walks in the light of faith walketh in the truth and to walk in truth is to hate sin which is a lyer This is to live in the practice and possession of true vertue and in the terms of the Scripture to live in Iesus who is the way the truth and the life It therefore greatly importeth souls which will live good Christians and obtain true vertue to establish themselves in the spirit and use of faith to demand it of God and to referre all their good exercises thereunto which is truly the foundation of all the rest the principle the entertainer and supporter of Christian perfection this exercise is very large Faith and truth have effects almost innumerable He who applies himself thereto shall taste the fruits more or less according to his care therein But if we would know the most important where we must begin I answer it is the esteem of God wherein the soul must entertain it self much and lay a good foundation to arrive at this esteem It is not necessary to enter into a high and extraordinary knowledge of God but to make use of the Principles of faith and a frequent loving and affectionate consideration of God we must never speake of God or of any thing that concerns him but in words worthy of the subject with a sense full of respect and reverence
as in the Church he is fed with the body and drinks the blood of Iesus Christ. Among the true vertus which we must possess that which is as the gold and enamel of all the rest is purity a vertue altogether necessary yet either despised or little known If we would see the necessity thereof let us onely consider what is the end of a Christian and wherein consists the perfection of the state of Christianity The perfect Christian must live the life of grace which is the life of Iesus Christ he must carry God he must possess God If any man love me saith Christ he will keep my words and my Father will love him and we will come into him and make our abode with him which we must not onely understand of justifying and inherent grace a gift created and given of God but of the reall true habitation and presence of God in our souls The soul of the just saith the Wise man is the Throne of God and the Apostle sayes often that our souls and bodies are Temples of God Know ye not that your body is the Temple of the holy Ghost Reflecting on this so manifest a truth we must say that to receive and possess God in our soul we must have the purity of God and in a word without flattering our selves with vain hopes and disguizing or covering the truth let us consider a little seriously what the place ought to be where the Majesty of a God will dwell for ever what ought his dwelling to be of whom David saith Thou dwelst in the sanctuary and in the holy of holies What ought the heart of a man to be where God hath made himself a seat which he hath chosen and consecrated to be the throne of his love We must believe God will require in us a purity worthy of God seeing he who is purity it self will dwell eternally in us This purity that God demands and whereof he is worthy is so divine that our strength cannot arrive unto it he must give it he must assist our importance there is nothing but the fire of his love the lightning of his light the force of his grace and the power of his spirit that can purge expiate and consume all in us that is contrary to this purity In brief it belongs to God alone to place us in the purity that he requires of us This shews how much those souls are deceived who think to possess God and be well with him yet are more remote from him then heaven is from earth We need not but to behold and judge by the effects what its cause is Now as this purity is altogether necessary to possess God so it is our part to desire and to demand it of him and our principall care must be to purify our heart to make it to bear God we must offer it to him that we may bring to our selves the effect of this saying of God to his Spouse and to all others My son give me thy heart we must give and resigne it to him alone it is his desire it is our duty and our happiness if he will vouchsafe to accept it it will be his when he pleaseth to make it such as he requires it This is not all we must co-operate herein and labour with care and vigilancy that we may employ our selves herein with courage and labour with profit let us therefore see wherein this purity consists The purity of the heart may be understood two wayes one that we must purifie our heart from all sorts of sins and voluntary imperfections God enters not into a malicious soul nor inhabits in a body enslav'd to sin we mean not only gross sins but ordinary failings even all faults be they never so little For God being purity it self cannot inhabit in a heart if he find not or put not therein this purity and being infinitely good he infinitly hates evil whatsoever it be and though the least faults drive not God out of our souls yet they make a division and unsettle the soul from God they make great spoil in the heart they undermine it they brand it they indispose it and being so it is disagreeable to God and becomes the object of his Iustice. The soul that knowes how to esteem of God and bears any impression of his purity will think more then I say and never consent to the least imperfection all is insupportable to her that she knows to be disacceptable to God she hath no consideration of estate honour her own good or of men where she sees there is any thing capable to offend the eyes and heart of her God all her care is to detest and extirpate not onely the least faults but to quit renounce and separate her self from whatsoever she knowes to be displeasing to God It is the chief advice of St. Augustine Before any work saith he be sure to purify the heart and take from it all that you observe displeasing to God When he would have us take from our hearts all that is displeasing to God he discovers a great secret he would have us go out of our selves and take out of us all that is of Adam he would have us annihilate our inclinations because whatsoever is of Adam is impure and opposite to Iesus Christ and ever contrary to him whence we conclude that he who would possess Iesus must do all he can possible to dispossess himself of and to drive away Adam this spirit of Adam and his inclinations can no more subsist in the soul with the spirit of God then the Idol Dagon could stand before the Ark of the Covenant All that is in us and is not of God is impure and unworthy of God and all that is out of God can produce no good nor any thing worthy of God these are great truths such as might transport our spirits yet let us not be astonish'd at this Proposition as too high and impossible and we shall see that therein is nothing too much but rather far less then so worthy a subject merits if we consider how pure that soul must be that would please God be in God and possess God and what purity it must have to be one with God for thereon the life of a Christian happily terminates O great God how many deceive themselves O God of adorable purity how few are fit to possess Thee By the light of these truths we may discover the abuse and deceits in christian devotion Some think that they hold God by the hand already and believe themselves well advanced in perfection in that they communicate in that they fast and pray every day and a thousand such like things wherein they exercise themselves they have the taste and sense of devotion they speak well of God and if you will believe them they say they are ravished in God But consider them well you shall find they live wholly according to their own inclinations they mind onely their own
Interest they care onely to satisfie themselves in a word they are but themselves and full of self-love you shall know these Trees by their fruits and the end will let you see that do but touch these Mountains and nothing will come out but smoke God dwells not with Baal let us not go two wayes the soul who will possess God who is purity must be pure must purge and take from it self all that displeases God for flesh and blood possess not God There is another deceit whereto we must take heed which is of those that believe they do much and think that God is endebted to them when their Conscience troubles them not with any deadly sin that is when they themselves say they avoid them all for that according to the truth of this proposition simply taken it is certain he who dies without mortall sin shall be a Saint But laying aside many things that may be said against this abuse I will onely make it appeare that they support themselves upon a Reed for I advise all those souls that speak so to acquaint themselves with their own state because that to know the state of our Consciences and our faults as they are we must know what they are before God and by the light of God We cannot have this knowledge but in as much as we are filled with the light of truth and as we esteem God and his greatness But if we did esteem God and acknowledge his greatness and if we did live in the light of the truth we would never speak thus On the contrary we should not onely shun mortall sin but even the least faults for knowing God and esteeming his greatness we love him loving him we fear to do any thing that may displease him be it never so triviall and they therefore who onely regard and fear the grossest sins and care not for the rest assuredly neither know nor esteem God They know him not for they cannot know the state of their Consciences and consequently they deceive themselves when they ground their assurance on a pretence that they are not troubled with mortall sins and that so much the more in that they care not for all the rest believing they are well assur'd of their salvation Alass who is he that can be assured he is worthy of love or hate what presumption is it in men of this age to assure themselves amidst so many dangers Saint Paul the mirrour of Sanctity said of himself I know nothing by my self yet I am not hereby justified and elsewhere he sayes that he runs and labours alwayes because he is not arrived to that perfection God requires of him We must say the same in what state soever we are Whence I conclude that to live in the purity that God requires of a Christian he must not onely shun all sin but further have a generall care and particular vigilance to do nothing which may displease God whatsoever it be and must neglect nothing conducing thereto and herein consisteth purity in the first sense Purity taken in the second manner implies no other thing then a pure regard of man to God be it for the soul or for the body This purity is greatly important and altogether necessary to those who would live as perfect Christians by this purity the soul regards onely God she doth nothing but in the sight of God she seeks nothing but his Will if she love it is onely God if she affect any thing else it is onely for God and according to God in every thing she seeks his glory and satisfaction all creatures are before her as if they were not in this consists the essence of this vertue Perhaps we shall make it better known by proposing the wayes and meanes whereby we may arrive to the acquisition of so divine a vertue The first I place in purity and simplicity of intention when the soul in all that she does annihilates all her intentions her desires her motions her thoughts and admits none but the pure desire of complying with God I call this intention simple because it must be clear and naked without consulting Reason in any thing This intention is simple because it is one wholly and alwayes equall in all things it regards God onely and him continually in brief this intention and regard is simple because it onely rests upon God the soul that seeks this vertue seeks onely God O how desirable is this vertue how happy is this manner of life This is that which unites the soul to God that which pleaseth God and is fit to bear God The second meanes to arrive at the possession of this vertue is by denying our selves when we renounce our selves and admit no resentment that beares impurity and respect to our selves or the creature as the esteem of our own merit of our capacity of our vocation the content of a Neighbour the profit of Friends the acquisition of Vertue and such other things that cause us to stray from God We must annihilate all these resentments and thoughts to persist in the unity and bare simplicity of the pure regard of God the pleasure of God his glory and his content is a thing more important and infinitely of more worth then can be imagin'd yea then the salvation of all men The soul therefore that seeks God and perfection for that is all one must carefully take heed to this manner of purity for to regard any thing but God and to love out of God is to love unworthily and to love any other thing with God whatsoever it be to think thereon to seek it and to care for it is to make too little account of God it is to esteem his love too meanly Men addicted to this World will passe over this lightly and perhaps with contempt but I wish all that heartily seek God and are in the number of those whom God holds in his hand and regards to all eternity with a regard of love and good will that they think of what worth this eternall regard of God is who regards us without ceasing that they consider what God deserves and demand of God that which he pleases for this regard of his love I am confident that these thoughts would lead them to true piety The third meanes to attain this Vertue is vigilancy whereby we take heed to that which God does in us to correspond faithfully with the designes he hath to purifie us for by this vertue he is infused and God by his operations incessantly purifies us It is the duty of the soul to watch the occasions that God giveth her I say to watch for the love of our selves is very cunning to separate us from God and to apply us to our senses under pretence of vertue and necessity The devout soul must seriously take heed least she destroy in her self the works of God This is the design of Satan they are his ordinary subtleties that deceive the most fervent by this meanes destroying
our heart and form in our soul an alienation and displeasure of too great a love born to our selves and of that adherence and fastning which we have for the creature And for as much as one of the greatest hindrances to vertue is to think tacitely or actually that we have vertue we must believe that we are at a great distance from the purity and perfection God demands of us and are filled with our selves the affection of the creature and voyd of God Hence we proceed and raise in our selves a continuall hunger after God a desire and a firm purpose to approach unto him to love him to please him and to separate our selves from our selves and from all creatures We must think upon these words Thou sayest I am rich and encreased with goods and have need of nothing and knowest not thou art wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked In fine as all Evangelick perfection practised and preached by Iesus Christ consisteth in two points in love of God only and in hate of our selves we must study to establish and advance our selves in these two Principles we must vigilantly seek God in all occurrences in all things at all times and annihilate our selves upon all occasions and objects presented to us The second Practise must be actuall abnegation we must study to annihilate and go out of our selves This may be done two wayes One when we seek occasions to practise self-deniall or choose some exercise upon this subject This is for those who have courage and a great desire to be God's and to live good Christians But many belive not that they ought to renounce and have not sufficient courage to seek occasions to annihilate themselves There is another manner whereby they may profit by this exercise which is to receive with a spirit of self-deniall whatever happens to them and to entertain it as from the hands of God without which nothing can happen unto us and to whom all the powers of the earth are subject Here the soul must have a care to be faithfull to God when any occasions occurre to practise the interiour or exteriour self-deniall to make good use of it as God shall give him power and according to the objects God shall cause them to be presented to him It is a Lesson that all Christians ought to learn that we are obliged and it must be our continuall endeavour to destroy in us the old man even in the least things if we will have the new Adam Iesus Christ to live in us If it be demanded what self-deniall is since it concerns us so much to practise it I answer to practise self-deniall is to go out of our selves and to sever our selves from the creature to employ our heart and make our selves fit to bear God for our heart is God's and he created it by his power he consecrated it by his grace to dwell there and be there as a Father in his family the Sun in the heavens a King in his kingdom Sin drives him from thence the love of our selves and the creature holds the place of God and hath the boldness and rashness to seat it self in the Throne of God This love of our selves and of the creature reignes tyrannically in us usurps the right of divinity does all there that God ought to do The duty of a Christian is to establish God in his Throne to re-place him in his heart and to let him raign in his soul. To do this we must necessarily drive away this love of our selves and extirpate our affection to the creature This is the office of self-denyall which annihilates us and makes us go out of our selves and clear our heart to replace therein the fulness of God To practise self-denyall and for a man to go out of himself is to have no other desire then purely to please God to have no other will then his to have nothing but God before his eyes and to quit all considerations of the World onely to seek the glory of God To go out of our selves is to lose the care of our selves either of the soul or body to commit our selves wholly to the will of God to abandon our selves wholly to his conduct and the order he hath established from all eternity over our life It is to think no more of that which concerns us and to desire no more that any love us or esteem us no more to seek our own interests or satisfaction but onely the pure will of God So to live is to go out of and to annihilate our selves for the soul by these practises renounces and annihilates in her self all affections all respects all care of the Creature all that is not God or of God and so renders her self capable to possess God To attain this practise of this vertue besides the meanes already supposed a third may be added which is when God himself operates in the soul the annihilation he would have there and there are two ordinary wayes that he makes use of herein one by christian and justifying grace which cannot be in the soul till he drive thence and annihilates what is contrary to him and as far as it reigns herein and possesses the heart it proportionably annihilates in us this love of our selves and of the Creature so truly that we may say there is as much of the one as there is little of the other for grace and the love of our selves cannot reign together one drives away the other Besides grace God makes use of divers favours and communications secret and interiour as lights motions and other divine and loving operations whereby he infallibly operates self-denyall and annihilation in us It is a true principle that God never operates any effects which bring not purity self-denyall and annihilation into the soule where these effects meet not it is a certain mark that it is not the work of God for God who is purity cannot operate but purely he is alwayes like himself If there be an operation of God there is purity and consequently annihilation for purity annihilates impurity If in the operation which the soul bears there is not the effect of purity and annihilation 't is not an operation of God or an effect of grace but an effect of proper or naturall love or else of the Devill who can transform himself into an Angel of light but he cannot give the soul the effects of light which is to be observed thereby to know how to discern naturall operations from those of grace This truth will appear most clear if we consider the designs of God in his divine and loving communications We know that God doth not communicate himself nor work in our souls but to prepare and render them worthy and capable to receive him being therein received he will possess and fill them with his fulness How can all this be done in the soul if God at first by his operations doth not purifie the soul and separate it
him abroad in the Kings Palace The devout soul who beholds God in her heart and sees nothing but God there beholds him every where She knowes not that the World sees her she onely knowes her God beholds her and she her God that suffices her If a Christian love his God he will love him every where and not considering men he will say with the spouse my God is mine and I am his The Christian Master St. Paul gives us a good lesson upon this subject and in divers places furnishes us with reasons to perswade us to the care we ought to have of the outward man and of the actions that appear to the eyes of men he sayes that first we owe to God the care of perfecting our exteriour for God will be honoured by our actions This object we must have continually before our eyes this thought must never go out of our souls the reason that the Apostle gives is that we are not our own but Gods whether we live or die we are the Lords saith he and consequently in all our exteriour actions we must have a regard to God as if I should say whether at Court in publick or private in happiness or misfortune in what estate soever I am in of death or life what condition soever I live in I am Gods and therefore must so order my self that in all conditions and estates I may honour God by my actions that my exteriour may be as agreeable to him as my interiour Know you not saith the Apostle that your body is the Temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you which ye have of God and ye are not your own for ye are bought with a price therefore glorifie God in your Body By the first words he shewes the dignity of our bodies seeing that they possess the holy spirit by the rest the obligation we have to take care of our exteriour that it may give God the honour he expects This Doctrine stops the mouth of all the reasons or rather excuses of those who dissemble what they are and not esteeming the exteriour content themselves with good intentions We must say they live among the living we must accommodate our selves to men and a thousand such nicities to which there need no other answer then that of the Apostle you are not for your selves or your own Interests nor for your friends nor for the World give unto God what you owe unto God and to Caesar what you owe unto Caesar. If this reason be not sufficient Saint Paul gives you another taken from the condition of Christians and which they profess holy and perfect As a Gentleman is oblig'd to live like a Gentleman a Prince like a Prince every one according to his quality so a Christian must live according to the quality of a Christian his exteriour life must be conformable to the state of Christianity which he professeth I have shewed you saith St. Paul and prayed you to walk worthy of God who hath called you to his Kingdom and to his glory As the quality of a Christian is most noble that man can be advanced unto in which quality he must appear before the Tribunall of God to receive judgement and recompence of his actions it is but necessary his life and actions his government and conversation be conformable and worthy of so high and divine a quality whereto the same Apostle exhorts us I beseech you that you walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called This is all that is required of a Christian that in what estate condition or manner of life soever he be he live after a manner worthy of Christianity Let this be his first design the subject of his examen let all his care be to profess what he is by his actions The first thing that a Christian must regard in his actions and exteriour is not to see if he be conformable to the rank he holds among men and to his condition in the World but rather to be conformable to the state he professes before God herein consists the fidelity and courage of a Christian. This care of our exteriour is not an indifferent instruction but a Law from Heaven pronounced by Iesus Christ Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorifie your Father which is in heaven He will have us concerned in our neighbours and for love of them strive to live well to be unto them a mirror of vertue This is not therefore an advice but an obligation to give good example and by our good actions to shew others what they ought to do Example by sweetness of attraction wins the heart binds the will captivates the affections if vertuous it makes vertue to be deified it constrains us to love it and by the rule it bears over our hearts innsinuates and instills the vertue which it exerciseth For men said the Morall Philosopher give more credit to their eyes then to their ears From this principle is derived our obligation to let our light shine before men to preserve a vertuous and exemplary exteriour We are a sweet savour of Christ saith Saint Paul teaching us that our exteriour should have the odour of the vertue of Iesus Christ and not only have the savour but be the very savour it self so much God desires the perfection of our works words recreation conversation employments affairs In brief all our actions must savor of Iesus Christ and bear the odor of his vertues we must not pervert this counsel to formall affectation True vertue is masculine and noble every where it rules with modesty the spirit of God walketh with Majesty in humility all that we require is to profess vertue every where not to be ashamed to shew that we are God's that we respect his divine Majesty that we fear his Iudgements He that hath a good interiour let him shew it by the exteriour let him dissemble nothing but walk alwayes in sincerity remembering that he is in the sight of God Angels and men who behold him and shall one day be his Iudges By the same reason that we labour to perfect our interiour we must endeavour to perfect the exteriour for common sense teaches us that by our exteriour we must please God and render him as much honour as by the interiour To recollect and profit by what is said let us learn to perfect our exteriour and have regard to God onely to conform our actions to the state and dignity of Christianity Let us remember that the rule whereby God will judge us at the hour of death will not be that of honour nor of men of the world much less that of our Interests but of his will and his honour we are only in the world for his honour to do his holy will we are his and for him and it is reason we should render to God what we owe him CHAP. II. That in all our Actions we must follow the
glory and honour of a heart I say that God will possess and shall possess God to all eternity They are unworthy of God opposite to the purity of his love As God is pure in his entertainments and jealous in his love he never suffers such an evill seeing it is not becoming his greatness to divide his glory and contentment to mingle his honour with self-satisfaction and the complacency of the creature The law of love forbids this division we are obliged to love God with all our heart that is perfectly for as he that loves well cannot love two things so he that will satisfie himself and please the creature cannot satisfie God or conform himself to his divine will The state of Christianity teaches this purity for if we are Gods and love only for God why then all these satisfactions The soul that desires to be saved must onely seek perfection that is God for true perfection consists in the possession and seeking of God she must have no regard but that of God no other intention but to please him The Christian that pleaseth himself and seeketh complacency in any thing besides God does quite contrary he turns from the will of God to seek that of the creature or to satisfie himself and loses the regard to God the most pure employment of his soul to regard the creature to take pleasure in it and from that very time that he suffers himself to be transported with this imperfection he turns from God to turn to the creature which is the greatest misfortune that can befall a Christian. For turning to the creature he makes himself unworthy the favours of heaven and if he continue so it will never be possible for him to taste God or to possess the purity of vertue If I yet saith St. Paul pleased men I should not be the servant of Christ. The word complacency is of great extent it comprehends all that is not God nor of God and includes also the gifts of God naturall and supernaturall of capacity and of grace wherein it is never permitted to please our selves or to seek our own satisfaction The reason is because God dispenseth not his gifts that we should settle our selves upon them or make them the objects of our love or the subjects of our satisfaction and complacency He gives them only because he loves us and would make us worthy of his regard love and favour He gives them to make us capable to love and please him such is the desire of God in this his liberality whence we may thus argue If God gives nothing but to obliege us to love and please him it follows that to use his gifts otherwise be they naturall or supernaturall is to overthrow his intentions and to destroy his work and it is a kind of Idolatry to regard the gift more then the giver In brief it is to make us unworthy of his favours and to stop the course of his divine communications and if we consider well we shall confess that it is the chief reason that oblieges God to withdraw his gifts and graces and to turn away his eyes from us whence we cannot expect less then a miserable fall or to be abandoned of God either for ever or at least for a time So fell Lucifer so was the first man lost and with him all humane nature By the same fault many Christians are fallen from the state and capacity of grace whereto God had elected them The world is astonished when it sees some fall into great enormities others into afflictions intolerable agitations dangerous and insupportable desertions We demand whence these evils proceed who hath precipitated so many souls from the heighth of grace and perfection We may say what we please but assuredly this proceeds not from the ordinary course but onely because we regard nothing but our own satisfaction and quit the regard of God and pure desire to please him to regard the creature to satisfie our selves and take pleasure therein If we weigh this offence we shall find it a great undervaluing of God an injury to his gifts it is to hold unjustly the favours and graces of heaven it is to put God beneath himself and the creature Hence it happens to such souls as at other times it hapned to the wise of the world who when they knew God glorified him not as God neither were thankfull wherefore God also gave them up to uncleaness through the lusts of their own hearts He will do the same to Christians who after they have received so many gifts of God regard rather the gifts then him that gave them and convert them to their own satisfaction which is a greater crime before God then we imagine If it be not permitted to delight our selves in the gifts of God nor to seek satisfaction therein what shall we say of those who make use of them to enter into an esteem of themselves and who glorifie themselves in the endowments which God hath bestowed on them How shall we judge of those who so exceedingly please themselves and who glorifie themselves in the capacity that God hath given them therein in their exercises in their vocation in their happy estate who cannot entertain themselves with any thing else What piety can those souls have who are taken only with those that flatter and praise them and believe none but those that esteem them and study to give them all manner of satisfaction They have all cause to fear for assuredly continuing such they shall never taste God or possess the spirit of true piety Saint Augustine confesseth this with tears saying O Lord I was putrified whilest that I took contentment in my self and endeavoured to please the eyes of men Let us profit by these truths remedy our abuses and establish our selves in solid piety let us lift up our eyes to heaven and recollect what we have said Let us consider that God alone is the centre and end of our souls and that as the inclinations of all creatures tend to their centre and the end drives and moves us to action and is the rest and perfection of the work so let us direct all our inclinations to God and destroy all those that are contrary to him since he alone is our end let him be also our chief regard our first intention the only desire of our souls Let us do all our actions according to our estate and vocation as God shall give us the inspiration and means but in doing them let us regard nothing but God Let us endeavour to have no other intention but to do the work of God to accomplish his holy will to please and satisfie him in all things Let us learn that God regards not whether we do little or much so that what we do be conformable to his will and worthy of his love This is all can be required of those who seek Christian perfection and would make themselves worthy to possess God in heaven CHAP. V. Of
the satisfaction of their own spirit You shall find their hearts void of God full of self-self-love their actions inconstant their thoughts in continuall changings In fine they are nothing but disquiets complaints and murmurings Look upon their life and actions it is but a pastime unprofitableness and the vanities of the age and having considered it all it will not be hard for you to know whether those souls have the fear of God and the knowledge of vertue yet in appearance they make a great shew we know not whether is to blame those who are conducted and directed or the Directors But how ever it be the Christian who would be saved must labour herein seriously and neither fear pains nor mortifications but seek to be conducted by the wayes that God hath ordained and passing above all considerations and all sorts of difficulties prove constant and complyant with the order that God hath established over him he must every day renew his good resolutions and pray to God to let him know and be acquainted with the designes he hath upon him and give him grace in every point to follow them and with fidelity to accomplish them And seeing that his fidelity is now in question and that it is altogether necessary to all Christians it were but necessary we made some discourse of it CHAP. VII Of the fidelity of the soul and of its necessity in the wayes of grace and the actions of a Christian. TO speak of Fidelity and to see how much it is necessary to all Christians we must reflect upon the truths already proposed and remember that man was created for God who is his end that God alone can conduct him to this end and that it is the same God who onely operates in him all the good works which are necessary to make him Gods and to arrive at this end which is God From these principles of truth we enter into our subject and presently see that we have not any thing more important in this World then to go to God to co-operate with the works which God does in us to save us and to accomplish with fidelity that which he requires of us and in the spirit and disposition that he desires every one applying himself faithfully to the way that God proposes and the works of his vocation that the Priest live according to the perfection of his estate the Christian as Christian in brief that all men live so as at the houre of death they may say with Iesus Christ My Father I have glorified thee upon the Earth I have finish'd the work thou hast ordained me to do This fidelity which is absolutely necessary must be in our soul from the time we were born Though there were neither Heaven nor Hell we are obliged to live according to the will of our Creator what aversness soever the creature may have it shall be allwayes subject to the order of God either in the way of justice or mercy If we would be saved it cannot be unless we co-operate with the works that God will do in us unless we become faithfull to his graces and follow the order that God hath prescrib'd wherein he will conduct us to salvation and therefore it concerns us more then we think to take heed to the designes that God hath over us and to the vocation whereto he hath called us to the motions and inspirations he gives us to make use with fidelity of the graces he offers least drawing our selves from the order and offer of his mercy we enter into that of his Iustice and one day he say to us in the rigour of his determined Decree as he said to his people I will choose their delusions and bring their feares upon them because when I called none did answer when I spake they did not hear but they did evill in my sight and chose that in which I delighted not Isa. 66.4 When we speak of the vocation and use we are to make of the graces and benefits of God we speak of Paradise to despise them is to neglect salvation Therefore the Christian must consider what he does as well in that which concerns the vocation he must choose as in the use of the graces and favours he receives of God seeing thereon depends all his happiness or misery we must take heed we chuse not what God would not have us nor despise what he would have us to embrace This point is the most important of all in a Christian life yet is it a mystery the most secret of any in Christianity The vocation of a soul is as much hidden as her election which none can know or easily discern by her conduct The wayes of God are as much elevated above ours as Heaven above Earth and yet O wonderfull God wills that we follow his wayes and none shall be saved but according to the vocation whereto God from all time hath called him What remedy seeing on the one side necessity constrains us and on the other the incertainty and obscurity deters us O just God God of all bounty who shall enlighten us in this darkness who shall resolve us in an affaire so doubtfull who shall assure us amidst so many doubts nothing but thy light O God the onely refuge of our souls can conduct us nothing but thy spirit can teach us but thy truth can assure us and but thy infinite mercy can protect us This lets us see in what danger they put themselves who so long neglect the motions graces and favours of God and make such ill use of his benefits From these truths we learn the esteem we ought to have of our vocation and with what circumspection we must make choice thereof and if we will make our selves worthy to receive of God the light and conduct necessary in an affaire of so great consequence for our salvation it will be very profitable to enter into these following dispositions First The Christian must have a pure desire of God and a resolution to do in every thing his divine will being from the bottom of his Heart wholly resigned to his will and conduct Secondly He must have a great sence of his weakness he must be in an estate of humility before God not esteeming himself worthy or capable of any thing for the humble shall never perish and as Esay saith God looketh to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit and trembleth at his word Thirdly He must renounce his own interests and all his particular concernments he must not regard his own safety that he may have no object but the pure will of God yet in such manner that he who resolves to remain so faithfully and constantly in the order and designes of God and proposes to make hereafter use of Gods gifts graces and benefits and regards not perfection advancement vertue not Heaven it self must not content himself with a thought to please God for alas who is worthy thereof but cleansing and purifying his intentions
words which shew the pain and travel a Christian is obliged to undergo to root out of his heart and tear from his soul all that is contrary to the Law of God and vertue words which condemn our delicates and all that fear labour and sufferings excusing themselves by their weakness of nature To comprehend the importance of this advice Let us lift up our eyes to the contemplation of the truth and spirit of Christianity there we shall learn of the Son of God that the Kingdom of heaven is gained by violence that the grace of Christianity is grounded upon suffering that the perfection is in love in love crucifying that all the wayes of God and the operations of his spirit consist in privation and resignation and consequently in the cross Whence it necessarily follows that they who fly sufferings and humiliation seeking onely a sweet pleasant life fearing pains and travel do by this fear make themselves unworthy of God who reigneth on the cross and is onely found in the thorns of the fiery bush They withdraw themselves from the Kingdom of grace which agrees with annihilation they shut their heart against love and which is more to be lamented go out of the order of God and from the conformity they ought to have with Iesus Christ crucified who is the object the way and the life of perfect Christians and of Iesus Christ who cannot conduct our selves but in the way of annihilating of suffering and humiliation which is the way of Iesus Christ his life and essence Here may these delicate persons see how their faint-heartedness deceives them Let us then take heed and seriously consider the sentence that Iesus Christ pronounces against them He that takes not up his cross and follows me is not worthy of me To fear sufferings to fly humiliation to refuse the communication of God is to make our selves unworthy and uncapable of all his divine operations of grace for God cannot communicate himself to the soul in the wayes of grace but he will cause therein annihilation and humility All the operations of grace can have no effects in our souls but those of humility abnegation and death Grace must operate in the souls that which death doth in the body This is so known a truth that all that speak of grace unless that it 's proper and principall effect is to give us to God to make God live in us and to place therein his love and favour It is impossible for God to operate all that in us without annihilations subversions humiliations and death unless he pluck the love of our selves and the Creatures from our hearts he cannot plant his own therein If he kill not in us the old Adam never will Iesus Christ live in us God cannot dwell in us if he do not annihilate and consume the impurities and malice of our souls Thus Christian grace to produce its effects in us requires an estate of submission and death They therefore deceive themselves who think they are in grace yet bear no mark at all of this grace for if it be in a soul it will infallibly produce the effects proper to it if it produce nothing it is a sign it is not there Herein also appeares the wrong that the fear of suffering causeth to Christians How much do souls separate themselves from God who seek no other consolation satisfaction and enjoyment but their own and labour onely to put themselves into a certain repose thinking that perfection consists in this false rest and never to suffer any crosse affliction or temptation No no Earth is the place of combate Christian life is the death of man perfect love like the Phenix seeks death and findes life in the same flames the Crosse gave grace grace now giveth the crosse the sacred spouse saith she is fair but brown scorched with the burning beauty of divine love He that cannot suffer cannot love he that cannot love is not worthy of God or the name of a Christian. It is love that triumph'd over Iesus Christ annihilated him to the condition of our mortality it is love that humbled him even to our lowness and infirmities it is love that crucified him Christianity hath no other love or grace If then the Christian will love if he will be subject to the Kingdom of grace he must defie all sufferings and couragiously embrace all that shall befall him for love overthrowes all and triumphs over the soul. If she flatter it is to hurt if it hurt it is to kill so they who seek true and solid piety must not behold God but in the Crosse nor consider grace but in humility and sufferings My well-beloved saith the spouse in the Canticles is a bundle of myrrhe she confesses she fainted and dyed in the communications of love she received from her God For when the spouse had given her his love and ordained charity in her she instantly adds stay me with flaggons comfort me with apples for I am sick of love The greatness of God the infinity of his being his divine spirit are so powerful that if he never so little communicate himself to the soul by the purity of love and grace He is able to annihilate and consume her For if he apply himself to the Creature without proportioning himself to its capacity he cannot be supported for he overwhelms and ruines the created being by this power infinite and infinitely predominating over a being so small so subjected to his power In fine it would swallow up and consume it if he did not proportion his operation to our weakness and if he gave us not a capacity and force to bear it But whatsoever he doth if he communicate himself he alwayes annihilates if he giveth grace he changeth the man if he giveth light he humbles him if he make him to bear his love he wounds him Thus the soul that will love God must love sufferings he that will love the life of grace must lose himself and annihilate himself to receive divine operations He that will beare the light of truth must humble himself seeing God doth not manifest himself but to the humble of spirit and that all the works of God bear his Crosse in humility Hence we learn that it is necessary we esteem the Crosse and sufferings and embrace them with joy and fervour of spirit but we must further observe that sufferings subversions losses and humiliations and other misfortunes of humane life are necessary to a Christian to keep him steadfast amidst the deceits and blandishments of the World the subtleties and surprizes of the Devill By these wayes which we call rigorous God severs us from the world and takes us from kindness to the creatures he makes use of these losses and subversions as of gall and bitterness to mingle with the sweets that the creatures present to us He uses humiliation and affliction to abate our pride and if he do leave us for a time it is to
have this Disposition perfect the soul in its sufferings eversions and humiliation and in all the contrarieties of humane life must have no other thought nor interiour state but to suffer because it is the pleasure of God she should suffer This I call a pure regard of God she suffers onely to praise God onely because God hath delight to see her suffer and wills that she should suffer This Dispositition is the state that the Wise man calls the Sacrifice of the Holocaust a sacrifice killed and layd whole on the Altar as the holocaust is all consumed and annihilated to the glory content and honour of God alone without the Creatures having any part therein so the soul suffering in this pure regard of God sacrifices her self wholly to God and is wholly consumed in the good pleasure of God without her bringing or receiving any other intention thought or state wherein her happiness doth consist For God seeing the soul suffer onely for his content and good pleasure gives her a sufficiency and capacity to suffer with so much liberty and amplitude that she no longer regards what she suffers nor thinks more of sufferings but only thinks to do the good pleasure of God So that she undergoes not sufferings with pain but with love and with a disposition that beares in it more of love then of sufferance in the suffering it self resigning her self wholly to God and to all the effects of his spirit and grace how vigorous soever they may be thinking no more of sufferings but believing and loving and in this disposition love is the life of sufferings and sufferings are the object of love of a love pure and perfect To suffer according to divine wayes may yet be understood in another manner when in sufferings mortifications and humiliations the soul is such to God and so firmly united that all things in the World are painfull to her all is unsupportable to her and her own body causes her to sigh and lament saying with the Apostle We groan within our selves waiting for the adoption to wit the redemption of our body Every where she findes contrariety and the more she lives in Iesus Christ the more she feels the weight of the Creature all her repose is to be Gods she seeks not nor findes any thing but pain and contrariety for she findes all her pleasure all her repose and content to be in the good pleasure of God In this disposition the soul must be really lost in God for she no more beares all the adversities of humane life but according to the spirit of God with a divine patience that is in the same manner that God beares them or if you will in the spirit wherewith Iesus Christ suffered our nature our sins and the Worlds a patience which we must adore and imitate in Iesus Christ for he did not onely beare them but also which is admirable in the excess of his love gave his life a divine life for our sins and by the same patience bearing the contrariety that his divine and infinite essence hath to all impure and limited creatures he acted with the creature laboured and died for it This patience of Iesus Christ is the beginning and cause of our happiness this patience is the cause that all the just and holy that ever were in the Church militant have born all adversities with peace and meekness this patience must alwayes make us to suffer all the rigours of this life but after a manner so much more perfect and divine as the soul hath received of grace and is advanced in the way of perfection according to the measure that the soul is possessed of the life of Iesus Christ to the same measure the spirit of sufferance must be pure in her and she must remain more resign'd to the designes of God more divided from all Creatures In this point consisteth the principall subject to be examined whereby to know the fidelity of the soul. He that would know the way to make use of this divine spirit must learn it of Iesus Christ who is the rule and example of our life and actions all that he did all that he suffered had relation to the glory of his Father to the exaltation of his name to the establishment of the Kingdom of God in our souls In a word he lived in the World and dyed upon the Crosse onely to do the good pleasure and will of his Father My meat said he to his Apostles is to do the will of him that sent me This was the end of his coming and of his incarnation Let us do the same and remember that as we must have purity of intention in all our actions so must we in all our suffering have a pure regard to the will and good pleasure of God When we shall suffer whatsoever it be let us suffer it because God permits it or so appoints it or because he will shew his power over us and will be glorified in our subjection Let us not regard our own interest but undervalue all things in respect of the glory of God Let us endure them onely in regard of God since it is his will since he takes pleasure to see us in sufferings and in the Crosse and that he will shew his power in our submission Let us reduce all our intentions hither they may be good but this includes all the rest In this disposition Iesus Christ prepared himself for the Crosse and presented himself to his Father to be the offering and the sacrifice of the holocaust a propitiation for our sins Thy will be done said he and no more let us say the same in all events let us settle the foundation of our soul in this estate and disposition To this we must add a remarkable admonition for those who will profit by sufferings humiliations and other adversities of humane life and bear them with faithfulness And that is this that in all conditions of life in all that may happen to us we must endeavour to find out if it be possible the designes which God hath over us in all that he does or permits to be done and we are to be very carefull to receive them and co-operate faithfully with them For as God in all he does or permits hath alwayes some design worthy of his greatness and goodness so is it the duty of the soul to submit her self thereto to subject her self according to all her capacity that with an intire consent she may act with God if need be and receive with fidelity all things according to the designes and intentions of God as for instance There happens losses and ruines we are to see if God by these losses would separate and sever us from the Creatures If it be so we must accept them with this disposition and make it our endeavour to sever and deprive our selves of the love of all things created because that by the losses and disgraces which befall us we see that
and the reverence we should bear to this estate for the Sonne of God having chosen the Crosse and sufferings and having united to his divine person by his incarnation meanness and infirmities and adversities of humane life he hath made them divine and ennobled them So that we must regard them much more for the dignity which they receive from Iesus Christ and to speak properly they are the sufferings of Iesus Christ for we are united to him we are members of his body flesh of his flesh bone of his bone and by reason of this unity they are no more our sufferings then the sufferings of Iesus seeing they are more to Iesus then to our selves Whence Saint Paul saith as the sufferings of Christ abound in you so our consolation abounds by Iesus Christ. The Apostle highly advancing the sufferings of Christianity calls them the sufferings of Iesus St. Peter speaks in the same manner Rejoyce in as much as you are partakers of Christ's sufferings And therefore when we see all that is in this World all the adversities and vicissitudes we must not passe them over indifferently or as men without grace and vertue stop at our own resentments and loose our selves in our weakness and naturall passions but we must lift up our eyes and thoughts to the consideration of Catholick truths and making use of the light of Faith endeavour to use all things according to the manner God requires and to the power he hath given us If we suffer let us not suffer as slaves and criminalls but as the Children and true Servants of God Let us suffer with esteem and in the spirit of Christianity a spirit holy and divine a spirit powerfull and couragious and which onely belongs to the chosen of God and to his greatest friends Hence the Apostle summing up the graces that the new Christians had received of God puts sufferings in the first place and accounts them as a singular favour He hath given you saith he not onely to believe on him but to suffer for him thereby shewing that it is a benefit of God to be called to the state of sufferings and to know how to make use thereof In the view of these truths let us beg of the Sonne of God part of his spirit of the Crosse and sufferings and his grace to support us under them that we may bear them with the spirit with joy and the grace of Christianity let us say with Saint Paul and often repeat this Prayer in our heart That the Lord would prepare our hearts to the love of God and to the patience of Iesus Christ. CHAP. XIV That we must suffer out of a zeal to the Iustice of God WE suffer in the wayes of sinners and for the zeal of Iustice which is the third Disposition that we have proposed when we enter into the zeal of God which brings him to do justice upon sin and that in all things we exercise upon our selves the judgement that God exerciseth therein in bearing in our hearts a true desire and an effectuall will to submit to the justice of God before whom we are sinners before whom we have offended so many ways By this Disposition the perfect Christian must undergo all sorts of pains and sufferings and regard the adversities and inconveniencies of humane life as effects of God's Iustice on him as a sinner whereby he would destroy sin in him and root out imperfections With this spirit and Disposition he must endure all naturall incommodities as cold heat poverty sickness afflictions and such accidents which are the attendants of our life regarding and bearing them with this zeal to the Iustice of God upon sin This thought if it be solid and well settled in the soul of a perfect Christian will make all pain sweet and easie For what can we suffer but we deserve much more if we weigh our afflictions our sufferings travails and adversities with the number of our sins Who will not see the deformity and weight of our sins and how much they surpass the rigour and weight of our sufferings If we consider the hate God bears to sin and to sinners by reason of sin who will not confess that our crimes are much greater then our pains that amongst our afflictions and sufferings even the greatest and most insupportable the mercy of God appears more then his justice What more manifest example of Gods hatred against a sinner then the rigour wherewith the divine justice which is alwayes equitable punished sin in Iesus Christ And if the eternall Father as the Prophet saith so rigorously chastised his Son for the sins of his people what should he not do to us If the Son of God who is holiness it self sanctity uncreated and incarnate becoming a pledge and offering for our sins was subjected not onely to our miseries and naturall infirmities which are great but to adversities afflictions poverty contempt accusations ignominy even to the rigour of the cross what ought we to suffer who are sinners and objects of the hatred and justice of God If this be done to the green wood what will be done to the dry If the Sonne of God who is the eternall and true wisdom chose this estate voluntarily subjected himself to all miseries incited by zeal to the glory of his Father and to satisfie divine Iustice what ought not we to do what pains and rigours should not we embrace who are the guilty to appease this angry God to satisfie and allay his provoked wrath to restore to glory what we have ravish'd from him Let us enter into this disposition and zeal of submitting our selves to the stroke of Gods Iustice and we shall see all things will be easie to indure we shall not complain whatever befalls us whatsoever is done unto us we shall not take it as a wrong nothing will appear harsh unto us nothing insupportable the quality of sinners and multitude of our offences will tell us that we deserve more we shall bless God for the favour he does us in giving us the meanes to honour him by our sufferings The Christian therefore must have a care to bear all adversities all changes of this life all sorts of afflictions losses and misfortunes yea all incommodities and naturall vexations of humane life with an intention to glorifie God to submit to divine Iustice against sin O how great must be the courage of a Christian how invincible his constancy in all changes and misfortunes if he professeth this zeal of God if he be animated with the hatred God beares to sin How easie would all things appear if in them we had no intent but to act and suffer onely to please God with a full resignation of our selves in all things to his divine conduct To facilitate this disposition and make it more generall we must remember that the Wisdom of God rules all this great World and hath a generall and particular superintendency over all things Nothing
have said we are God's without whom we can neither honour God nor be acceptable to him It follows that the foundation of true piety consisteth in Iesus Christ that is in the adherence and relation of our souls to Iesus Christ and in the submission of our being and life to the conduct of his spirit and grace for by that adhering to him and being subjected to him we are pleasing to God and receive in him and by him the capacity of honouring and serving God which is the proper effect and chief duty of piety and devotion The truth would need no proof but that few persons think thereof and that many are ignorant of it therefore it seems to be to purpose to speak thereof more at large in the Principles of Christianity Without out going any further let us consider that to be a Christian we must put off the old man with his deeds and put on the new man Iesus Christ it is the Doctrine of the Apostle whereon we must found our Discourse If to be a Christian we must crucify and put off the old man to put on the new with much more reason to be a good and devout Christian we must crucify and put off the first to invest us with the second When we say that we must be clothed with Iesus Christ it is to shew we must be united to him adhere to him and as a garment adheres to the body and is united to it so must we be Iesus Christ's but much more perfectly then this comparison expresses Reason and Faith will easily convince us of this truth if we doubt of it for faith teaches us that it belongs to Iesus Christ to give us grace and strength to put off the old man that is to draw us from our imperfections to deliver us from our sins and annihilate our evil inclinations It is the same that Iesus Christ invests us with the new gives us his spirit grace and vertue for and according to Saint Paul Iesus Christ hath been to us wisdom and righteousness sanctification and redemption In a word Iesus Christ is all in all to us Now that the Son of God may operate in us all that we have said it is necessary that we be united to him adhere to him and be subjected to his designes his will and divine operations Who can deny so manifest a truth If Iesus annihilate our evill inclinations and root sin out of our hearts ought not we to be subject to his conduct and spirit and so receive his operations of mercy If we participate of his grace and vertue and live according to his Commandements is it not necessary we should be united to him And how should we be united to him but by a true relation and faithful adherence to him This deduction is easie and clearly shewes how true it is that the foundation of true piety consisteth in unity and in the adherence and dependance of the soul on Iesus Christ it is acknowledg'd by all that devotion cannot be true if we be not exempted from our vices and imperfections and filled with the spirit of Iesus Christ and assisted with his grace to make us worthy to honour and serve God We cannot perceive in that devotion nor practise the exercises thereof if the same Iesus Christ be not operating in us the will and perfecting according to his will This Iesus Christ said to his Apostles and in them to all Christians Abide in me and I in you as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine no more can ye except ye abide in me adding he that abideth in me and I in him the same bringeth forth much fruit for without me ye can do nothing O words of love words spoken the eve of his death to shew us the excess of his love that proceeded from his heart wholly divine and full of tenderness whereby being moved he further said unto them Abide in my love So infinitely was he desirous to possess our hearts and to triumph over us by his love whence he often repeats the same words to engrave and imprint this care in our souls and by the proceedings of his love oblige us to love him again This indeed is a thing we ought to have continually in our thoughts for all the happiness of a Christian consisteth in this relation and this amorous dwelling of our souls in Iesus All our good is in this union since that by it and the adherence we have to Iesus we become his and by him we receive a power and capacity to bear the fruits of good works to practise vertue and to passe our life in the exercises of true piety and Christian devotion which make us hope for the reward which God promises to those that serve him Without this relation and union we shall continue in our weakness and incapacity our life is unprofitable barren unfruitfull and in evident perill If any man abide not in me saith Jesus Christ he is cast forth as a branch and is withered and men gather them and cast them into the fire If we will come to the experience of what we have said let us examine God's conduct of such souls as he will save and we shall find that the first knowledge he gives them is that of Iesus Christ proposing to them his Crosse or some Mystery of his life the first motions the first thoughts of piety that he inspires them with are those of a certain compassion and sympathy with his Crosse and sufferings or those of love and tenderness in consideration of his benefits If on the other side we intentively consider souls even the most ignorant we shall easily know they have a secret resentment and an inclination to Iesus Christ though they know him not But God alwayes begins these divine Communications and effects of his mercy by this first grace The reason is manifest in Divinity which teaches us that the eternall Father doth nothing but by Iesus Christ operates nothing in our souls nor in the state of grace no more then in nature but by his Sonne The first favour therefore the elect soul chooses to receive of God is that the eternall Father hath given it to his Sonne and there Iesus Christ accepts of it and appropriates it to himself Now as God demands our co-operation which yet we cannot give without his grace and therefore inspires the soul with a resentment of Iesus Christ gently insinuating into it a certain attraction which sweetly drawes it to a knowledge and piety towards Iesus Christ so our soul begins to be Iesus Christs perfecting her self in the state of christianity according to the measure that he advances in this affection and in this relation to Iesus Christ. The Sonne of God speaking to the Iewes obstinate in their errours saith None can come unto me if the Father who hath sent me doth not draw him And to shew the manner that the eternall Father uses to lead our
worthy to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and blessing The Earth and all the creatures of the Universe do the like and present themselves before Iesus declare him their Soveraign and protest obedience and service to him I heard saith Saint Iohn every creature which is in Heaven and on the Earth and such as are in the Sea and all that are in them heard I saying Blessing honour glory and power be unto him that sits upon the Throne and unto the Lamb for ever and ever Let us do the same and from the bottom of our hearts say Amen let us adore Iesus Christ in his greatness and acknowledging his Soveraignty live in true subjection to his divine conduct The Continuation CHAP. V. Of the Motives which oblige us to belong to Jesus and to serve him by true piety OF all the Mysteries of our salvation that which ought most humbly to subject us to the will and power of Iesus Christ is the work of our Redemption for in this Mystery of love and mercy Iesus is our Redeemer we are his Purchase and have no longer Right either to our selves or to any creature Ye are not your own saith St. Paul for ye are bought with a price meaning we are Christ's who hath bought us with his most ineffably precious blood But the better to understand this sublime mystery let us derive it from its very source We are then to consider that by the sin of our first parents we should all have perished in him as guilty with him all nature should have been extinct by his sin for from his first offence he ought to bear the execution of the Decree pronounced against him by the mouth of God in these words In the day that thou shalt eat thereof thou shalt surely die And doubtless divine Iustice had annihilated him and in him humane nature and all creatures had perished with the Sinner if the eternall Father beholding his Son designed for the reparation of this offence had not repress'd the rigour of his Iustice. The Father out of the love he bore his Son suspended the execution of this Decree he saved the offender mercy triumphed over justice he granted this sinful man life and the world to live in and consequently humane nature and the world it self which for this sin should have been destroyed were preserved onely in consideration of Iesus Christ for his sake the eternall Father took compassion on us From this first Consideration is easily inferr'd that we owe unto the Son of God all that we are and all that we have and therefore we are as often his as there are moments in our life and as often as we receive any benefit from this bountifull hand of God and therefore all these rights which are innumerable ought to be so many tyes to unite us indissolubly to Iesus Christ. But if we dive further into the contemplation of these truths we shall find that by sin we belong to the Devil we have granted him that right which God by Creation gave us over the creatures we have as it were by sin made over our selves to him Thus by voluntary offence Man who should have commanded the World becomes a slave to the Devill and sels himself to sin I am carnall sold under sin saith St. Paul in the name of all sinners In this quality the Devill hath all manner of right and power over us and assuredly would exercise his malice against us if the divine goodness did not restrain him He would make us even now feel the same rigours which he exerciseth over the damned and dispose of us at his pleasure as he doth of souls eternally cursed of God were it not that Iesus Christ by his death hath forc'd us out of this captivity and devested the Devill of all right and power over us He hath blotted out the hand-writing of Ordinances against us saith St. Paul and taken it out of the way nailing it to the Crosse. Thus the Sonne of God delivering us from this captivity makes us his Captives acquiring by his blood and death a new right and power over us which he will use not with rigour and justice but with love and mercy the state of grace and spirit of piety having nothing but sweetness and indulgence He hath delivered us saith the Apostle from the power of darkness and translated us into the Kingdom of his dear Son For the power of Iesus is all in love and dissolves it self into dearness What Christian seeing so much sweetness will not resign himself to the excess of this goodness to the power of this love To conceive more fully the effects of the grace of the Sonne of God and his rights to us by redemption observe that by the conduct of God and according to the merit of our offences so soon as man is in sin and withdrawes himself from the order and end that God hath prefix'd and proposed to him he is nothing but the object of divine justice unworthy of any favour from Heaven Heaven Earth and Hell bandy against him God is obliged onely to promote the punishment of sin by malediction blasphemy damnation and hell If God stay the stroke of his Iustice if he hath yet some reserve of mercy for this miserable sinner if he suffer him to live and preserve him out of an expectation of his penitence that so he may escape hell it is by Iesus Christ and onely for his sake We must then acknowledge that a sinner owes to Iesus Christ all the motions of his life all the happiness of his soul all the good which may befall him in Heaven or Earth O how many obligations have we then even as many as there are moments as many as we have thoughts as many as we have received benefits from time to time so many rights hath Iesus Christ to our souls so many times do we belong to him Who can number these wonders Can there be any thing in nature able to break these bonds and separate us from Iesus Let us dive yet a little further into this consideration by an examination of particulars let us see how by daily sins we separate our selves from God and shaking off the obedience we owe him become slaves to sin He that sins is a slave to sin saith Iesus Christ so that the sinner by a deplorable blindness withdrawing himself from the sweetness of the Kingdom of the Sonne of God subjects himself to the power of sin which would infallibly exercise its rigour and Tyranny over him if Iesus Christ by his mercy did not suppress its malignity For as sin ruling over the rebellious Angels subjected them to its malice and rigour causing those Angels of light to be to all eternity Angels of darkness and malediction So the sinner from the time he offended should be abandoned to the same Tyranny and left to the fury of sinne which would precipitate him into
the life of Iesus after what manner he pleaseth This is a principall point of Christian piety The very mysteries of our faith acquaint us with this truth and discover unto us the designes whereby the Son of God would advance us to a participation of his Mysteries and the severall estates of his life The Son of God becoming man by incarnation takes possession of the nature of man of our bodies and of our souls by which he acquires a right to his nature to advance and appropriate it to himself after what manner he pleases as by this work of love he took humane nature upon him assuming body and soul which he appropriated to himself and elevated to all the greatness of the divinity communicating to it for ever the person being life and nature of God In like manner in the works of grace whereby his divine mysteries are honoured Iesus chooseth such souls as he may dwell in by love or after what manner he pleaseth otherwise he appropriates them to himself by his grace he advances them to adherence and union of spirit with him and by a particular indulgence establisheth them in a communication of his greatness To this end he applies and employes his power to which a Christian ought to be most vigilant and attentive that he may alwayes continue in the subjection he owes to Iesus Christ to accept receive and bear the effects of his power This Principle of truth and piety is grounded upon the common doctrine that all that Iesus Christ did he did for us and all that he is he is for us He saith the Apostle became poor for our sakes although he were rich that by his poverty we might be made rich meaning that Iesus being God became man and took upon him our meanness infirmities sufferings death the severall conditions of our life to withdraw us from our meanness enrich us with his divine graces and advance us to a participation of the severall estates of his life blessedness sanctification and salvation Hence we may take occasion to consider the greatness of Iesus he is our fulness in his annihilation in his poverty he sufficeth all for God gathereth together in one all things in Christ both which are in heaven and which are on earth It is the greatness of his mysteries that they are capable of communication to us and can admit the sanctification of our souls as it is our glory and happiness to be able to participate of the grace estate and mysteries of the life of Iesus Christ. This is the first designe God hath upon us when the Son of God living an immortal and eternal life in the bosome of his Father took a new and mortall life in the womb of the Virgin his Mother He desired nothing so much as to give us his immortall life and to abase himself to our estate to elevate us to a participation of his greatness and the rather because as he honoured his Father by the several estates of his new life his hidden life his suffering poverty death cross obedience subjection in all the estates and mysteries of his life so he will have us to honour him in participating of the estate spirit and grace of the same mysteries For this reason in his Church and of all qualities and vocations he chooses souls and calls them to an establishment in the participation of his spirit and a communication of his new life a life of grace such as is wholly singular and proportioned to the eminence dignity and sanctity of a Christian calling All this is an effect of his divine mercies the fruit of his sufferings it is our glory to be called and elevated to this happiness as it is our duty to keep our selves in a disposition and capacity to receive and bear them according to the designes and intentions of the Son of God All those then who are desirous to live according to Christian piety must make it their main business to continue faithfull and humble in this subjection that they may be ready to go when they are called and to receive when they shall be rewarded We come now to the Dispositions whereby this estate may be attâ—ined CHAP. IX Certain dispositions necessary for the devout soul that would participate of the grace and estates of the life of Jesus Christ. THis estate of interiour piety which puts the soul into a subjection to the power of Iesus Christ and a capacity to receive and bear the graces and estates of the life of Iesus is altogether suitable and necessary for those who seek perfection as being proportioned and conformable to the designes and order that God hath established in his creatures In the creation of the visible World adorned and embellished with so many severall creatures God hath created Angels and man to contemplate so perfect a work to admire the excellencies and to honour the Authour of such miraculous productions He hath done the like in the creation of the new World that is the establishment of his Church wherein Iesus Christ chooseth souls and formeth spirits who are employed in considering the works of love operated by him upon the Earth for the salvation of mankind and honouring the Authour of so many Graces As God hath created a great number of Angels different in perfection and order and as some conceive in species also to whom he hath given severall gifts and graces as well as severall ranks in Heaven that they may honour by these diversities of estates perfections the divine qualities and severall perfections of God for the Seraphims as Thomas Aquinas affirmeth adore by estate and by grace and contemplate by the light of glory the uncreated love of God the Cherubims his wisdom the Thrones his Stability and so of the rest The eternall Word having accomplished the ineffable and adorable work of his Incarnation having finished that of our Redemption and created in this naturall World a new World that is the Church puts souls into it who by the conduct of grace are employed in consideration of the works which Iesus Christ operated on Earth And amongst the rest he hath chosen many who by their severall estates and perfections continually honour the severall estates of his life and adore his actions and perfections humanely-divine and divinely-humane This must needs be an undeniable truth for if the Angels and the Church triumphant are continually and eternally employed in admiring and adoring the life estates and Mysteries of Iesus Christ shall not her Sister in the Church Militant have the same rights employments and duties It is not to be doubted and certainly seeing that love hath obliged the Sonne of God to these lownesses and makes him ours for ever for he shall be man eternally and eternally our Iesus our head and our All it is but reason that we be alwayes his and render him perpetuall honour and homage This is he that operates in our souls this is the estate whereto many are called It
onely exteriour ours interiour the source of all our sins is in the bottom of our cursed and rebellious nature Wherfore let us live in fear and have continuall recourse to him who can perfect us Iesus Christ the Redeemer of our souls who exposed himself to temptations saith the Apostle that he might succour those that are tempted Our fourth enemy is the Devil who endeavors nothing so much as to separate us from God and Iesus Christ he makes use of all creatures even our selves to ruine us The hate he bears to God the envie to our happiness and his obstinate malice makes him watch continually about us to make us sharers in his misery and torments and to separate us for ever from our only felicity Iesus Christ. The more we seek vertue and endeavour to do wel the more he strives to divert us When we are employ'd in good exercises he either withdraws us from them or disturbs us in them and incessantly makes use of all things even vertue if self to make us lose vertue Sometimes as Saint Peter saith he goes about like a roaring Lion to devour us sometimes he comes like a Fox to surprise us He follows us every where and with a malicious subtilty strives to vomit forth his poyson to infect our purest actions In fine he gives not over till he hath gain'd or overthrown us by his violence or enslav'd us by deceit or at the least wearied us out by continuall importunities In a word there is no Artifice he makes not use of no place or employment that he finds not out no sin or action where he is not present with us to ruine or torment us What shall we do then in the midst of so many perplexities Where shall we find a sanctuary and secure refuge How shall we avoyd such manifest dangers and defend our selves from the cruelties of so powerfull an enemy This we must needs know and therefore must not forsake our perfect Christian till we have given him directions how to behave himself in such a condition CHAP. XV. In what Disposition the Christian ought to be that he yeild not to such temptations as occur in the exercises of piety THey are deceiv'd who think piety grows among Lilies that the way to perfection is strew'd with flowers who imagine nothing but sweetness and that a good inclination or an easie nature can bring us thither that devotion is a land flowing with milk and hony and consequently that there is nothing difficult which yet they are the sooner peswaded to in regard that in all their exercises they onely seek certain self-satisfaction using no violence but fastening only upon this That it is sufficient for a man to do what he can There are others on the contrary who look on the exercises of piety as so rigorous painfull and strict that they will hardly hear them spoken of but say of devotion as the sensuall Iews did of the land of promise it is an ill countrey inhabited with giants that devour strangers See here two different sentiments in extremes and consequently faulty both deceive themselves To remedy this we may say that Devotion is indeed a Lily but growing among Thorns Piety hath it's thorns they prick it may be hurt us but these thorns are loden with Roses As Moses found God in the burning bush of thorns so the Christian finds God and piety in travells and conflicts as it is the life of Iesus so it is the life of our souls to believe otherwise were to flatter our selves Devotion hath great privileges piety hath a power to bring us neer to God to honour and serve him but it is with labour Sin sets us at so great a distance from God that we cannot return to him without much pain And yet it is certain there is much content in this travell for the grace and help of God is alwayes present which will never fail us as lang as we dispose our selves to recive it In this respect devotion is all sweetness seeing we are able to do all in him who comforts us St. Paul saw all this and knew the travels we must undergo and the hazard whereto we are exposed when he discovered to the Ephesians their enemies and arms them on every part to defend themselves Ye strive not against flesh and blood but against principalities against powers against the rulers of the darkness of this world against spiritual wickedness in high places Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day It is to us he speaks the life of a Christian is a perpetuall warfare this world is a land of perpetuall hostility wherein we cannot be secure for Heaven it self was not free from contention in the fall of the Angels nor the Son of God when he dwelt in the wilderness Now to understand the dangers we are in on all sides let us reflect on what was said in the precedent Chapter and we shall find how we ought to stand in fear and are obliged to have a great vigilancy to foresee the designs and discover the sleights of the Devil and to shun the deceit of self-self-love In a word to overcome the difficulties and temptation which we continually meet with in all exercises of this life in few words thus Humility is the foundation of all vertues the sanctuary of the devout soul in all the hazards and difficulties of this world The first Disposition whereinto we must enter for covert in all dangerous encounters is to keep our selves in profound humility looking on our selves as subject unto all kinds of misery which separate us so powerfully and so continually from God To continue in this disposition of humility we are to consider on the one side the infirmity and inconstancy of our nature on the other the inclination we have to evil This consideration is enough to annihilate us This disposition to of humility keeps us in fear this fear puts us into a vigilancy that we may have an eye open to all things lest we should do any thing that might separate us from God or displease him and by humility we attract the protection of God for the truly humble cannot perish and obtain his grace and light which makes us know and avoyd the temptations and subtilties of our enemies as Saint Paul saith Take unto you the whole armour of God that ye may be able to withstand the deceits of the Devil This Disposition obtain'd which must be continuall in our souls we must demand of God that he would be pleased to annihilate in us the evil inclinations which separate us from him and place in their room a powerfull inclination towards him the centre of our being the life and perfection of our souls for our inclinations proceeding from the old man who is contrary and rebellious towards God can have no power to lead us to God nothing can bring us to him but he himself Now since
every thing This is an indispensable obligation whereto we are bound by the condition of our being for as such we are Gods being Gods we ought to refer our selves wholly to him and be onely for him The fruit is his to whom the Tree belongs if we belong wholly to God our life and actions consequently must be referred to his honour and wholly employed in the accomplishment of his Will In effect none can be ignorant but that we are in the World to do the work that God hath put into our hands according to our vocation and according to the manner that he proposeth and for the end that he hath ordained us Nothing is more evident for what have we to do in this World and what should our soul aim at but to accomplish the will of God and to do all our actions according to the designes and order established by the eternall wisdom why are we in the World if we please not God How shall we please him if we do not his will and live not in the order he hath prescribed To what end serves all the rest whereto are directed all our actions if they are not acceptable to God This is the onely point of our happiness the principall care that a Christian ought to have to regard God in all his Actions and to perform them in a pure desire to please him Let us endeavour onely to content God and God will provide for all the â—est Them that honour me I will honour and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed saith God to Eliah O how happy shall that soul be which at the houre of death shall be able to say with Iesus Christ My God and my Father I have glorified thee on the Earth I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do Happy is the soul that forgets her self to think onely on God which loseth it self in all concernments to seek onely the pleasure of God Happy are those Christians who can say in all their actions we keep his Commandements and do all things which are pleasing before him For in effect the Christian hath nothing else to do in the World We are obliged thereto by the state of Christianity St. Paul gives us a very evident reason when he sayes speaking of the sonne of God He died for all that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves but unto him which died for them rose again wherein is comprised all the duty of Christianity The Apostle saying that Christians should not live to themselves shewes the obligation they have to live to God that is according to the will of God that in all their actions they ought onely to seek to please him all other thoughts are repugnant to the state of Christianity The Sonne of God himself teaching his Apostles and in them his Church what to demand proposes to us chiefly the sanctification of the name of God the establishment of his Kingdom the accomplishment of his divine will shewing us by this lesson which we ought to repeat daily what our thoughts intentions and prayers should be that we must chiefly desire the glory pleasure and will of God After so divine a precept what have we to seek why so many exercises so many intentions such multiplicity of thoughts Let us seek to please God in all things and take a continuall vigilancy that we do nothing disacceptable to God or that is not conformable to the state and vocation wherein God hath placed us How can so many complaisances accommodations correspondencies affectations of humane prudence tend to piety when they are displeasing to God who loves nothing but purity This is an evill that destroyes the purity of all our actions an abuse that deceives the greatest part of Christians CHAP. IV. Of the complacency and self-satisfaction which drawes us from the pure regard of God and of the purity of intentions which must be in our actions IF 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 saith the Son of God of the dispositions and intentions wherewith Christians ought to do all their actions shewing by the similitude of the eye that the intention must necessarily be pure if the action permit it For as the eye being single makes the body full of light so the intention being pure makes the action pure the end and object is that which advanceth or depresseth the action giving it the quality it beares Now because the intention to be pure and simple must have as we have said no regard but that of God the onely object of its action a regard which seeks onely to please God to accomplish upon the Earth and in Heaven his divine Ordinances desiring no other estate then a bare simple subjection to his loving conduct this is that we call regard of God purity of intention To transgress this regard and purity of intention is to forsake the Sun to go into darkness to destroy the perfection and purity which makes an action truly Christian. We ought therefore to have continually in our heart the prayer of David Turn away mine eyes least they behold vanity as if he should say Lord withdraw my thoughts and intentions which are the eyes of my soul that they may be removed from all Creatures which are but vanity to be employed on thee alone who art the Truth We have reason to require this of God for this purity of intention this pure regard of God is the most beautifull piece the most behovefull to a Christian life it is the onely mark that distinguishes night from day darkness from light In this point alone the greatest part of Christians deceive themselves taking the shadow for the substance vanity for verity this is it we must examine One of the greatest retardments that the soul finds in the way to perfection in any vocation or estate is quitting the pure regard and going out of the purity of intention to seek complacency and satisfaction in something out of God By reason of that complacency and satisfaction the soul can never taste God nor arrive at perfection We need no other proofs of this then the difference between pleasing God and the Creature between the glory of God and our own satisfaction they are two paths so contrary that it is as impossible for them to subsist together as truth and falshood or bitter and sweet without corrupting The soul who seeks her own satisfaction to please her self in her self or any other thing is as far from pleasing God as the Creature is from God Wherein appeares the abuse of those who make no scruple to do their actions in regard of the Creature and have no desire but to please either themselves or some other Reason it self shewes us that those complacencies and self-satisfactions are unworthy a heart that God hath created onely for his pleasure consecrated to his