us in the childhood of our love to lead it by degrees to filiall love which is the full age of our affections For indeed while our love is in this first infancy our minds may be well said to be in bondage under the elements of the world rather serving upon a servile contract then acting as heires of the Promise which dignity a Christian evidenceth only by filiall Love indeed the other sort is rather legall then evangelicall and alone bringeth nothing to perfection §. III. Filiall love described and some strong incentives presented to kindle it in us NOw then as the Apostle saith Let us leave these beginnings and rudiments of the doctrine of Christ and covet earnestly the best gifts and I will shew unto you a more excellent way by as much as the matter of the altar of perfumes was more precious then that of Holocausts let us then leave fouling our hands with this brasse of mercenary love and fall a telling out this gold of Filiall dilection Filiall love is an adherence of our hearts to God under this mixt notion principally of his own being and secondarily of our relation to him So as this may be said to be a repercussion of his own light upon him as simply as our compounded nature can reflect it the light of Gods countenance impressed upon us being by this love reverberated upon the divine nature From the eyes of the hand-maid fixed upon the eye of her mistresse more in order to the duty of her nature then in private affection to her selfe So that this kind of love seemeth to be in the regeneration of man in the age of reason what the soul is in his first generation to wit the first principle of life For our devotion is but as it were an Embrion before it receive this animation which is induced by an infusion even of that love wherewith God loveth himselfe since it is the holy Spirit diffused in our hearts that quickneth and informeth them by this kind of love This is then the onely sort of affection worthy of God whereby we returne him that part of the divine nature we partake by his communication while we seem thus to remit the holy-Ghost back to him out of our hearts loving God with the same affection we derive from this residence in our soules Methinks the dignity and present delight of this noble love though it were an unthrift anticipation in this our minority and were to be discounted to us out of our future estate of loving might tempt a soule to take up for her present joy and satisfaction the suavity and blessednesse of this excellent love how much the rather ought we then aspire to this degrees of loving when the estate of our reversion is reproved proportionately to the degrees of this our anticipation This may well be the Method of such a father whose portions to his heires are the injoying himselfe no wonder then that the desire to preoccupate this state should augment the childrens inheritance For the Father who is infinite love must needs be largest to them who have advanced to themselves the most of Filiall love and the reason is that this Celestiall Father can reward nothing but his own gifts assigning alwayes second benefits by the measures of his first liberality and thus the more he hath inriched us with this love the more he remunerateth the possession of it so that mercenary love when it is understood will be found to damnifie it selfe by this projected aeconomy of selfe-provision for in this commerce all private reference imbaseth so much the species wherewith we negotiate as it falles in value just as much as it riseth in quantity When we reflect upon the state of humane nature we may collect easily how much God desireth this correspondence of Filiall love since even from the forfeiture of all our filiall dignity he tooke the rise of a nearer and firmer alliance of our nature unto his and fastned it so to this filial constitution as he took it out of mans own power ever to divide or sever it againe from this relation for even the sinne of man can never divorce our humanity now from this filiall state since the naturall Sonne of God will now no more cease to be man then to be God so inseparably is our nature now fixed in this filiall reference for though individuals may by want of Filial love to the divine nature separate themselves from a blessed participation thereof in eternity yet our nature can never fall from this divine conjunction but shall remaine elevated above that of Cherubims and Seraphins to all eternity O who can contemplate this and consent to love God lesse nobly then our present nature will admit considering we have even the noblenesse of our nature now set out to us as an object of our love for as it is in Jesus Christ we cannot over-love our own humanity and since God hath done as much as was possible for him in honour of our nature shall man be content to love this God lesse then is possible for his constitution nay there are grave Divines who indeare this obligation upon our humanity by this supposition that God lost the love of much nobler creatures by his preference of mans nature before theirs and if the supreamest of all creatures thought this as a partiality to an unworthy subject a provocation to leave loving of God shall not this prefer'd creature derive from hence a powerfull motive to raise and purifie his love in respect of this so obliged proposure whereof the Apostle glorieth and insisteth much upon the prelation of the seed of Abraham before the nature of Angels as one of the strongest inducements to â—nterest our hearts in this filial affection And since God hath prefer'd the nature of man before that of Angels not onely in point of honour but likewise in the part of succour why may we not suppose he valueth more the love of men then that of Angels this conception may safely be made use of to incite us to the studying the abstraction and spiritualizing our loves to the purest degree of our compound nature in which the very disadvantage we have more then pure spirits in the devesture of self-respects may be converted into a conducement to the value of our purity by reason the opposition of our bodyes in this disinterested love is counted to us an indearement of our hearts when in this reluctancy of one halfe we reduce our love to that decree of implicity which is compatible with this our complexure and as Saint Jerome saith of the chastity of virgins composed with that of Angels There is more felicity in the one but more fortitude in the other So we may say respectively of their two loves that there is more happynesse in the one but more Heroicknesse in the other What Angelicall love exceedeth in the finenesse of abstraction humane may answer in the fidelity of extraction since his is laboured
allure us May not that be justly then contemned which either afflicteth us for the present or betrayeth us for the future O how admirable is God in this piece of distributive Justice to Mankinde who having by his Providence comparted the conditions in this world into such a diversity of states as cannot admit all to the fruition of secular Delights hath commanded that none should love them by which order the lowest ranks are much compensated in this respect That it is a harder task to forbear loving such things when we enjoy them then it is to contemn them when we know we can neither expect them nor ought to love them If they who use this world must be as though they used it not those who use least of it may be said to be seated the nearest to this performance and certain it is That their state is the most conterminate to that of the true Propriator of the whole world while he was upon the earth who did himself use those things most which we use to love the least and yet alloweth us to enjoy even the most pleasing proporties of the earth provided we do not love the world in that relation All secular goods were so unworthy of the love of the God and Man Christ Jesus as they are not allowed the love even of single Mary for all the most precious and glorious things of this world are ordained to serve Man as his slave unto whose offices there can be assigned no love for this wages doth presently invert the two conditions rendring the lover the slave How reasonable then must it be to address unto him all our love who hath by his love to us subjected all these things unto us and hath so disposed it as to maintain our Prerogative there is required no Art but the contemning of what stands thus subjected Whereupon I may well press you in this point as the Apostle doth Let this minde be in you which was also in Christ Jesus his comportment towards the world was intended to give you the same minde Look then upon your Nature in the author and finisher of our Faith and you shall see Mans dominion over the World maintained by contemning it the world was so perfectly crucified to him all his life as he contemned the being crucified by the world despising as the Apostle saith even the greatest shame and confusion of this world And what could this Divine Man do more to imprint in us this aversion to the world then these two acts in not vouchsafeing to enjoy any of those things the cupidities whereof use to vitiate us to leave all them abased and vilified and in not declining the sufferance of such things whereof the terror doth likely subject us to the world to render them easie and acceptable What hath the world then left in it for Motives either of our love or fear of it that even God himself may not be said both to have undervalued and undergone And what we are enjoyned neither to love nor fear cannot seem uneasie for us to despise especially when this advantage is annexed That we gain more by contemning the whole world then we can by enjoying our own divident therein For whereas Fortune keeps many worldlings poor the Contempt of the world keeps Fortune her self wanting and indigent leaving her nothing to give to such a disposition So that in stead of incurring the reproach of the Prophet in setting up a Table to Fortune and offering libaments upon it this habit of minde sacrificeth and destroyeth Fortune upon the Altar of the Holy Spirit and thus even the feathers of Fortune to wit The vanities and levities of this Age when they are incensed and consumed by a holy Contempt of this world may make a sweet Savor in the Temple of God whereupon I may say That these sorts of feathers which while they are burning in the flame of our sensitive passions yield an odour of death unto death when they are consuming in this Sacrifical fire of a zealous Contempt and Renunciation of them afford a savor of life unto life in this act of their destruction in our mindes In the time of the Law when the Commodities of the Earth seemed to be proposed as the Salary of Mans vertue there might be some colour to love this world and so in that state God accepted the Beasts of the Earth for Holocausts But in the Gospel when no less then the enjoying of God himself and all his goods is exhibited for the term of our desires it cannot seem unequal that even the whole World should be required for a Holocaust immolated and consumed by a Religious Annihilation of it in our Mindes to the honor of such a Remunerator §. II. Motives by the property of a Christian to contemn the World VVHen we consider our selves under the notion of Members to such a Head as hath offered up as a Holocaust even the Creator of the whole Universe it seemeth not strange but rather suitable for such Members to Sacrifice the whole World to hold some proportion unto their Head especially since his offering of himself was in order to the enabling us to Sacrifice and destroy this world Doth not this our Head God and Man Christ Jesus say That even in his life the judgement of this world was given it was sentenced to Contempt by his despising it he that did not disdain to own the Infirmities of Man did notwithstanding protest against his being of this world so much hath he left it vilified to us And doth not he say If he were exalted above the earth be would draw all men unto him So that in this exaltation is proclaimed our Duty and capacity of transcending this world and treading on it with Contempt by the attractive Vertue of this our Head raised above all the Heavens And we may remember That the first Members he was pleased to unite unto him upon Earth were instantly elevated to that height of being above the world seated in this abnegation and despection May I not then fitly say with Saint Paul These things were done in a figure of us since what they left to lighten them for this transcendency is an apposite figure of what we are to do in order to this elevation namely To relinquish our Nets in this world which we may understand in two sences that comprise all our directions in this case to wit either as we are actively catching and chasing the Commodities of this Age or as we are passively taken and intangled in the love of what we enjoy In the first of these states we may be said to have our Nets in our hand and in the second to have them in our hearts so that to leave our Nets signifieth to relinquish both our solicitous Cupidities and Passions in point of pursuing the goods of this World and our Inordinate love in case of their possession And this disposition of Minde raiseth us to that exaltation
this precept requires not only a fervour which we feel our selves but a splendour that may illuminate others by the edification of our lives When our Saviour stateth us as pilgrims in this transitory world he advises us to have our Loynes girl and our Lights burning which intimateth promptitude to the exercise of Charity and fervency in the act of our love And Devotion comprizes fully this equipage for our journey since it collects us and strengthens us for motion and is likewise that fire which is the best security we can carry with us in our passage through the wildernesse we travail to arme us against all the wild sensualities that lie in our way since it hath this speciall virtue to fright and disperse all that is irrationall And this spirituall fire hath many analogies with materiall insomuch as the holy spirit sayes of it The coales thereof are coales of fire and have a vehement flame and me thinkes this one remarkable similitude betweene them may be fitly applyed viz. as fire doth convert many substances which were unfruitfull unclean into a matter both generative and clensing by the consumption and reduction of them into ashes which have both these qualities so Devotion by consuming our passions which were both barren impure converts our affections into the love of penance and mortification which are the ashes of our consumed offences and so are made both fruitfull and purging by this conversion into matter of humiliation by which kind of soyling many converts improve much the good seed fal'n into their hearts for that penitent reflexion Devotion makes upon our vaine and foul passions and affections which is the consumption and incineration of them becomes purgative by sincere contrition and generative of all fruites of Charity since the zeale of mortification is not only a marke of our repentance but a meanes of our perfection when holy David sayes he eate ashes like bread they were made of his loose passion consumed by the flame of his Devotion and so converted into seeds of penance and we know how fruitfull these ashes proved to his former sterility The water of expiation in the Law was made with the infusion of ashes and certainly there is nothing more clensing then the matter of our offences consumed by Devotion and aspersed upon our memories for nothing makes us more zealous to take out all their staines upon our lives according to the Apostles observation of the effects of godly sorrow What carefulnesse what clearing of our selves what indignation what vehement desire what zeal yea what revenge it workes so as you see what fertility Devotion raiseth out of the consumption and ashes of our sinnes which is the Apostles godly sorrow §. II. Devotion described a more familiar way and the best naturall temper in order thereunto BEcause Devotion hath hitherto spoke the Language of the Church it may seeme uneasie unto many to be understood therefore I shall put it into the vulgar tongue of the Court and so make it more familiar for apprehension and by the warrant of S. Pauls condescendence to the capacities he wrote unto I may speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh and therefore venture without any levity to say Devotion is a Divine passion Love raised to the height of passion upon humane objects is a power in our mind whereon most of the world doth rather pretend an excellency over others then plead any excuse for such an incapacity in their nature wherefore this will be an expression of devotion that will serve and fit most apprehensions And certainly as strangers doe discreetly to change their habit when they come to dwell in forreigne parts especially if they be rude and uncivilized so pure devotion being a stranger to our carnall nature which is of it selfe wild and undisciplined comming to plant it selfe and live with it may be better suited for the purpose of introduction with the apparell of passion which is native then with her owne habit of purity though more decent and becoming for this exteriour simil 〈…〉 de may give the love of God at first more convenient conference with our sense which usually doth but looke strangly at her when she appeares first in her owne spirituall habit which is so different from the spotted garment of flesh and blood So that Devotion being thus put into the fashion and speaking the language of the place it comes to may hope for admittance without much wonder unto our understandings and by acquaintance with them informing them of the benefits of her association may obtaine a plantation in our wills and affections and thus by degrees come to be naturaliz'd in our dispositions and by this easie way of introduction Devotion may come to get possession in some minds by commerce of a good companion sooner then by open claime of her owne rights for we may conclude what right Devotion hath to our mindes by this that when prophane passion seekes to value it selfe and to possesse the minds of others it puts on a heavenly habit and speakes the language of Devotion in reverence and adoration thus as it were confessing the due interest piety hath in our hearts May not piety then to recover the easilier her due without irreverence be put into the lighter figure of passion I may therefore in order to a pious successe propose the being devout under the tearmes of being in love with Heaven because it is the likeliest way of perswasion to the world to propose not the putting away but the preferring of their loves and so transferre them to a fairer object not extinguish the fervency of their act and I believe without any levity of conceipt that hearts wrought into a tendernesse by the lighter flame of nature are like mettals already running easilier cast into Devotion then others of a hard and lesse impressive temper for Saint Austin said the holy Magdelen changed her object only not her passion and one may joyne him with her to authorize this opinion for love like gold though it be cast into an idol the perversion of the forme doth not disvalue the mettall and we know the same gold that Gods People tooke from his Enemies in the forme of their idols after it was purged by fire was consecrated to the tabernable and then it seemed to have a double capacity of honouring God as an offering of his servants and as a trophe from enemies so when the flame of the holy Spirit which is Devotion hath purged and purified our loves that were cast into the images of humane passions the same love is sanctified and assigned to Divine Service and brings a more speciall glory to God as it is not only an oblation of his children but also a spoile of his enemy This is not meant to countenance the alienation of our loves at any time from God but to commend that disposition of nature where love seemes the predominant instinct for
the earth is thine In this verity he rejoyced extracted out of all his transitory felicity And King Ezekias having his treasury and cabinets filled with all pretious stores might have rejoyced in the truth of those blessings without deriving from them vanity and presumption as much as he boasted of them to the Babylonians so much untruth he found in that felicity whereof he seemed to have forgot the changeable property and was quickly instructed by the Prophet in the insecurity of such goods whereby he discerned how he had rejoyced in the untruth of his temporal happines out of which he might have extracted matter of a true and sincere rejoycing for Gods Spirit attesteth to us that he doth not cast away the mighty whereas he himself is mighty All the attainders lying upon great and rich men in the Scripture are brought against such as rejoyce in the errours and deceits of temporall goods such as either sacrifice all their wealth to the Idols of their fancy or such as make an Idol of their wealth and offer up all their thoughts unto it The voluptuous or the avaritious are those that fall under the sentence of the Gospell and their crime is not what they possesse but what possesseth them when they doe not rejoyce in the truth of their goods but delight themselves in contriving errours and fallacies out of them and as the Apostle sayes Change the Truth of God into a lie So that the defectivenesse of their happinesse ariseth out of their degression from Truth and whence doth all the blessednesse which Christian faith annexeth to sufferance issue but from this spring of verity which streameth out that joy and exultation is proposed to us in the afflictions of this life How come the thorns of sufferance to beare grapes the wine whereof rejoyceth the heart while our senses are prickedct wounded with this spinous or thorny matter Surely this cordiall is made of the Spirit of Truth which may be extracted out of all the asperities of this life first by considering the true state of Humane Nature designed to sufferings not only by sentence but by Grace in order to the aversing us from the love of this world next by contemplating the truth of those glorious promises which are made to a virtuous correspondency with Gods Order in his disposure of his creature so that both the materiall goods and evills of this life afford no legitimate joy but what the mind beareth when she is teeming with Truth we may therefore resolve with King David that when Truth doth spring out of the earth righteousnesse shall looke downe from Heaven §. III. The fallacies of some Objections solved and rejoycing in Truth concluded for our reall Happinesse BUt now me thinkes having determined the happinesse of this life in the loving and rejoycing in Truth many that thinke themselves unhappy wonder at this conclusion and conceive me disproved by their defeatures perswading themselves to have beene alwayes suitors and lovers of Truth when the Truth is that they doe not first seeke verity for the object of their love but conclude they have found it in what they have placed their love Supposing their opinions of such joyes as they pursue to be sincere and solid truthes insomuch as I may well resolve such sonnes of men that They love vanity and seek after lies In that region of the world which I have travelled the most I may reflect to the inhabitaints of it one raigning error which may convince many of insincerity in their addresses to Truth for the ground of their happinesse this it is the trusting the infidelity of fortune to others for our owne felicity designing our stock out of the spoiles of our fellowes and in this course doe we not fixe the hopes of our happinesse upon what can never passe to us but by such an infidelity as must assure us we are in continual danger of a like dispossession this must needs be our case when the expectance of the unfaithfulnesse of fortune is made the assignment of our prosperity And yet we see how Courts are commonly divided into these two partyes of some that are Sacrificing to their owne nets and others that are fishing for such nets the first is the state of such as are valuing themselves for what they have taken the second of those who are working and casting out how to catch what the others have drawne and in this manner there are many who pretend to be lovers of Truth that make these fallacies the very ground of that web of happinesse they have in hand This is so preposterous a course for ingenious spirits in order to true felicity as surely there is much of a curse in this method and God warranteth my beliefe both by the Prophets and Apostles when speaking by the voyce of Esay to this case he saith They have chosen their owne wayes wherefore I also will chuse their delusions and by Saint Paul the holy Spirit saith Because they received not the love of Truth for this cause God sends them strong delusions that they should beleeve a lie Let the worlds darlings examine what they confide in for the security of their joyes and they will finde it is the Father of lies they trust for the truth of their felicity who being not able to diminsh the increated verity sets all his art to deface all created Truthes which worke in this region of the world I now treat of he designeth by such a course as he used with the Person of Truth it selfe when he was upon earth for he carryeth up our imagination to the highest point of esteeme he can raise it of earthly possessions from whence he exposeth to our fancies the glories and beauties of this world in deceitfull apparencies as if they were permanent and secured fruitions and our wills are commonly perswaded to bowe downe and reverence such false suggestions whereof the infidelity augmenteth by the degrees of our Devotion in that beliefe since the more we confide in their stability the more falshood doe we admit for our happinesse and thus are we abused in the possession of Truth while we affect all our delights under that notion by the subtilty of the great enemy of Truth we are as Saint Augustine saith elegantly brought to hate Truth by loving those things which we love only as we imagine them to be true for the impermanency of this worlds goods is odious to us which is the truth of their nature and we affect in them their assurance as a truth without which we would not love them and yet that opinion is a meere delusion This may satisfie many who account themselves unhappy by the mutations of fortune and the dispossessions of their secular commodities for they shall finde themselves unfortunate but in the same measure they misapprehended the true nature of such fruitions by as much as they over-loved them so much are they distressed by their losses so the
then see of them resplendent in that clarity This Celestiall mirrour maketh a reflection much differing from all materiall ones for it doth not send back to us the same image we set before it but a farre better then we had any capacity to expose unto it for when our love looketh upon God refer'd simply to his own essentiall purity This sort of mirrour returneth to us not so much the image of our loves to God as the representation of Gods love to us by reason we see then God loving us in this our intuition of his goodnesse which reflection sheweth us a better character of this manner of our love then we could have prefigured to our selves and when we behold our selves in that image of Gods loving us we cannot overvalue our selves under that notion so that this is a blessed and a safe course joyntly to please God and humour our own nature in a selfe-complacency Thus have I endeavoured to figure these two loves and I have set them both in the tabernacle but in unequall ranks of dignity the one without among the utentsils of brasse the other within the vail among the instruments of gold so as the most ignoble of these two species is allowed in the service of religion in some degree but is not accepted single as sufficient for our religious oblation For God tollerateth no longer the infirmity of that love whereof we our selves dispence with the insufficiency so that the relying upon mercenary love may decry it while our disclaiming the meannesse of it may hold it up current with him to whom King David paying the purest species said Thou art my God and standest i◠no need of my goods §. V. Advises in order to the preserving this sort of Love and fraternall dilection represented as a gracious rule whereby to judge of our rectitude in filiall love THese two loves being thus set by one another whereof I have not only drawn the several complexions but delivered the diverse constitutions there is little doubt which of them will be preferred but much which will be rightly pursued for our degenerated nature is apt to believe that the verball preferring of Filiall love is the having it and certainly many who have been neare it have missed of it by concluding they had attained it and many have lost it by conceiving it might be kept and left loose without much attendance whereas they should remember that it is not the Spring of our fallen nature that of it selfe riseth to that point from whence it fell it is the force of grace which can only raise and re-mount it to this elevation and our spirits must continually attend this operation of Grace to force up this pure affection against the risings of our sensitive appetites which make steepe oppositions to this reflux insomuch as if this worke be not assiduously intended our affections quickly sinke into the channell of our earthy nature which is interested and mercenary love They who pretend to keepe their hearts exalted as the Prophet saith above the altitudes of the earth in this purer element of filiall love must watch it continually when they hope they have it and still pray for it as if they feared they had it not and there is no so ill sign of our having any of it as our presuming we have enough of it as Saint Augustine saith of the knowledge of God that he who hath speculated his nature never so long when he commeth to think he hath found a compleat definition of God may be then said to understand the least of him So may I say of Filiall love they who have been never so long filling their heatrs with it when they presume they are full enough are then the most devoyded of it It is in our love referring to the immensity of God as in numbers relating to infinity wherein any summe never so great when it is once cast up and stai'd in any total may be said to be further from infinity then a much lesser number which is still running on without any determined period So any degree of love to our Creator being once voluntarily bounded and circumscribed is farther off from our interminate duty of loving then an affection never so much behind that is still advancing without a purpose of terme or limitation This then may be an infallible note of the deficiency of our love when in any straine of interior fervor we conclude we may stay our loves at such a pitch and make plaines upon it never aiming at a higher flight and this may be a secure rest for such hearts as are yet never so infirme in their loves that as long as they pursue sincerely the premotion and advance of them loving all they can and resolving never to love lesse then all they can improve their loves by any solicitude they may believe they love enough for nothing reacheth nearer Gods actuall infinity then this as I may say optative infinity in the soul of man which though she can never reach the other infinite existence yet hath a possibility of never staying or limitting her motions towards it This consideration drew from Saint Bernard this elegant indearement of the capacity of love in these words to God O otherwise incomprehensible Majesty to a soul loving thee thou seemest comprehensible for though the conception of no soul or Spirit can comprehend thee yet the love of a true lover of thee comprehendeth all thou art when he loveth all thy being how great soever it be What greater incentive can we wish for the purifying our love then to conceive that capacity to be granted to our love on earth which is denyed to our understanding even in heaven to wit the full comprehension of God but there is no love unlesse perfect filiall that can beare this so large ascription For our mercenary affection may be said to look upon divinity but as an object angular onely as it pointeth unto our selves and doth not spread out souls upon the spherical and circular form of the divine goodnesse as it is it selfe imbracing all forms and beings which latitude and expansion is peculiar unto Filiall love as an operation of that all-comprising charity diffused in our hearts by the holy-Ghost For all our love to God is inspired by himself as the light inlightning maketh the light that is illuminated God hath provided so kindly against our mistaking of our way to this excellent love as he hath set us a sensible mark to guide us by which is fraternall love which we have as a kind of visible object whereby to direct our course so that if our love lose sight of this mark we may be sure it is out of the way to filiall affection for the beloved Apostle in pursuit of his Masters specifical difference given to know his disciples from others which was the loving of one another giveth him the lie that is so bold as to say he loveth God when he hateth his brother
And sure it is a speciall mercy the. laying for us these sensible steps of sociable dilection whereon we may feel our hearts rising up to that imperceptible object of the Deity that by loving what we do sie we may direct the course of our love to what we do not see if we wanted this land-mark whereof the Pharisees took down the upper halfe when they shortened the precept of loving our neighbour to the length onely of reciprocall friendship our love would be much more exposed to deviation in the course to heaven For we know it is much easier to keep our way at land where we have diverse sensible marks for our guidance and information of our advance then at sea where we keep our course by accounts of art and little visible directions and our love to our brothers seemeth to be a passage of our minds by land since in that motion in our own element we have many marks and signes of the rectitude of our love whereas the elevation of our loves to the invisible being of God seemeth to be a course at sea wherein we are conducted onely by spirituall and abstracted notions We may therefore account our selves much favoured by having fraternal love as a sign secure token of our loves being in a straight and rectified addresse to God and the bosome disciple of Christ fixeth this as the pole by which our love may safely set his course to our Celestiall Father affirming that He who loveth his brother abideth in light and in him there is no scandale this is grounded on his Masters assertion that the second precept of loving our brother was like the first of loving God and these two loves may me thinks be said to be different but as the Divines say Gods attributes are distinct from his Essence not really in their own nature though they are severed by distinct conceptions in our understandings to wit of Gods wisdome goodnes justice c we form conceptions distinct from his essence which are all really the same thing with it In like manner we frame diverse notions of this charity as it is divided into these distinct exercises which is really the same is distinguished onely by our understanding according to these several respects towards God and our brother for it is the same inspired love that streameth it selfe into these diverse acts or operations Let us then blesse God for this precept of Fraternall love given us as a visible pillar of fire which while we have in our eye we may be confident of being in our way to the term of Filiall love consummate in the sight of our Father who is as yet visible but in his images wherefore let us attend unto this duty as to a light shining in this our dark place untill the day-star of Filiall love rise in our hearts Thus have I set before you Christian Charity in the forme of Jacobs ladder on which our love must ascend to him who rests upon the top of it and in this similitude mercenary love seemeth to answer well to the lower rounds neerest the earth on which our infirme nature is allowed to set her first steps and so to rise by degrees to the uppermost marches which touch heaven to the which none reacheth but filiall love and our fraternall charities seeme to be the side-pieces which combine and compaginate the whole frame so that these three concurrencies do compleat the meanes of our soules re-ascent to her Creator And since Christian grace is derived from the filiall relation in the Deity Filiall love in this state of our adoption must needs be the pillar strength of Christianity which like the pillars of the holiest part of the Tabernacle hath the head cast of gold and the fact of silver that is it containeth not onely the purity and preciousnes of speculative love but the pliantnes and commerce of practicall charity whereby the feet in action hold a proportionate value to the head in speculation thus by the intelligence of speculative and the industry of acting charity our souls are safely re-conveyed into our Fathers bosome where the portion of every child is no lesse then the becomming like the Lord of all our elder brother Christ Jesus whose Filial love hath purchased this co-inheritance for us upon this condition onely on our part of loving our father and his with an affection copied after his and the liker we draw this image the more we shall resemble him when we shall become like him by once looking on him let every one then that hopeth this sanctifie his love as his is sanctified The fifeenth Treatise The Duties of a Christian towards Enemies Divided into five Sections §. I. The precept of loving Enemies sweetned by miny Reasons drawn from Christs injoyning it and his acting it NEver â—an spake like this said our Saviors enemies of him when they came armed with Malice and Authority to offer him violence This singular attribution was due to all he said but cannot me thinks be more apposite to any thing he uttered then to this injunction of Love your enemies as good to them that hate you The strangeness of this precept seemeth to imply That the Author of Nature onely could be the proposer of it because the complyment with it seemeth to require a reversal of the instincts of Nature and looks like a greater undertaking then the re-edifying the Temple in three days this seeming as many miracles proposed as there are Humane tempers in the world to be wrought upon For the answering of Hatred and Injury with Love and Charity seemeth more incompetent with our Nature then the proposition which posed Nicodemus since iâ— may be said to be less strange for Nature to revert to what she hath once been then to transcend so much her own dispositions as to be raised from a Humane to an Angelical temper For in this state of Charity the spirit seems no ways acting by the impulses of the senseâ— Me thinks those Coelestial Doctrines should have attested to his enemies that it could be no less then the Creator of Men and Angels that could undertake these Conversions of old men into children and all men as it were into Angels and he it was indeed who proposed this renovation and exaltation of our Nature and well might he do it who had in his person brought God into Infancy and Man into Divinity We may â—iâ—y then proclaim of him with them that heard him referring specially to this article of Loving enemies that he taught not as the Scribes but as having power For the Doctors of the Law durst so little press this duty upon the people though it were contained in their Commandments as in complyance with the hardness of their hearts they ventured rather to allow a Bill of Divorce to their loves in this case of consorting with enemies and in this perverted liberty Christ found the people strongly habituated Insomuch as we may say not improperly
our Saviors judgement denounced in the Parable of our being delivered over to the Tormentors in case every one forgive not his brother from his heart and in point of benefiting of enemies the disposition is onely exacted in order to their extreme necessities so that a temperate consideration of the terms of this Duty will easily resolve with the Apostle of love That even this command ment is not heavy We must remember then that this order doth not allow the common shift of the world which is The raking up our passion in the ashes of civil prudence where malice is still kept alive though it neither blaze nor smoke to the perception of others This allowance would make this precept the easiest to be observed where it seemeth now the most incompetent namely in courts where hatred as well as many other mean things is usually dressed up in so fine clothes with so much art and dissimulation as it looketh familiarly liker all things then what it is This disguise is the more criminal as it seemeth to make even God of the party by putting out his colours of love and sincerity when all the exterior civilities and correspondencies are but set out as false flags by which the enemy may be boarded with the more safety for here the acts of enmity are commonly suspended not so much out of fear of Gods prohibition as of his defeature of the success which is Judas's art this watching an opportunity that the people might not spoil his bargain and so the attempt of revenge is but deferred by many till it seem sure to the wisdom of the flesh which we know is an enemy to God In this sort Gods enemy shroudeth himself under his wings while malice remaineth masked with sociable civility but indeed this dissimulation is so mean and irreligious a thing as it may be said to brave God and to fear Man And having branded it with this infamous Character I hope I shall not need press any farther the detestation of this counterfeit conformity There may be so great advantage made of enemies as certainly no ill-willer would act his malice upon one from whom he expected but a return of love For the scope and aim of all violence and mischief is the pain and resentment of the patient so that did we believe our harms designed would prove satisfaction instead of sorrow malice would never alow the maligned party this gain upon her Envy would never set up her frames if she thought that she did but weave her Rivals Nuptial garment Christian Charity maketh this conversion of the works of her enemies she cloatheth and adorneth her self by the same hands that invade her Therefore we see most commonly that they are such as are little skill'd in the nature of Charity that offer injuries and studies revenges and it must needs be upon their expecting such a temper of grieving and vexation in their patient as they finde in themselves otherwise they could not assail an enemy whom they conceived they should fortisie by their attempt But true Christian Charity hath this excellent property unknown to such strangers and so improveth by her invaders by this unexpected capacity for there may be truly affirmed much more of the vertue of Charity then was fained of the estate of Antheus who was said to raise new strength from his fall but this was onely after his being overcome he had been more invincible then Hercules if he had doubled his forces by the gripes and compressions of his Adversary and this is the Prerogative of Charity which therefore is insuperable by all violences because she deriveth fresh vigor even from the pressures of the hands that impugn her In order to this I have seen Charity painted with her hand upon a Compass and this Motto While I am press'd I am inlarged which aptly expresseth her true nature and informeth us That if we do not finde this opening and dilatation of ours upon the pressures of enemies we should resort to Christ with this sute of his Apostles upon this same occasion Lord increase our Faith This request sincerely pursued in all our provocations is always answered with this grant Saint Paul proclaimeth of glorying in our probation as it produceth hope which is not to be confounded because the Charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Ghost and this infused love can be tested at nothing more approving then Enemies and Persecuters for true Charity must not onely have the clarity of Christal but the solidity of Gold it must not onely be lucid and shining in good Works and firm until some Violence strike upon it but it must be like gold by which it is so often symbolized malleable and induring all percussions without shivering or dissipation This sort of Charity hammered by the hands of enemies and refined in the ardors of persecution is that fire-tryed gold which the faithful and true Witness counselleth us to buy of him to be made rich but this precaution is very requisite to be given such as intend this purchase not to reckon on the possession thereof until they have actually laid out some of it since this error of the Angel of Laodicea is very familiar to account our selves rich in it when we are poor and void of it for the speculative promises we make to our selves of this treasure are but such an account as if one should calculate his wealth upon great Bonds and Obligations which he had made to himself our perswasions of this capacity proving often such self-deceivings when this Charity is to be issued out in practise For while the will may take this vertue upon trust and pay no ready constraint and pain for it upon these terms it freely engageth it self for future discharges of this Obligation but commonly when God sendeth enemies affronts and indignities to call in for the discharge of this Charity our will doth oftner break and run away from them then make good and acquit our Contracts It is therefore but very bad Security which we use to give our selves the presumption on this vertuous habit before the practical demonstration for sure there is no precept of Christianity wherein the speculation and the practise are more distant from one another then in this of Loving our enemies and benefiting our disobligers §. V. The best preparatory disposition for the acting this Duty which maketh no opposition to the course of Justice as also powerful persons admonished of their temptation in the point of Revenge and animated by their exceeding merit in this fidelity SInce it seemeth so unsafe to presume upon the interior habit of this conformity before an actual probation this question may well be made What is the best preparatoty disposition in order to the compliance with this precept in all emergencies and occurrences of Injuries Whereunto I answer The habit of sincere Humility a vertue every one lays claim to but most do it upon evidence
God in Christ Let as many therefore 〈◊〉 be perfect be thus minded and those who are otherwise I beseech God to reveal this unto them The twentieth Treatise Of the Contempt of the VVorld Divided into two Sections §. I. Arguments to discredit all the Attractives of this Earth and Gods contribution thereunto produced I Have in effect shot all my Quiver at this one Head viz. The love of this World and have set such points to my Arrows as I conceived most proper to enter those Helmets of Perdition wherewith the Prince of this World commonly armeth his Militia in this quarter I aim at namely Presumption or Inconsideration Wherefore now me thinks I may say to this Age with the Psalmist Childrens Arrows are made thy wounds relating either to my former Alliance to the world or to the present weakness of the hand that hath made these Ejacuâ—ations But surely the Head that hath been my Mark may be fitly compared to that of the Beast in the Revelation which having been wounded as it were to death was afterwards healed and Worshipped the more upon this Cure For the love of this world seemeth very often mortified and lying as it were dead in our mindes being wounded by the Sword of the Spirit and yet 〈◊〉 viveth and grows stronger then ever in our Affections And as these two Heads do not differ much in their Allegories since all the Heads of the Beast may be said to signifie several mundanities so are they consorted in this point of having both the same Surgeon the old Serpent who venteth all his Art upon the recovery of this Head namely The love of mundanity wherein do indeed reside the vital Spirits of the body of Sin the onely Subject of the Prince of this Ages Empire So that considering the dangerous convalescence of this wounded Head I have conceived it requisite to do my best not onely to kill it outright by playing Jael's part driving this Nail that is this express Tract directly through the temples of it but also to endeavor the burying it as I may say in this holy ground of Spiritual Joy and Acquiescence which is the safest course to prevent the revival of it for the alacrity of the Spirit keepeth the inferior appetites as it were under ground and in this figurative interment the Balms and Spices of contemplative Solaces contrary to material ones have this vertue quickly to consume and dissolve this matter when they are applied unto it I shall therefore endeavor to draw out of the inclosed Garden of the Spouse such precious Spices as may work these two different effects to dissipate and consume the love of this world as well as preserve and persume the love of Heaven One Sin infected our whole Humane Nature by reason that all succeeding individuals had then their voyces comprised in one person Representative of the whole Species And when we see the whole Mass of the Earth accursed at once me thinks we may speculate this to have been some part of the reason that in the little portion of Earth composing the body of Man the whole Globe thereof seemed represented and consequently all tainted by the inquination of that one parcel for the sensitive part of Man consisting of Earth that may well be charged as a Complice in the Crime since that portion of Man although it were not Principal was yet an accessory in the Crime the body having acted the transgression This may give an ingenious reason for the Condemnation of the whole Earth to bear onely Thorns and Bryers naturally and fruits not without induring wounds and violences to wit the contamination of the whole in the vitiousness of this first ungrateful portion of Earth which in the person of Woman may be said to have put forth some Bryers to catch the Soul of Man even before it was accursed This I presume to be a better Reason for the sentencing of the whole Earth then can be given for the Soul of Man's adhering to this Earth by his affections forasmuch as this convinceth us of the terrestrial parts of conspiration of our ruine and so may well averse the Soul from such an adherency How evident is it that God never intended that the Soul of Man after this first injury should set her affections upon the Earth since Man was presently removed from the most lovely part thereof and that was fenced against his access to it not onely to shorten his time upon Earth but also as we may suppose to abridge his Delights and Solaces in that short time since no other part of the World could afford such a complete deliciousness as the earthly Paradice out of which Man was excluded whereby God seemeth to have provided against Mans having the strongest Motives the Earth might offer him to draw down his affections upon it and hath left him a continual quarrel as it were with the Earth to wit the Contention of his labors against her sterility to entertain this disagreement between it and the love of Man since the Earth alloweth him nothing but at the price of his sweat and â—atigation This might seem sufficient considering our lazy Nature to admit no kinde or friendly correspondence between us nay there are many who suppose the world long since not to have had so much invitation left for Man to love it as the containing the terrestrial Paradice This at least is very probable That even since the Flood the beauty fecundity and pleasantness of that portion of the Earth is utterly deflowered and â—faced But this is positively true That God did not expulse Man out of Paradice to allow him the making another Paradice for himself out of the Earth These speculations do as Saint Paul saith speak after the maner of men to implead all title this Earth can claim to the affections of a reasonable Soul and through all the body of this Miscellany there run veins enough of disparagement to this world so that they may well terminate in this Centre of Contempt and despection The Apostle of love whose fiery tongue casts forth as many Scintillations of love as he doth lines in that Work which may be fitly called An Epistle commendatâ—ry of Love to Christians doth not allow the world so much as one spark of it he rather straineth his breath to blow out and extinguish every flash of affection to it enjoyning us expresly Not to love the world nor the things that are in it And it is remarkable That he alleageth not the miseries and disgusts of the world to discredit it but bringeth even the most amiable alluremonts thereof for Reasons against our affecting it arguing upon the worlds having nothing in it but the concupiscence of the eye and of the flesh and the pride of life in which consist the most powerful Attractives the world hath for our love And if all these which are acknowledged the worlds Proprieties are turned against the valuation thereof what hath it left whereby to
waking and comprehending the true nature even of the things wherewith we are the most affected In so much as while the truth is that our life in this world is but a kind of dreame or shadow we dreame so strongly as we doe not discerne it to be but a dreame for the momentanynesse and inanity of our life seldome comes into our fancie which though it be so susceptible of all levities yet seldome admits the thought of mans owne lightnesse into it the vanities of our life shadow and cover to us our lives being but a shadow and thus while we breath continually in this element of vanity it becomes as the ayre to us which we feele not sensibly in our familiar respiration and yet our breath is nothing else but aire after this manner while our life is nothing but vanity we are the lesse sensible of this constitution So vaine a thing is meere humane nature as when your wit hath fancyed the most ayerie and light conceptions it can for images of this inanity man seemeth yet so much vainer then all those expressions as even all of them leave no impression on man of his owne vanity for he makes no use of those his apprehensions but lives as if hedid traduce and abuse himselfe in his conceptions and expressions of his owne vacuity and emptinesse and falls not at all into consideration of those disabusing notions and thus he verisies what the holy Spirit sayes of him that man compared to vanity is found lighter then it For as if the variations and instability of his owne state were not sufficient for his vexation doth not man adde to them the changeablenesse of many other creatures more vanishing and fleeting then himselfe by fastning his love to them namely to riches honour beauty and the rest of this worlds flashes and blazes of delectation which goe out very often even before they have so much as warmed our senses §. II. Treating Mans abuse of what he might learn by the mortality of the creature and the frailty of his nature evidenced in all sorts of persons and tryals ALL the creatures seeme to tell man in their perishing variations that they were made so transitory to passe away as attendants on the flux and motion of his life whereby to instruct as well as serve him by their subjection yet is he so little advertised by them of his own frailty as he rather applies their variations to amuse him in the imperception of his owne instability For while all his pleasures are derived from the continuall changes and mutations of things even out of this variety of delights he drawes the inconsideration of his owne continuall flux and consumption For he neither seemes to beleeve the nature of the things themselves in all these evidences of their mutability while he fixes his heart upon them as if they were immoveable nor doth he so much as learn the variablenesse of his own minde by the experiments of so frequent alterations of it which happeneth after even without so much cause as satiety meerely by the lightnesse of his owne constitution Doth not this seeme a strange incongruity in the nature of man who while he states all his delectation in the intermixture of changes even of his owne minde as well as of forreine fruitions that in this occupation he should divert himselfe from the animadversion of his owne vanity and impermanency How justly may it be said then O wretched man who shall deliver thee from this body of delusion When all the creatures that passing away and dying open themselves in an Anatomie of thy fraile nature thou wilt not so much as looke upon thy owne frame and composition which thou canst not see in those living figures thou art playing and sporting with for the life of man cannot see it selfe truly but by reflex from death and every perishing dying or dead creature reflects to man his own image and yet as the Apostle sayes Man so frequently beholding his naturall face in this glass of death forgets what manner of man he is Therfore the Author of life in his Word hath often set his hand to his manifest of the creatures which they all make for Man in their successive corruptions and in very pregnant tearmes he hath declared to man That his life is but a vapour that appeares but a little time and then vanisheth If then our life which is the foundation of all our vanity be but so slight and subtile a thing what can we say of riches beauty and honour and the like temporalities which are but the accidents of that substance which is it selfe but a vapour Wherefore all they seem but colours diversified by the severall variations of that light which is but a flash of lightning for life it selfe is but such an esclat of light This considered when the nature of all the worlds toyes and nugacities is rightly discussed all the specious good of them is found to be but opinion and imagination which may be tearmed the fume of this vapour of our lives as it is exhaled and vanisheth away and yet this fume of opinion darkens to us the nature of our lives as smoake often doth the matter out of which it is raised For how familiarly the eye of our reason is deprived of all exercise by this smoak of opinion I need not urge since every one that goes abroad into the aire of the world palpably seeth what sore eyes Reason hath almost every where by living in this smoak of opinion O then how much worse then nothing is the life of man thus lightned and evaporated by his own fancie when at the best of his carnal nature in the holy Spirit 's account it is but a shadow a dreame or a vapour And certainly it was an expresse act of Providence relating to our undeceiving this of Gods choosing Solomon among all his Secretaries to make the most ample and precise manifest of the nature and conditions of all temporalities for as Alexander is said to have furnished Aristotle largely with expences requisite for all sorts of Anatomyes when he designed him to write the history of Nature that his experiments might afford him both light for himself and credit with others so God seemes to have provided Solomon an abundance and affluence of all those creatures in their best degree of sincerity and perfection whereof he was to deliver to the world the nature and properties that the sensiblenesse of his experience might move and affect the world joyntly with the charity of his speculation S. Iohn Baptist who had the same spirit of truth I by an immediate infusion but did never exercise it in any practical experiments had not been an organ of this truth so proportinate to our infirme apprehension which embraces truth sooner clothed with sensible particular experiments and so becomes as it were palpable then in the universality of notions while it remaineth more abstracted in speculation King Solomon therefore was an
instrument sized and fitted to worke upon our natures and he who was the best Moral Chymick that ever wrought upon the matter of temporallities by the experiments of all fruitions extracted this as the quintessence of them all Vanity of vanities all is vanity under the sunne and vexation of spirit Here then is the product and summe of all our loves and fruitions in this world and after this convincing manifest of the worthlesnesse of all other creatures alas how much a more deplorable conviction hath he left us of the vanity of man by his owne fall and prevarication when in the splendor of all this light of verity a few fading colours in a womans face dazel'd even his Eagles eyes and so his blindnesse and infatuation is become a clearer evidence of the infirmity of mans nature then even all the beames of his illuminating pen. They who will look attentively upon this naked image of Solomon need no other character of our humanity there they shall discover all that the world accounts the security of happynesse to be the likeliest betrayers of it For he whose knowledge exceeded the stock of nature and whose possessions were equall with all natures provisions may be said to have fallen by the weight of his felicities how infirme a thing then is man that cannot carrie even his own wishes without falling under them when he is charged with their successes for alas how much doth familiar evidence attest this truth that man in honour becomes like the beast that perisheth May not our carnall nature then be justly discredited to us by considering that our life is either a perplexity of wishes or a perversion of successes and this convincing evidence which common experience offereth proveth what Solomon sayes that this is the affliction which God hath given to the sons of men to exercise them in it since indeed this world is but a stage for their wrastling and contention And if we look upon our nature in the exercise and triall of it in the other extream of affliction we shall finde their feeblenesse even in those pillars that were the strongliest supported by grace namely Elias who seemed to have had so little mixture of the elements in his nature as he is called by the holy spirit a fire and a burning light yet even he in his fiery triall had so much earth about him as to faint under his carriage and to cry out to be delivered even of his life as of a burthen thus strong was that little weakness of our nature he had about him holy Jer. who seemes to have brought none but holy earth out of his mothers wombe by the testimony of his sanctification in it yet even this sanctified oare had so much drosse found in it when the burning fire was shut up in his bones as to run over even into the cursing the day of his birth and to prepose his mothers being a tombe for him before a deliverer of him into that light wherein he saw so much misery and affliction May we not well say then in reference to that of Solomon if the best men on earth make this confession of the misery of their nature what doe the worst and the most depraved Thus have we seene frailty and infirmity of our corrupted nature taken from the best figures of it in diverse postures of temporall felicity and affliction and we perceive that in one state it is so unhappily disposed as the pronenesse of it to ingratitude is raised by the very degrees of obligations and benefits it receiveth Insomuch as the plenty of temporall blessings proves often an over-ballancing even of the power of abundant grace as we see manifested in the infidelityes of Solomon and againe we find in the other triall how the weight of sufferance boweth and deflects a little even the strongest pillars of humanity among which we doe bring in Saint Pauls deposition of this truth where we make upon all these surveys this his reflection O wretched man who shall deliver thee from this body of death and corruption But we are not so miserable as not to have a present answer to this sad question the grace of God by Jesus Christ our Lord. Wherefore let us goe on and look upon our nature as it is Deified in him and as the other representations might make us lament our birth with Job upon our dunghill so this aspect of it in the person of Christ may recall us to rejoyce with Zachary in the Temple and allow our nature this selfe-ascription justly assumed by the second organ of the reparation thereof henceforth all generations shall call me blessed this assumption may be well allowed our nature when we look upon it with S. Paul not living in it selfe but Christ living in it The second Treatise The reparation of Humane Nature divided into two Sections §. I. Treating the admirable meanes God chose for this worke and the rehabilitation resulting to man from this proceeding of God HAving seene the figure of man made much liker the image of him who said he would raise himselfe and become like God then like God himselfe who made man after his own image what meanes is there left to restore that which all the subtilty of the supreamest Angel had much adoe to disfigure when ruine is so much easier then reparation If Lucifer himselfe had applyed all his abilities to have given man satisfaction he could hardly have excogitated such a meanes of mans redintegration for it may be disputed whether it had not been a higher pitch of disrespect to have designed God to have put on this wretched nature of man then it was to project for his own Angelicall nature an independency on the divine So here the spirits of men and Angels are confounded when they consider both these natures of God and man first apart in their peculiar properties and then behold them united in this incomprehensible manner in the person of God here Saint Austins exclamation is more proper then any inquisition one Abisse calls on another the Abisse of misery attracts that of mercy here is the transcendency of all wonder that the unworthynesse and demerit of humane nature should prove the exaltation of it For now the Church doth not stick to say foelix culpa proclaiming even the fault to have been happy that procured such a redemption and a melioration Lord what was man that thou should'st be thus mindfull of him who had nothing left to move thee but his being become worse then nothing did this invite thee to shew thy selfe more God in his refection then in his creation wherein his nullity had thus much towards his being viz. no actuall opposition to thee which his iniquity had and so his reparation seemed more incapable of thy love then his nothing was of thy omnipotency in his first production In this deplorable state of humane nature become even Gods enemy he did not only reconcile but even subject
himself to it to mediate this reconciliation he that could not rob God of any thing by his equalizing himselfe to him seemed to rob God of all his Majesty by this his equality with man by this stripping and exinanition of himselfe taking upon him the forme of this disfigured servant here we may ask with the amazement of the Apostle who hath been thy Councellor in this incomprehensible designe which man could not have so much as wished for himselfe And Saint Paul resolves us God for that great love wherewith he loved us hath raised up our dead nature and made it sit in as heavenly a place as even the person of God And indeed love could only render this act worthy of almighty God all the other of Gods benefits might be referred to his glory without any relation to his love the creation of all out of nothing might relate to the manifestation of his omnipotency and the order of his providence and administration of the world might be referred to the magnifying of his wisdome and the exalting his glory by his diverse communications to his creatures But this exinanition of himselfe could not consist with Gods dignity if it had not flowed from the immensity of his love So as this act confirmes Saint Johns definition of God that he is love for in this testimony God appeares nothing else all his immensity and infinity is extant onely in love since in this act of Gods incarnation even his Omnipotency may be said to be exhausted in obliging man when there remains neither power in God to do nor wisdome to excogitate a greater benefit then this selfdonation O immense beneficence and excesse of love which terminates even the divine omnipotency shall not this then subdue mans infirmity and appropriate all his desires to the study of loving this God who having given man even all his divinity by his love shall not man give this divinity all his love methinks it is now unnaturall since God is become man by love to him that man united to this God should not become all love of this divine Essence How can man then finde now so little of God in his nature as to plead his own infirmity for not loving God when by this gift he is made a consort of the divine nature as Saint Peter tels him and thereby inabled to love God by a participation of the same love with which God loves himselfe so that the donation exceeds so much the delinquency as Saint Austin votes a congratulation to our humane nature which being assumed by the Son of God is constituted immortall in heaven and exalted so as to sit at the right hand of the Father who then ought not now to congratulate his nature thus immortalized in Christ when he may hope to rise to the same immortality by this assumption So much strange incomprehensiblenesse followes upon Gods incarnation as our nature is dignified above what it hath a faculty to conceive for the soul of man shall not rightly apprehend the honour of this union with our flesh till she be sever'd her selfe from this connexion so great is the mysterie of Gods taking flesh and blood upon him as man must devest his before he can comprehend it for we see the more we are immersed in flesh and blood the lesse we discerne of it the carnal man is the worse inquisitor into this incarnation but the benefit and mercy is no lesse then the mysterie for Gods incarnation inableth man for his owne decarnation as I may say and devesture of his carnality and by imitation of this divinâ— man Christ Jesus shewes him how to weare his flesh in s 〈…〉 proportion as Christ wore his namely as a garment that did not defile what it cover'd Who then will chuse to cleave to our nature in the impurenesse of her owne carnality and bewaile that infelicity for an extenuation of her foulnesse rather then recur to this capacity which is imparted by the two natures of Christ unto ours viz to refine her selfe to so much cleannesse and spirituality as Saint Paul doth not feare to exalt our spirits to an identity with Gods he doth not wonder at any thing in consequence of this first gift of God himselfe given to our nature for he concludes that he who did not think his owne Son too much how shall he not with him also freely give us all things Insomuch as we may justly now say with S. Paul Therefore O man thou art inexcusable when thou judgest thy nature as incapable of victory over her infirmity for there is no such predominant malignity in her as thy enemy would insinuate the belief of the worst part of thy weaknesse is this querilous diffidence for in that ill feature thou shalt finde no similitude in the person of Christ in all thy trials and temptations thou mayest finde some resemblance in his figure even in the anguish and attristation of thy spirit but none in the yeelding and surrender of thy confidence for he felt our infirmities that we might not faint under them so that the similitude of his temptation is the succour and security of our defence in all our tryalls They then who in the pressures of their frailties shal faintingly say who shal shew us any good have their answer following in the next words the light of thy countenance is sealed impressed upon us for now the light of Christs divinity is not only shining on our nature but even in it as being now the orbe of the sun of righteousnes insomuch as the eyes of God may be said not onely to be upon us now in all our conflicts but likewise to be concerned in our contentions as members of that head whose eyes are his and consequently they do not only animate us but act and second us insomuch as the Apostle S. Paul chuseth his infirmities only to glory in to magnifie the triumph of Christ Wherefore they who behold the splendor of Christs divinity now shining in our nature need not lament the destruction of the first Temple when they contemplate this re-â—dification of this second Sanctuary but may confesse with one of Gods witnesses that the glory of this latter House is greater then that of the former for our nature is more dignified in the person of Christ then it could be depressed by the fault of Adam since not only the holy Angels adore now humane nature in the person of Christ but the very revolted spirits are punished even by the consequences of their malice to it for the bruised heele stands now trampling upon their subjected heads and it is not only in the glorious person of Christ that our nature triumpheth over her enemy but even in many other persons mortall and charged with her infirmities which make the weight of the shame the heavyer she treades victoriously upon the Basalisk vilifying all the malicious powers and principalities who are the governours of the
notified May I not fitly then reproach those with S. Paul who with vaine flatteries change the truth of God into a lie for is not this done by such who corrupt the reall good of beauty by fond and false ascriptions And surely while they serve thus the creature more then the Creator they provoke God to give them up to their vile affections in which with Daniels Elders Having overthrown their sense they turn down their eyes that they may not see heaven But the perversion of this blessing doth not not interdict unto the eyes of the world a due commerce with beauty nor to our sight the being delighted with it for as the Apostle wisheth us we may be children in malice and yet men in understanding If Devotion comming to Court should declare such a war to the world as to prohibit oursenses commerce with pleasures which are the natives of this world she would find but a small party upon such a breach to follow her And indeed God doth as the Prophet sayes lead us into solitude when he speaks that language to our hearts there he sets on the wings of Seraphims to those that upon such plumes fly over their passage through the world but those whose vocations lead them through the tracts of the earth doe alwayes feele the earth they tread upon and it is not to be required of them to leave all the pleasures of the world in their following of Christ but S. John Baptist instructs them sufficiently in the lesson he gave the souldiers that they should exact no more then is appointed them and be content with those wages of innocent pleasures God allowes their senses in the duties of nature We may then justifie Devotion to be so farre from interdicting to nature the regular love of the creatures as we may assert it the only meanes whereby we can assure the continuance of our loves to them for our sensitive affections are like the hay and stubble the Apostle speaks of they are easily lighted by every spark of pleasure but they make onely a short blaze and goe out againe whereas Devotion is the Psalmists oyle of gladnesse and though it raise not so glaring and so sharp a flame of joy yet it entertains it in a more equall and durable temper for notwithstanding it doth not blaze so much in the sensitive yet it warms and recreates more the rationall part of our minds and so doth rather foment then waste the matter of our joy which the sharper flashes of our passions do quickly consume for truly our affections and passions in their owne nature are so light and volatile as beauty it selfe that works best upon them cannot fixe them nay nor stay them so long as even beauty which is so variable continues the same since the same vaine love which to day robs even Divinity for offerings to make to beauty tomorrow commits as great a fault in humanity stripping again his owne Idol meerly upon the motion of inconstancy not at all upon the complaint of conscience so that I may fitly apply this of the Prophet to such loves They weave spiders webs their webs shall not become garments neither shall they cover themselves with their works Thus are our humane passions so deceived in their commerce with the vanities of this world as they break often upon the return of their adventure it seems our fancies insure more upon fruition then the commodities are worth we traffique for and so we become losers even by the return of our adventure whereas Devotion teacheth us the true value of our desires and successes and how to adventure our hopes and how to manage the happinesse of our wishes in temporalities in such sort as to make a stock out of them for eternity according to the prudent advice given us to make friends of the felicities of this world that may provide for us in the eternall habitation By these lights we see how the love of God is not onely compatible but requisite with our love of creatures to assure and improve our true delights in them for nothing but piety can make good to humane appetite in all temporalities that abatement of their esteeme which is made by propriety and Devotion teacheth us to love them as gifts of God By which meanes fruition makes rather an endearment of them then a deduction But because I conceive this passion of love hath more friends then any other that will be interested in the cause I shall give it a fairer triall another time single by it selfe wherein the right our love hath in the creature shall be determined §. II. Ambition rightly examined and discreet condescendencies proposed respectively to diverse vocations IN the next place Ambition seemeth to claime a hearing and pleadeth a long prescription for possession of a great tenure in our nature I shall examine therefore that affection of the minde which is currant under the sinister notion of Ambition and endeavour to shew how the matter of this appetency which is temporal dignity and glory is not inconsistent with the purity of Devotion Pride is like Jeroboam who first drew Israel to sinne and indeed may be fitly said to set up golden Calves for the worship of our fancy against the true service of our reason wherefore Devotion is charged to extirpate all that house and Ambition as it is familiarly accepted is the eldest sonne of the house for it is an inordinate appetite of temporall honour and preferrence which we understand commonly under the terme of Ambition which indeed is the act of the habit of pride And so Ambition is as it were the title of the prime seignory belonging to the House of Pride which varies only the appellation of the sonne and in this sence as Ambition is the heire of Pride though bearing another name Devotion can have no confederacy with it for humility which hath the same relation to piety that Ambition hath to pride hath the commission of Jehu and is not to be tempted by Jezabel though she be never so well colour'd and painted even the little ones of this house must be dashed against the stones but humility hath no command to raze and demolish the Cities and Pallaces this ill generation lived in which are honour fame and power for piety may lawfully dwell in these commodious habitations of the world and make excellent use of all these temporall advantages So that Devotion doth not prohibit the pursuite of honour and preference it rather gives our nature a safe conduct against the dangers of the way upon which so many parties of our passions make their courses for we know honour and differencing of degrees are staires of Gods fabricke and there can be no order without degrees for order is the right disposition of parity and disparity Whereupon the severall stations in this world are designed by divine wisdome both for the ornament of the universall frame which is the naturall end of them
and as we may be said to lodge God in our hearts so we do carry him abroad no way more visibly then in our mouths and surely the custome of any unclean speech tainteth and spoileth the breath that is to carry him Let us not therefore be deceived with this vulgar diversion to wit that these freedoms of discourse are harmelesse and allowable there is no action of a Christian inconsiderable to God our recreations must be of the same species as our prayers though not of the same degrees of intensive finenesse they must be both of the same nature of innocence though not adequate in the measures of purity we may say methinks not improperly of our recreations and devotions that the first must be holy as the last are holy in the same sense that we must be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect which is in point of similitude not in a degree of equality such as analogy must the pleasures of a Christian hold with his prayers of being resembling though not commensurate in Sanctity We may well infer what an obligation of purity Saint Paul layeth upon Christians when he saith Those that are baptized have put on Christ if we are to consider our selves as clothed with Christ how can we be too curious and circumspect in point of keeping such a vestiment unspotted methinks this should be a good glasse for those who are so curious and neat in their materiall clothes and dressings wherein the least unbecomingnes or disorder is so much examined for by a reflexion from these words of the Apostle they may see with what degree of purity they are incharged methinks this respect may well move them to an exact candour and cleanlinesse in their conversation which is recommended by the holy Spirit under the notion of keeping in all times their vestments white and candid But I pray God much of the worlds proprety and decencies be not affected expresly in order to the staining this our inward garment of Christian purity this is light enough to all intelligent persons for an exploring the rectitude or wrynesse of their behaviours in this particular since even in this vain superficies of neatnesse they may discern a figure of their Spirituall obligation to purity whereof Christ doth prescribe to us the preservation by this exact Discipline of Watch and pray lest you enter into temptation For alas we have the roots of the forbidden fruit planted in our nature which shooâ— up continually so fast as we have work enough to nip and crop off their buds and blossomes and all unclean liberties may well be said to be so much dung and filth we cast about these roots to cherish and set them forwarder but the ranknes and luxuriancy of our tempers in this kind ought rather to be the subject of our extirpation then a ground for owâ— manuring and culture we might better methinks derive much bashfulnesse and confusion from this notion of the pregnancy of our natures towards all these foul productions then work thus with our fancies to stir up the earth about these roots They who extract shaâ—e and humiliation out of the foulnesse of their naturall propensions may be said to do some such cure open themselves as Christ did upon one of the blind men to wit upon their own eyes by thus laying their own dirt upon them and those who catch at all occurrencies in discourse to advance their light impulses may be said to continually raising a dust out of their loose earth to put out not onely their own eyes but likewise those of the company they frequent Referring to this depravation there is one familiar iniquity which deserveth a particular animadversion which is this custome of letting our tongues runne full counter to this Christian precept of Watch lest you enter into temptation For alas how frequent is this practise of watching to lead all words into temptation by binding and straining even the modest words of others into a crooked and lascivious sense this vitiousnesse argueth a great sullnesse of the evill spirit when it runs over with such a waste even upon the words of our neighbour and well considered me thinks this is one of the most censurable parts of this licentiousnesse in regard it laboureth to taint the whole body of conversation as it corrupteth the nature of words which are the Publique Faith whereupon all innocent discourse must needs trust it selfe so that this perversion seemeth a publick impediment to the commerce of all vertuous communication wherefore this distorting of equivocall words which passeth commonly for a triviall peccancy if it be well examined will be found a very dangerous admission for me thinks this may be termed a verball adultery as it vitiateth and corrupts the property of another which would have remained innocent without that sollicitation and therefore seemeth much a fouler fault then a single incontinency of our own words This discourse puts me in mind of a most ingenuous piece of S. Augustines Confessions upon the reflection on the uncleannesse of his youth whereof my repetition will be sufficient application Thou O Lord Phisitian of my soule afford some benefit to others by my infirmities grant that the confession of my evils past which thou hast remitted and covered blessing me with a change of my soule by thy grace when they are read and heard may awake and stirre up the hearts of Auditors that they may not sleep in despaire and say alas we cannot rise but rouse themselves up by the love of thy mercy and sweetnesse of thy grace whereby every weake one is sufficiently enabled who by that influence commeth to be conscious of his own infirmity Let those I impart this confession to lament my ills and long for my good all my good is thy provision and gift as my evils and faults are thy judgements Let them sigh for these and sing thy praise for the other Let both pitie and praise ascend up to thy sight from the hearts of my brothers the which are thy incensors and thou O Lord delighted with the odour of thy holy Temples have mercy upon me according to thy great compassion and for thy holy names sake give not over what thou hast begunne but consume totally my imperfections These words will be too easily applyed since all those who have known me cannot be ignorant of my culpablenesse in those particulars against which I have informed in these two Treatises and truly if I could represent the just shame and confusion I feele in the reflection upon my guiltinesse in this kind I believe it would undeceive many in their opinion of the lightnesse of such faults for we may learn by what meanes humane nature is the likeliest to be moved unto Reformation by the Proposition of the unhappy rich man in the Gospell who concluded that his brothers would certainly be converted if they had one sent back to them from the dead to preach and represent their sufferings and surely
Christian and the last leaveth us this precise advice in order to the same regulation He that looketh into the perfect law of liberty and continueth therein being not a forgetfull hearer but a doer of the worke this man shall be blessed in his deed and if any man thinke himselfe religious not bridling his tongue but seducing his heart this mans religion is vaine The thirteenth Treatise Handling whether to be in love and to be devout are in consistent In eight Sect. §. I. The nature of Love and of Devotion compared LOve in humane nature is both the sourge and center of all passions for not only Hope Feare and Joy but even Anger and Hatred rise first out of the spring of Love and the courses of these passions which seem to runne away from it do by a winding revolution returne backe to rest again in Love for there could be no aversion if the last end of it were not some affection which our Love pursueth through opposition with which our Anger and Hate combate but in order to the conquest of our first Love so that all the powers of a rationall Nature seeme to be ministeriall to this soveraigne power of Love since even in Grace also Love is both the way and the end of Beatitude For God himselfe is Love and none end in God that do not go by Love Therefore S. Augustine saith excellently that a short definition of all Vertue is the order of Love for since Love is the first impulse and motion of our intellectuall appetite which is the Will towards an union with what it apprehends under the notion of good if God be rightly apprehended as the supreame good and our Loves primarily directed to that union then all our affections descend from that due elevation upon the lower stations of the creatures as upon stepps set in order by God for our affections to passe down upon his workes and repasse again upon the same gradations up to the Creator Therefore we must examine whether that state of mind which the world termeth being in Love admit of this order wherein consisteth the vertue of all Devotion I have before treated and defined what it is to be Devout so I conceive it expedient now to determine what it is to be in Love for as there are many antipathy's which while they are out of the presence of one another discover not their repugnancies but being set together do quickly declare their aversions so if we state prophane and sacred love by one another we shall the easilier discerne whether there be any incompatibility between them for he who transfigureth himselfe into an Angell of light doth more artificially disguise this passion then any other and presenteth it to our minds under the fairest notion he can utter it knowing that Love is the best colour he can use in his own transfiguration I have already described Devotion to you in these familiar termes of a being in love with Heaven whereby I conclude that being in Love is the most intensive appropriation of all the powers of our mind to one designe now how such an assignment of our Soule to the love and service of the creature which is to be in love with one can consist with the precept of loving the Creator with all our heart and all our mind is a question too hard for even the Devill to resolve therefore to reconcile Passion with Devotion he doth commonly detract somewhat from them both in his definitions of them to us representing it as a lesse alienation and transaction of the mind to be in love and a lesse exaction on the soule to be devout Thus mans first supplanting Counsellor offereth himselfe for a reconciler of this inconsistency and pretendeth to accord these two loves as we use to compose civill differences where likely each party doth remit some of his interest to facilitate the agreement and thus many taking off somewhat from the nature of humane passion and abating some of the rights of divine Love think they may both concurre in the soule by this arbitration as who should say when God is allowed the supreamest part in formall adoration the creature may share in the inferiour portion of the mind which is the seate of Passion and be allowed a love to a degree of Passion Many are deceived by this as with an equall composition which truly examined is to conclude that if the Arke be set in the quire Dagon may stand in the body of the Church but he whose Temple our heart is alloweth no independent love to the creature to stand by his at any distance all our affections must rest involved in his Love and must issue from thence upon the creature but as by commission and delegation from that master Love So I may say of such compounders that pretend there may be some of the heart allotted to support humane Passion as was said of the inhabitants of Samaria after the captivity wherein were mixed the Jewes and Babilonians These feare the Lord but serve their Idols for indeed they who give not God all their Love give what they do chiefly to his feare and so may be said to feare God not to love him but to serve and love their passions Yet it may be there are some who being frighted with the precisenesse and amplitude of the precept of loving God disavow me in my definition of being in Love saying I have done an ill office to humane Passion in this exaltation of it putting it upon a claime of so great rights as must needs make a quarrell between it and Devotion when they pretend they do covenant between their eyes and their affections in the admiration of beauty for the preserving the prerogative of divine Love alleadging that all the vehemency of their affections is in order to the estimation of the excellency and perfection of Gods workes and disclaime any infringing the rights of Religion This is commonly answered by some when they are before grave and pious examiners when they find themselves fallen as I may say among Gods party then they have his word ready to passe with but when they come off to their own side when they are giving account of their passions to those persons they serve under then commonly they take all occasions to do all ill offices to divine Love and study to affront Devotion as if it were a Rivall that pretended to that affection for which they are in suite and then the entirenes of the oblation of their minds is what they most insist upon and God knoweth Religion is not so much as thought upon unlesse it be to take from it some divine tearmes to set out the offering of their passion §. II. Some subtile temptations detected and liberties reproved PRophane Passion is a flame in our sensitive Appetite which doth commonly refine and subtilize the faculty of our imagination enabling the fancy very much to circumvent the reason suggesting this beliefe to
many that we may easily proportion a correspondence between our affections to sensible and spirituall objects setting them in the due subordination of the sence to the understanding and when this order is settled in our minds we are perswaded there may be allowed this intelligence which passeth often between the greatest distances of degrees that what appertaines properly to the dignity of spiritualities may be borrowed sometimes innocently and applyed to adorne and grace the worth of materiall goods and after this manner I suppose we may accommodate these attributes of divine and heavenly and many other such jewels of the crown of God to illustrate the accomplishments of corporeall blessings In this method many Lovers seeme to thinke they may use Gods spirituall Altar as we do his material Altars in Churches from whence the ornaments are borrowed and transposed from one to another according to different solemnities for many use as familiarly all the proprietyes of divine love for the gracing of their passion as if God had lent them his attributes to set off the shrine of their affections which do usually stand dressed up with Sacred vessels with all the termes of veneration and adoring and thus doth our unfaithfull councellor perswade us in effect to set up altar against altar upon pretence of a faire correspondence between Grace and nature This is truly to be blinded by the God of this world as the Apostle saith to treat any such compartition of our heart between our faith and our fancy applying alternatively the same expressions of estimation to them both when we know all the appurtenances to Gods altar are so fastned to it by his own hand as the very borrowing of them for secular uses is sacriledge The same composition of oyntment which God did appropriate to the services of the Tabernacle was forbid to be imploy'd upon bodyes in the delicacies of the flesh under the same paine as sacriledge and that confection of perfumes which was peculiarly Gods odour was not to be compounded for any common application and when we poure out so familiarly Gods attributes upon our loves as an unction of suavity and delicacies upon flesh and blood and perfume our passions with the same composition of prayses and exaltations which are properly affected to divine uses we do certainly incur this kind of irreligious presumption and how familiar this loose effusion is of all the most Sacred termes upon this subject of our passion I need not argue but enter this ill custome as a high indignity to God though it passe commonly for no more then a light intemperancy of the fancy which is little questioned truly it is most an end the foul ardor kindled in the heart that seeths this uncleane froth out of the mouth which staineth all the Moral virtues it toucheth for prophanenesse taints wit and civility and all other good qualities it runnes through and so though prophane love may sharpen the brain it alwayes sowreth the heart which is the vessell of devotion if there be then many hearts farre from God while they honour him with their lips we may safely conclude no heart can be neer to God while the lips are so farre from honouring him as leading out his propertyes Wherefore let no body presume that they may innocently convert a hymne into an Iopean that is to transferre the prerogative prayses of divinity to the flattery of his owne Diana In the religion of the heathen Romanes every one had their houshold gods that did not derogate from the honor of those they worshipped in the Temples each one was allowed his Genius each family their Penates for familiar gods at home which they observed loved more though they feared not so much as their state gods methinks they that would maintaine a consistancie betweene those two altars of humane passion and divine love take the priviledges of that religion allowing themselves their Genius or fancy for a domestick god which they affect more though they acknowledge not so much as their Church of God But the reason why the Gods of the heathens did admit this association was that they were not jealous Gods and cared as little for the singlenesse of the heart as they knew the secrets thereof whereas our God is just the contrary both a jealous and an Omniscient God and as all hearts are his not onely by creation but by purchase with no lesse a price then all his love so it cannot be expected he should receive hearts back againe with lesse then all their love §. III. The errours of prophane jealousie argued and a Pious jealousie propounded MEthinks passionate lovers who know nothing so well as the nature of jealousie which studyeth continually the anotamy of hearts and is so severe to the least defective part should not hope to passe any insincerity upon a jealous God if they did not study too much the quality of jealousie and too little the nature of God for if they attended that it would shew them God cannot be jealous according to the nature of man where jealousie implyes doubt and perplexity of inquiry for to God the secrets of hearts are manifest even while they are secrets to themselves he preconceiveth what all hearts shal ever freely conceive so God calleth himselfe a jealous God as knowing the nature of humane jealousie which is so sensible of the least substraction from what we affect to assure us by that title he can admit no participation in what he vouchsafes to love It is to inlighten man in the knowledge of his severity not to obscure the beliefe of his omniscience that he cals himselfe a jealous God which quality is as propitious in Gods love as it is malignant in mans for humane jealousie among all the falsities it suggests for our disquiet telleth us but one important truth and that we seem to believe little by the eagernes of our solicitations which is the infidelity and variablenesse of all humane loves that are so unfaithfull as our greatest passions are commonly unsecured by our tendernesse and caution of them and Gods jealousie assureth us of the immutability of his love which we can loose onely by our not being jealous of it for the more watches we set over it in our lips and the more guards in our hearts the more it is obliged by this circumspection nor must we think to keep it safe in our hearts while the doors of our lips stand open to all the passengers of a prophan and libertine tongue so that if we make a serious reflexion on it there is none of Gods attributes so sure a guide for our way to him as a jealous God Whereupon I may well ask the Synagogue of Libertines this puestion of Saint James Do you thinke that the Scripture saith in vain The Spirit that dwelleth in you covets you even to emulation and Saint Paul explicates this when to indeare his zeale to soules he calls it the emulation of God and we know God is
not as man that he may be deceived the same Spirit is jealous of us which peirceth and divideth asunder the soule and the Spirit and is the discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart Therefore they who look upon the beauty of Gods love in the beams of his mercy should alwayes reflect upon the shadow of his love which is his jealousie and is inseparable from the substance of his charitie But commonly Libertine lovers when they raise their thoughts as high as God look upon his mercyes being above all his works and account that as a City of refuge whereunto they can easily flie for protection of these kind of infirmities of nature pleading all their offences to be rather occasionall frailties then purposed infidelities to God and so while they have this attribute of Gods mercy in their eye like the hill seated upon a mountaine they think they cannot loose their way to it though they loyter and wander in their youth out of the strait and narrow way straying by the light excursions of their passion And certainly no one sinne hath misled more then this purposed Piety in which the Devill is a diligent advocate for Gods mercy For all active vitiousnesse hath a kind of hot feavor which keeps the conscience awake at least but this rowling between mercy and justice is a certaine motion that very often rocketh the conscience into a drowsinesse till our last sleep after which the worm it wanted never lets it rest againe How many say with Christ Yet a little and the world shall not see me who go out of the world in this stretching of themselves in a little more sleep a little more slumber Therefore I will recommend one jealousie to lovers which think themselves secure of Gods mercy by being but loose sutors for it let me propose to them to be very jealous of it I am sure they can know nothing of Gods heart which ought to make them confident of his mercy longer then they are actually watching it for it is seriously true in this case what is familiarly said to justifie vain jealousie that we cannot love mercy much and not be jealous of it nay I may add that the very apprehension of the insecurity of it is the fruition of this love for it is a possession of mercy to be solicitous and attentive in feare of losing it in this sense Solomon saith Blessed is he who is alwayes fearing and David prayeth that his flesh may be pierced with this feare But alas prophane passion is commonly a derider of all holy fear and accepts onely that which vaine jelousie imposeth on her and so the fear passion hath proves rather a curse then a custody for her love for the feares of lovers may be properly said to be such as the Wise-man elegantly discribes in the Aegyptian darknesse when their fire afforded them no light and those flashes of lightning which passed by them did but fright them so much the more being so terrified with what they saw they concluded that much more horrid which they saw not and thus their feare proved nothing to them but a betrayer of the succours of reason I need not put this on upon a lovers jealousie to try if it wil serve it by an application of those qualityes for it will appeare to any body that knoweth it as apposite and fit as if it had been made by the measure of that passion therefore I may wel conclude that love to be very unhappy which rejects all Pious feare and accepteth willingly this perplexing terrour §. IV. The deceipt of passion in promise of mercy and power of resisting temptations VAin passion is so malignant as it corrupteth the best power of mindes which is love and perverteth the best quallity of bodyes which is beauty nay it is so apt to make a wrong use of all beauty as it doth commonly misapply the beauty of grace which is mercy for it setteth our thoughts too much upon that faire delightfull attribute of God and seldome alloweth his justice a due proportion of them for many lovers acquaint themselves with Gods mercy as the Pharisees did converse with Christs person they are heires of Gods mercy and eat and drink with it familiarly but have no intelligence with his other attributes and so when they come to claime that acquaintance with it of having been taught and fed by it they are in danger to be disclaimed with I know you not depart from me mercy shall not then know them for their having been too familiar with her no more then God shall own the acquaintance of swearers who have beene so familiar with him thereforethe Wise-man giveth them an excellent counsell Say not the mercy of the Lord is great and he will have pitty on the multitude of my sinnes for his mercy and his anger are neer one another and his anger looketh upon sinners and most of all when they look not upon his anger For this reason lovers who usually set before their eyes mercy put before justice should use mercy not as a cover but as a Cristal onely to look through it upon the figure of justice in which it may intenerate and soften somewhat the hard strokes of that figure for the severity of Gods judgements may well be sweetened by this transparent supervesture of his kindnesse but when mercy is laid as a covering which too much obscureth justice to us then likely the more we look upon it the more we see our passion in it and the love of God the lesse for hope which vaine passion findeth a virtue in our hearts it commonly leaveth a vice by flattering hope into excesse and corrupteth it often by the art of overpraising it and so leadeth it imperceptibly up to presumption therefore I may properly say to many lovers presuming on mercy as Saint John Baptist did to such a kind of confidence think not to say within your selves we have Abraham for our father but bring forth works worthy of repentance let them not think mercy is intailed to the stock of their confidence but stated upon the conformity and fidelity of their lives for those that do the works of Abraham are onely his sonnes the children of feare and trembling are the onely heires of mercy But there are many mindes that seeme made of such a stuffe as was forbid the children of Israel which was a contexture of linnen and wollen which command did figuratively intimate that simplicity and intirenesse was to be the garment of the inward man against this rule many pretend they can weave purity and passion together and keep their minds sound and innocent in this composition and for this consorting humane love is very intuentive and ingenious in designing faire and specious termes of subordination in which this love pretends it may consist and be limited under divine love But many who pretended at first to keep their affections running through the beauty of
the creature in a regular re 〈…〉 ux back to the Ocean of all beauty find them intercepted in this dangerous passage and when they are once staid by degrees they come to intend nothing but the making their passion the deeper by an effusion of another upon it and thus they fall into the state which God reprocheth by the Prophet they commit these two evils They forsake God the fountaine of living waters and hew themselves out cisterns broken cisterns that hold no water For alas how unsound are all those conserves of humane beauty which containe mans passion we cannot say which is the lesse solid or durable either the matter of them which is but fading colour or the maker of them which is yet more fickle fancy neverthelesse in these broken vessels do men trust their love when they are even in the securest or strongest passion since inordinate love is so unsafe a conserve for our happynesse as even our own wishes cannot fixe it long upon one object and our reason can much lesse weigh it by graines as our owne wills take it from our senses and so keep our love to the creature in such a proportion as it may be tryed by the ballance of the sanctuary whether it have just that quantity which is allowed our affection to the creature Therefore let none perswade themselves they can keep their affections running on currently through particular inclinations back to the Universall center of love and upon that confidence license many insinuating familiarities with women for it is very hard even for the most purified humane affections to fall from beauty where nature maketh so many fences to stay them to passe on without making some eddyes in a reluctant motion looking backward with a profession of some unwillingnesse to passe so quickly forward in that course of purity they should continue and if as Saint Peter saith the severest watchers of their nature have task hard enough what shall be hoped of the indulgers of it certainly they who will cherish nature in her first appetites shall quickly finde her second past their checking and then as the Wise-man saith in this case Who wil pitty a sorcerer that is stung with a Serpent for they who are familiar with temptations will quickly be acquainted with infection let them remember then our Masters counsell that will have their body kept lighted to keep their eye pure since the Prince of darknesse observeth a rule quite contrary to the first law of the Father of light for when he hath put out an eye of his servants he doth not release him but makes him the more slave §. V. The faultinesse and flatteries to women discovered and disswaded NOthing hath more perplexed the animosity of man then the search into the nature and transmission of Originall sinne which the curiosity of woman produced it seemeth God is pleased to punish that first presumption in point of knowledge with a perpetuall perplexity of doubt in the very thing which was then introduced into nature and the onely one of mans own making which he did by yeelding to woman who furnished him the matter whereunto he gave the forme of Originall sinne and ever since they have both conspired to pervert the greatest blessings of their corporall nature into occasions of propagating sin for the same seeds of vain glory spring up upon all invitations The first temptation that prevailed upon woman was her becomming like God and the same tempter seemeth to imploy mans passion to performe his promise so that it is upon his commission men offer all those prophane flatteries by which they worship their passions and yet even all these presumptuous expressions of passion testify that all our love appertaineth to God for these mis-intended excesses unawares set the right superscription upon the addresses of their affections when they set divinity and adoreablenesse as the titles whereunto their loves are directed and so their tongues as it were by instinct declare the property of love to be Gods while they cannot call them lesse then Gods to whom they misgive their love and love which by nature and instinct is so conversant with God may easily slip into this mistake for as when we are bred and habituated to one company we are very apt to call those we speak to by accident by those names which are most familiar to us so love which by nature is most intimate with God when it is by accident diverted to other company seemeth to mistake their names and gives them that which is so imprinted in it and yeeldeth them the same reverence proper to that title thus even the farthest removes of their affections from God are remembrances of their loves being intirely due to him when even the possessed tongues like the evill spirits in the Gospel do testifie Gods right There is nothing sure the devil hateth more then beauty it is so much his contrariety who is all foulenesse and deformity yet there is nothing he flatters so much he serveth it with the supplenes of a Parasite till he gain his ends by it and being the best Artist with a gentle hand he layeth fresh colours of praises on the externall figure of beauty every day whereby Gods Image is quickly so covered as they who admire it most take no notice unlesse it be profanely of any such character upon it and the Glasse this servant holdeth to Women makes them no reflex but of those vain colours of flatteries which he hath laid upon the Figure and thus as at first he deceived woman by credulity in expectance now he seemes to delude her by confidence that shee is possessed of all his ascriptions to her and beauty set under this burning glasse of praises and admirations easily lighteth selfe Love in the heart which is a flame catches at all materials that are offered to entertain it nor is there any thing so apt to soment self-selfe-love as that Straw and Stubble of light prayses which the passions of others cast upon it Whence it is that prophane lovers do as the Prophet saith Walke in the light of their own fire and in the sparkles which they have kindled while abusing the liablenesse of woman to selfe-love and vanity they are continually striking fire out of their fancies upon this tinder that is straining their wits to cast excessive praises upon this so taking Subject of Womans beauty wherein men should be very temperate knowing how little a sparke fireth the whole Wood and turneth all the goods of Nature into jewels for Pride and Vain-glory the flame whereof is so deceitfull as when we believe it polnteth upward to the honour of our Maker it tendeth downward to the centre of fire without light for the fire of self-love as it is kindled by the breath of the Father of Lies so it partaketh of the quality of his flames to be without light since it keepeth us in darknes to our selves and imper-ception of our own true dimensions
Wherefore it must needs lye as a heavier charge upon men then they usually account it the breaking this bruised Reed by pressing so much flattery upon it for the aptnes which beauty hath to raise selfe-love may be reputed an allay of the naturall blessing thereof it may be this propensity to selfe-deceiving is set as another Fine upon womans head for her first fault and the facility of her minds conceiving and the pleasure of bearing this spirituall issue of selfelove is another kind of judgement upon her first credulity and to be thus endangered in her soule by the pleasure of her best materiall property which is beauty seemeth a greater penalty then the sorrow of her other labour Upon which ground Lovers do likely treate at first by Parly to introduce selfe-love into the heart by the Presents of flatteries and certainly more are betrayed by Natures intelligence with the subtilty of adulation then taken by the breach of interest For indeed self-selfe-love in woman hath a strange quality the more it perswades her to over-value her selfe the more it tempteth her to cast her selfe away and so men cheapen their bargain most by commending what they would have Therefore let not even those who without any designe do suffer their tongues to ruâ—ne loose by fashion in the praises of Womens graces and beauties thinke this aymelesse roving of their fancies altogether innocent though they pretend only to spring and put up their good humours and not to set and take their affections for convertly they undermine vertue though they lay not a Traine to blow it up The Tempter never wanteth ministers that watch hearts as they grow hollow and void of humility to fill them up with vanity and then the Mine is too easily sprung so many may be guilty of filling of hearts with Pride and self-selfe-love while they meant only to empty their own fancy and thus their wits serve the Tempter as Jonathans Page did his master for they carry Arrowes which the Devill shootes upon Design though they are not privie to the intention It is no wonder that fraile woman should be so much deceived in the colours and features of all their good qualities since the Devill and Man joyne and study nothing so much as to make them flattering reflexes of their persons and powers of their mind and so woman is entertained commonly in her first manner of delusion for that is still taken from her which shee believeth is given her the being like God for her innocence is a much better resemblance of God then mans vain adoration But let not men thinke they have an easie account to make for all those levities which they expose so handsomely as womens eyes are deceived by those false lights for that which will prove an aggravation of mens faults will serve as an extenuating circumstance for womens defence their wit and dexterousnes may deduct somewhat from the guilt of womans trespasses for she may plead now some commiserablenes by saying the man who was given me as my sentence to obey deceived me and as one of the reasons given why God did compassionate the fall of Man and not of Angels is that they sinned without any exteriour sollicitation so certainly abused woman shall find this circumstance as some intercession for her the being assaulted by a forreigne power of temptation which may move God the easilyer to call such to him as Christ did the Woman who had a spirit of infirmity so long upon her that tyed her from looking upward and Christ giveth this reason for his calling her when she did not it seemeth thinke on him that she was bound by Sathan and she is a good figure of the infirmity of her Sex which is easily overcome and bound by the violence of exterior temptations wherefore God doth more easily commiserate their fallen frailties and calleth them with more pitie then he doth the stronger Sex which have the crime of abusing their strength towards the others defection Wee can but hope that the Samaritane Lover was comprised in the conuersions of her towne we are sure of her sanctification and we have little reason to hope of the adulterers remission when the Woman found such commiseration in Christ so as we may conclude God is more indulgent to the infirmity of woman extenuated and modified by the exterior pressure of temptation then he is to the infidelity of man who is as it were trusted with a charge of superiority rather to succour then supplant the weaknes of that Sex Admitting this they who are so licentious in all their entertainments of Women should remember sometimes the penalty Christ hath set upon the scandalizing of little ones for there are few women that are not alwayes children in this point of being able to beare fond praises and adulations without enfeebling and lightening their minds so as all those levities which the fancies of men vapour out in their conversation with these little ones are Mill-stones which they are insensibly hanging upon their own necks while they are thus scandalizing them that is while they are leaning and pressing upon the infirmity of nature that way it standeth already bowed And since humane nature is of so fraile a constitution as the purest blood of it is the easilyest tainted we ought to be the more sober and temperate in treating and entertaining the most infirme part of it which is Beauty with the delicacies of praises since by nature it is so apt to make excesses upon such diet If we consider how profuse and inordinate even the most reserved Lovers are in this entertainment we may easily sentence even this light riot to be poyson to piety and devotion which saith with the Psalmist I will take heed to my wayes that I sinne not with my tongue what can then be answered for them who take care of their tongues only to make way for their sinne and since we are to account for idle words methinks that order should easily determine never so slight a passion to be inconsistent with Religion for we know they are the aliment and life of all such excesses and certainly no idle words are so hard to answer for as upon this subject of vain love Upon other occasions many vapouring extravagancies are like squibs thrown up and breake in the aire above the heads of the company and so offend no body but upon this purpose they are likely Traines laid to take fire and worke some ill effect so that idle words upon the ground of passion grow not as Weeds wild out of the pregnancy of the earth but are set as poysonous plants with design of making venemous compositions How heavy these light words will lye upon them let every one judge by this rule that they are to be accounted for at the same price each one setteth upon them for just as much as they would have them passe whether they be taken or no at that rare by those they would put them off
to viz. whether they make that cozening advantage by them or no with the creature they must answer for as much to the Creator as they projected to make of them and thus as the Prophet saith As much Wind as they have sowed so much Tempest they shall reape §. VI. Presumption upon our vertue discussed and the danger thereof remonstrated THere are many Lovers who when they find no direct design of impurity at first in their passions conclude them competent with their salvation and care not how neare the wind they steere nor how many boards they make as long as they believe they can reach the Port with this wind which is so faire for their senses therefore they pretend they need not stand so strait a course as making Jobs covenant with their eyes nor setting Davids watch over their lips provided they set a guard over their heart that no foule possession enter upon that seate thus do they expose many faire models of their love which in speculation may seem designed according to the square of Religion but how hard it is to build adequately to the speculative measures in this structure none can tell that presume to know it our senses are not inanimate materials that obey the order of the spirits designe but rather labourers which are easily debauched to worke contrary to the measures and rule of the Spirit hence it is that they who will undertake in this case all they can argue possibly for humane nature render it impossible by their undertaking it for they reckon not their presumption as any impediment which in the practise as being an irritation of God out-weighs all the other difficulties and the more alwayes the lesse it is weighed in the designe therefore as Solomon saith The wise man declineth evil and the foole heapes on and is confident The beliefe of impossibility is the most prudent supposition in such experiments as cannot be essayed without some desperate exposure of our selves it may be demonstrate by reason that we may have halfe of our body over a precipice so the centre of the weight be kept in an exact aequilibrium that part which is pensile can never weigh down the other which is supported but we should thinke one mad that would try this conclusion when the least motion changeth the Position and consequently destroyeth the practicer of this speculation so those that pretend to keept their soules equally poised in the just measures between piety and prophane love their eyes hanging over the precipice of temptations which do so easily turne their heads and then alter all the positions of their mind adventure upon just such a spirituall experiment He that seeketh danger shall perish in it is attested by the unhappy president of the wisest of men and it is superfluous to instance other testimonies of this truth When David and Solomon the two brazen pillars of the Temple being the direction and fortitude of the Princes of Israel were melted and poured out like water as David himselfe confesseth by the ardors of his flesh and so they seem to stand in holy record as two high eminent markes set upon these sands to advertise the strongest vessels not to venture to passe over them and if Saint Paul that vessel of election after his having seen the beauty of Heaven to possesse his heart thought himselfe hard matched with the Angell of Sathan and cryed out to heaven for helpe against him shall any presume to entertain and cherish this ill Angell and hope to overcome him with flattery and civility for they make this tryall who lodge in their thoughts and serve with their fancies strong impressions of humane beauty and propose to keepe their body in order even by the vertue of such a guest pretending that the very object infuseth a remembrance and reverence of purity With this and the like glittering conceipts do many vain Lovers fondly satisfy and abuse themselves which is to answer the question of the Holy Spirit that the fire they carry in their bosomes preserveth them from being enflamed by it we may fitly say to such in answer from the Prophet God laughs at you when all Gods advices are that there is no security against this bosome enemy but violence and diffidence there is no meane between the flesh's being slave or master this treaty of Friendship between it and the spirit proves but Dalilahs kind holding of Sampsons head in her lap while she is shaving him How often do we see the Spirit thus betraid and lye bound by this confidence And truly all those chaines which vain Lovers forge for the figuring out the powerfulnesse of beauty may be said to be those irons the flesh hath cast off and set upon the Spirit which is truly captivated alwayes by the others liberty This considered let none presume that while they deny the 〈…〉 eyes nothing which they covet they can deny their hearts any undue cupidity for this seemeth such an experiment as if one of the children of Israel should have carryed a fiery Serpent in his bosome presuming that while he looked upon the Brazen Serpent he could not be stung sure such a perverted confidence would not have proved safe to the projector So those who believe while they have the love of God before their eyes they may expose them to all the fiery darts of lustfull eyes seem to tempt God by such a vain presumption these are such of whom we may fitly say with the Apostle that Erring themselves they lead others into errour and have a forme of Godlinesse but deny the Power of it being lovers of pleasure more then lovers of God Let no body then trust to any confederacy between the flesh the spirit which is of humane loves making for of all reconciled enemies the flesh is least to be trusted after the accord and love the least for the arbitration therefore let none believe their souls out of danger because in the first paces of their passion they meet no insolent temptations that face them and declare the danger of their advance for the Devill keepes likely his first Method still with those he findeth in the state of innocence he taketh the shape of the serpent and creeps up by insinuation and then changeth his shape into the figure of his power and this transmigration of the evil spirits from one body into another is truer then the fancy of Pythagoras for we find often this Metamorphosis of the devill from the form of a dove unto a serpent from a lamb into a lion since it is the same spirit that moves in the poetical doves of Venus as was acting in Eves serpent thus what hath at first in our love an innocent form passeth quickly into a venemous nature Wherefore severe caution and repulse of the first motions of our sensitive appetite is the onely guard our soules can trust against our bodyes in this case for certainly many lovers sink into temptations in
back againe in all the circumference to that first point is a question will be answered affirmatively by none but by him who promised man he should become like God for this is an understanding above the straine of humane nature yet I believe there are many lovers seduced by this counsellor who at first designe this innocent re-conveyance of their affections passing through the creature back to their proper place and of many of such projectors we may say as Saint Gregory doth of the Camell in the law that they are cleane in the head but not in the hoof they ruminate well and speculate cleannesse and purity in the rationall part but the feet of their soules which are the sensitive appetites want alwayes their right division because they remaine too intirely carnall and so the whole becomes illegall in the law of grace therefore I may say it will be hard for such Camels to passe in at the narrow gate wherefore I shall advise those well-meaning minds in Christs name He that is thus washed wanteth yet the washing his feet they must indeavor to change and purge their terrestriall affections which are here typified by the feet with as much neatnesse as they can for the impressions of corporeall beauties which at first are but as dust upon their feet if they be let stick upon them do easily turne to such dirt as is not to be got off but by water drawn from the head teares are required to wash off that at last which our breath might have blown off at first Therefore let them remember Solomons admonition in the first straynings and impulses of their frailties thy eyes shall see strange women thy heart shal speak pervers things we must answer then our hearts first question before it multiply arguments with King Davids resolution My heart and my flesh rejoyce in the living God who indeed is the Essence of all beauty and goodnesse and hath such an immensity of them as even they who love not him directly can love nothing under the notion of faire or good that is not a part of him though they be so injurious to God as to cover him with his own light taking the lesse notice of him the more they find of his similitude in the creature they love and honour with his rights in this case we do but like fishes who play and leap at the image of the sun as it is impressed upon the fluencie of their element and take it for the reall substance for when we adore the image and copy of beauty shadowed out to us upon the fluent and transitory superficies of well coloured flesh and blood are we not deluded like fishes with a shining image of beauty superficially delineated upon our own fleeting element and thus as the Apostle saith we are erring and leading into errour §. VII Some scruples resolved about the esteeme of beauty and the friendship of Women UPon what we have discoursed I believe we may conclude that none should flatter themselves with the hope of an agreement or co-habitation of these two divine love and humane passion whereupon we may say that they who treate this accommodation are of Micahs disciples who hope to lodge concordantly together an Idol and an Ephod â—aking only as it were a Cell apart for God and expect as he did to prosper in this concordancy But we know our Law-giver Christ Jesus would not suffer so much as Doves to be traffiqued in the Temple which figureth to us that we must endeavour to dislodge even all our levities and most harmlesse amusements out of our thoughts which are apt to trade and bargain for a part of our hearts that must be kept single and entire to his love Therefore we may much more forceably conclude with the Apostle against the co-habitation of any vain passion What agreement hath the Temple of God with Idols you are the Temples of the Living God But now as I was laying downe my Pen there come some objections from my memory of the worlds humour which hold my hand till I have answered them though it may be I have already strained the patience even of a recovering Reader by the quantity of this prescript Methinks there are many now who like the Pharisees that were in the possession of the pleasure of changing wives reply as they did to Christ upon the decision of that question saying if this strictnes be required in our life with women we are debarred of all friendship and civill conversation with them and it were better there were no beauty if this be the case that we are interdicted a particular preference and estimation of it unto whom I may properly return Christs question for an answer have you not read that the souleof man is the spouse of God And that which God hath joyned so nothing must separate no creature must share any parcell of the heart in such a manner as may question her fidelity which is all the restraint I put upon the spouse but as wives are allowed friendships and familiarities with others which do not impeach the sincerity of their vertue so the soule of man is permitted acquaintances amities and valuations of the creature and proportionate to the excellencies wherewith they are advantaged from the Creator giving the graces of nature a prizall commensurate to their distinct dignities so it be bounded in such termes as do not come within that inclosure of the heart which is Gods property for the Beloved challengeth the heart as a Garden inclosed a Spring shut up a Fountain sealed And yet this integrity of the Spouses love to her Beloved doth not forbid her affections comming abroad and conversing with amiable objects as with her Lord his dependents and retainers which shee may esteem and delight in more or lesse as the stamp of his goodnes is the fairelyer impressed on them Wherefore I do not meane to attaint friendship with beautifull persons meerely upon the suspition of our frailty for such intelligences are requisite to some vocations in the world which may say in the Apostles name we must go out of the world if we do not contract friendship with Women and I hope such may find in this discourse some direction how they may be able to quench all the fâ—ery darts of the enemy who can easily make up his Wild-fire in friendship And in answer of what concerneth the honouring of beauty I professe to esteem the blessing of beauty so much as I designe only by these advises to secure it from the treachery of such a confident as beauty likely trusteth most yet is truly such a one as doth oftenest betray the goodnesse of it this is passion that I detect which is so naturally false to beauty as it subsisteth but by betraying beauty by perverting it into temptation and impurity whereupon I would preferre reason to beauty to have that trusted only which may furnish true joyes enough wherewith to entertain
delight the owners of it shewing what a reall blessing beauty hath by being made by God one of the best opticke glasses for the helpe of mans spirituall eye by report from his corporeall in the speculation of divinity for by this inference of the Wise-man he may argue If we are delighted with these materiall beauties we may judge how much more beautifull and lovely is the Lord and Creator of them adding that by the greatnesse of the beauty of the creatures the heathens were inexcusable that they did not find the truth of one Creator We may remarke a speciall providence of God in the order of nature providing against the pervertiblenesse of this great blessing of beauty for the most vehement cupidity of our nature ariseth not before the use of reason the abuse of beauty and the use of reason are both of an age whereby we have a defence coupled with the time of temptation and our reason when it is seriously consulted for our safety hath the voyce of the holy cryer in the desart and directeth us to a stronger then her selfe which was before her though it appeared after her this is Grace which we may call in to our succour in all the violencies of our nature so as with these pre-cautions I propose beauty to be truly honoured in that highest degree of nobility which God hath been pleased to rank it among his materiall creatures preserving religiously the Prerogative Rights of the Soveraign of our hearts who demandeth not the putting out of the right eye as the Ammonites did for a mark of slavery but proposed it onely as a medicine in case of scandall when the liberty of the whole body is indangered by it whereby we see devotion doth not infringe any of the rights of humanity in the valuation of materiall blessings for in not admitting vain passion it doth rather defend then diminish the liberties of humane nature which are truly inslaved by the tyrannies of passion Now in answer to that question concerning friendship with women I professe to intend so little the discrediting of reall friendship with them as I approve it for an excellent preservative against the contagiousnesse of passion for as passion hath been well said to be friendship runne mad so friendship may be properly styled sober passion since it hath all the spirit and cordiality of the wine of love without the offensive fumes and vapors of it and so doth the office of exhilarating the heart without intoxicating the braine Insomuch as we finde that our friendship with the proprietor of what we are tempted to covet doth often even by the single virtue of morality suppresse those unruly appetites Therefore when the power of Christianity is joyned to re-inforce it we may expect it should much the easilier correct frailty of nature It hath been well said of friendship that it is the soule of humane society and if our friendship hold this Analogy with the soul to be equally intire in every part of the body it is very safe with women if the love be no more in the face then in the feet as long as it is like a soule thus spiritually distributed equally in the whole compound of body and mind it is not in danger of the partiality of passion which never maketh this equall communication of it selfe but lodgeth solely in the externall figure of the body and friendship thus regularly spirituall may find a sensible as well as a lawfull delight in the beauty and lovelynesse of the person for beauty hath somewhat that affecteth and taketh our nature which methinks is somewhat like to that we call the fire or the water in diamonds which are certain rayes of luster and brightnesse that seem the Spirit of the whole matter being equally issued from all parts of it and so there may be a kind of spirit and quicknesse of joy and delight that may shine upon us from the object of a beautifull person whom we may love so spiritually as to consider nothing in the person severed from the whole consistence and virtuous integrity of soul and body no more then we do the fire of a diamond apart from the whole substance Thus beauty may innocently raise the joy of friendship whiles sincere friendship doth suppresse the danger of beauty which is onely the kindling of passion wherefore if it be rightly examined passion which pretendeth to honour beauty more then friendship will be found but to vilifie and debase it for passion useth this diamond but as a flint to strike materiall sparkles of lust out of it whereas friendship lookes upon the fire of this diamond as delighted only with the luster of nature in the substance of it which reflects alwaies the splendor of the Creator unto a Pious ' and religious love But this high Spirituall point of friendship with women where we have no defence by consanguinity against the frailty of flesh and blood is not so accessable as we should presume easily to reach it many loves have stray'd that pretended to set out towards it therefore we cannot be too cautious in this promise to our selves of security in such difficulties for our spirit can make no such friendship with our flesh as to rely upon the fidelity thereof without his own continuall vigilancy wherefore S. Peters advise is very pertinent in these intelligences Converse in feare in this time of your sojourning for otherwise I may presage to you in the termes of the Prophet Evil shall come upon you and you shal not know from whence it riseth for friendship doth often when it is too much presumed upon rob upon the place it did first pretend to guard being easily tempted by the conveniency our senses finde in that trust And as those theeves are the hardliest discovered that can so handsomely change their apparencies upon the place as they need not flie upon it so friendship when it is debaushed into passion is very hardly detected For when it is questioned by Gods authorized examinants it resumeth the lookes and similitude of innocent friendship and so remaineth undiscovered not onely by the exterior inquest but very often it eludeth a slight interior search of our own conscience thereby proving the most dangerous theef in the familiarities with women For this reason I must charge this admission of friendship towards women with this clause of Saint Paul While you stand by saith presume not but feare for in this case we may warrantably invert the rule of Saint John and say that perfect love bringeth in feare wherefore I will conclude this case with Solomons sentence Blessed is the man who feareth alwayes he that hardneth his heart shall fall into mischiefe § VIII The Conclusion framed upon all the premised Discourse and our Love safely addressed NOw then upon these evidences we may fairely cast passion in this charge of Treason against the Soveraign of all our love and consequently all libertine discourse and familiarities with women
may justly be noted as Malignants which legally in Religion ought to be sequestered nay even friendship it selfe with persons to be feared lyeth under some cloud as requiring a continual suspitious eye upon it to keepe it safe from all intelligence with sensual appetites in so much as when it is sincerest it must be watched with great prudence to be kept safe for which cause in stead of all these perillous commerces of our love I will preferre so secure an object to it as Saint Augustine saith of it Love but and do what you will this is the increated beauty of God in which there is not only no feare to be had of our over-loving it but even there is no fear of our not being out-loved by it and so our love is alwayes secured to us Therefore O Soule Why doest thou halt and hesitate about the loving him who must needs love thee faithfully and art so prone to love that which if it love thee at all must do it perfidiously either deceiving thee or some other thou shalt alwayes be unhappy in loving such which if another love thou shalt be offended or if they love another thou shalt be tormented The love of God is exempted from all griefe or care for in his loving of others thou shalt joy and that all may be in love with him thou shalt wish This is the transcendent sufficiency of Gods good that he may love all and be beloved of all without any detriment or diminution of either the lover or the beloved but with a fuller joy of both All other things are infirme scanted and indigent which are not sufficient for the loving of two or the being beloved by two without defrauding of one of them You then that by love seeke contentment why do you love that which even the loving of is disquiet O love him who even in the necessary disquiets of this life can make you happy how idle is it to love such goods which by loving thou deservest to want and not to love that good where the act of loving is the fruition of it for God being beloved becommeth yours other goods when you love you become theirs and so indeed you want even your selfe by such loves God is only to be wanted by not being loved and all other things which you leave for God you find again in his Love O then love that only which alone is all things To conclude all you who have much to be forgiven for other loves transferre betimes all your affections upon him where you may hope with the blessed Penitent To have much forgiven you for loving much Thus only you can hope to attain to the state Saint Paul prescribeth to abstain from all appearance of evill that your whole spirit and soule and body may be preserved blamelesse to the comming of our Lord Jesus Christ and God grant that our soules may meet him with the lamps of the wise Virgins only lighted in them and then we shall be no more in danger of ceasing to love what we should when we enter into our masters joy which is eternall love The fourteenth Treatise The Test and Ballance of Filiall and Mercenary Love In five Sections §. I. Of the value of Love and Gods tolerating some mixture of selfe-respects in it WHen Esdras had cleared to the seduced people that the Law of God could not dispense with their retaining of such strange women of the Land as lay in their bosomes they pleaded for some time to make this painfull divorce saying It was not the worke of a day or two So methinks many who are convinced in this point of the prohibition of this alien and strange conjunction of our Love which is the child of God with vain passion the daughter of the earth pretend that by degrees they will sever this impurity from their loves because it requireth some time and much grace to make this division I confesse it is not the worke of a few good motions or remorses it asketh as it were a melting and liquefaction of our hearts to separate this drosse from the pure substance of love but we are so much furthered towards this operation as the fire we must worke it in costeth nothing but the asking It is that which the Spouse saith are coales of fire and have a vehement flame and hath a speciall vertue to purge and calcine our affections according to the Prophets advice of separating the pure from the impure and we may confidently call for this fire downe from heaven by the Spirit of our master to consume these his enemies the concupiscence of the eye and the concupiscence of the flesh that are the opposers of this purgation and refinement of our hearts which he demandeth of us as silver seven times tryed Reflecting upon the exactnes of this receiver of hearts if we resolve to trade with our loves for the Kingdome of heaven we must examine sincerely what temper of purity is currant with God for as passion doth both lighten and vitiate them in one kind so is there another sort of drossines in our nature which doth often too much imbase our love by an over-allay of selfe respect that rendereth it too mercenary and of too low a value it is very requisite then to be rightly enformed of the Standard by whose purity all our love that passeth for the purchase of the Kingdom of heaven must be tryed tested In our contract for heaven there is a strange singularity since both the paiment and the purchase are one and the same thing differing only in degrees of intension and purification for infirme and imperfect love is our price and love perfected and consummate is our possession namely God who is love is all as love is the best thing even in heaven as well as in earth it is consonantly appointed for the chiefe commerce between them wherefore God asketh but the heart of man even for all himself knowing that the heart in the most entire transaction of it selfe in this life can remit but imperfect and defective love we must examine severely what rates of imperfectnes God admitteth in our affections for in favour of our poverty he accepteth some part of our payment in that which is as I may say the base money of our nature mercenary love which he alloweth for the conveniency of our indigent and decayed estate Methinks by this allusion we may appositely explain what degree of allowablenes mercenary love may be accepted at for as base money is a meanes of commerce between the rich and the poore and is not commonly allowed in payments above some low summe so God in condescendence to the poverty and incommodity of our nature permitteth mercenary love in some proportion to be currant between his plenty and our penury but will not accept our totall discharge in it we may have some selfe-respect in our affections to God that may represent to us our rewards as a beneficiall traffique
and correspondence but if we assigne all our love too partially to the interest of our private blessings we are in danger of losing heaven by trading only for it by reason this kind of love seemeth to treat with God only as he is in heaven not to affect heaven as it is in God and so we may faile of both by this misplacing of them in our desire they who seeke God first are sure to find heaven with him but they who looke at heaven only are not so sure to find God for in this Court the very aspiring to the Kings favour is the acquiring it and we know the having grace and credit is a better security for the making of benefit then the affecting of gaine is an addresse to the attaining of favour This considered we must be advised not to reckon too much upon this baser species of mercenary love for though it be admitted for some part of our account it will not be accepted for the whole summe of our purchase it must be the gold tryed in fire which the Angell adviseth us to provide that must make the greatest part of the price of that precious Pearle for which we traffique and this is filiall love even as pure as wee can refine it in this our â—ordid constitution Wherefore I conceive it will be expedient to lay out some pieces of both these loves that those who desire to discerne their differences may have some facility to weigh their own dispositions by these portions of either of them exhibited as just measures whereby they may judge their due proportions §. II. Mercenary Love defined and the relying much on it disswaded MErcenary Love is that which affecteth God chiefly in order to our own remuneration and so seemes to looke up to heaven rather as on a mirrour of reflexion then as on the essentiall splendor of Gods presence whereby this aspect on God seemes more referred to the sight of our selves in him then to the seeing of him in himselfe this kind of love then savoureth much more of the minds immersion in our senses then of the spirituall nature of the soule which by her own instinct pointeth back to heaven in order to a free returne to God from whom she issued rather then that she is drawn thither by a reflexion on her selfe and the more the soule is abstracted from selfe-respects the more genuine and kindly return she maketh of love which free and ingenuous reaspiring to her own repatriation we terme filiall love which is to love God more fervently for what he is to us by his own nature then for what we are promised to be by his grace which is a due to God who as he is a father to us in so admirable a kind as his love to us not his delight as in other fathers is the occasion of our being so his being rather then his blessings ought to be the object of our love But in our degenerated nature mercenary love seemeth to be the Elder Brother yet as it is the sonne of the Bond-woman so is it not the heire of the blessing though God doth heare the voice of this Ishmael and assignes some allowance to it yet he settleth not the Covenant upon it Filiall Love is our Isaac the issue of a free ingenuous Soule the spouse of God and of that stock Christ as the Apostle saith is born in our hearts and the chiefe blessings of christianity are entailed upon this seed of the Holy Ghost Filiall Love Notwithstanding we must acknowledge this Ishmael of mercenary love to be a legitimate issue though of a servile mother for King David himselfe owneth the Linage of it saying I enclined my heart to performe thy statutes for reward So as I do not censure the matter but advise the regulation of the measure of it For it may be said to be of the nature of Dwarfes which are an imperfection not a perversion of nature and so like them the lesse it groweth the better it remaineth the littlenesse of it making some amends for the infirmity And we may say aptly that this kind of love is permitted us for the hardnes of our hearts for from the beginning it was not so since we know God made the soule to reflect backe upon himself directly as a Beame emitted from his own goodnes and so it was to revert upon him in as direct a line as Rayes are reverberated upon the substance from whence they issue But we know who changed this course of the soule of man and taught her this flexuous serpentine motion of selfe-love in which she seemeth now to revert to God For selfe-love moveth in a posture of indirectnesse and retorâ—â—on winding and looking backe upon selfe-respects yet Gods indulgence is such as he tolerateth this infirme crooked regresse of the soule when by the succour of grace the heart is sollicitous to rectify and straighten the course of our loves reflux bending as little as we can in the obliquity of our nature towards private references and addressing the major part of our wishes in heaven to the glory of God When our hearts do sincerely aime and point at this straight filiall love God like a tender father doth rather compassionate then reproach the wrinesse and indirectness of our paces in this feeblenes of our feet when our hearts are set straight in this way of our loving him as we see fathers deale with little children which they call to them when they beginne to try to go alone when they see them crosse their feet and reele forward in their weake faltering motions sometimes falling by the way they do rather cherish them then chide them for this imbecility so God when he seeth the heart straining forward with the best of our powers towards a simple immediate love of him doth not discourage this infirme staggering of our nature between mercenary and filiall love and in conformity to this his Method with his children God saith by the Prophet I have taught Ephraim to go and taken them by their armes and then in condescendence to our degenerous and ignoble nature he advanceth further and saith I drew them with the cords of Adam with bands of love that is God presenteth us with such attractives as affect most our interested constitutions which are the objects of remuneration and private salary and of these threads made of the fleece as it were of our own nature he vouchsafeth to frame cords to draw us and fasten us to the love of him but we must not take this mercifull indulgence given to our defectuosities as a dispensation for the sordidnes of our loves but rather in a holy effect and contention of gratitude strain to love God the more purely and irrespectively to our selves in regard of the transcendent benignity of this dispensation This supposed we ought to consider mercenary love under the same notion as Saint Paul exhibits to us the Law of Moses as a Preceptor or Tutor to
and formed out of repugnant matter for man must overcome what Angels have not to resist many materiall adherencies incorporate in his senses insomuch as the sonnes of men for the purifying their affections must as it were cease to be themselves and these spirituall substances for the simplifying of their loves need but rest and remaine themselves Wherefore in this ods of natures in this act of loving the difficulty on mans part passeth as an allowance of some disparity in point of finenesse and separatenesse and taking our loves with this allowance they may be thought as currant with God as those abstracted affections facilitated by a more simple nature so that when man sigheth as the Apostle saith as burthened with inviscerate interests longing to put on this pure spirituall vesture of Filiall love this kind of heavinesse of spirit may be said to make his love weight in heaven and indeed the easiest way to lighten this kind of burthen of selfe-respect is to sigh it away by degrees for nothing looseneth and bloweth off more this dust about our hearts then these breathings and aspirations of the soule in a resentment of those impure mixtures the body infuseth into her love to God so that we are as I may say allowed what our nature aboundeth the most in which is sorrow to make up that wherein our love is the most defective which is simplicity and immixture since a pure and sincere sorrow for the mixture and impurity of our affections to this indulgent Father is accepted as a compensation for the defect of pure and Filial love §. IV. Motives to Filiall love drawn from our severall relations to God as also from the dignity and advantages of this sort of love LEt us observe a little under what affecting notions the divine Trinity vouchsafeth to exhibit it selfe to the love of man the first person under that of a father the second of a brother the third of a comforter or a friend so that the love of man may be said to be an act wherein they have all one indentity while they are distinguished into these three obliging relations issuing out of the unity of love thus the deity seemeth to draw it selfe out into these several lines of benevolence to take in all the wayes and avenues to our love since there is no inclination that is not suted and matched by theâ—e agreeable correspondencies if our affections do not so easily ascend to the relation of a father we have that of a brother which is level and even with the current of our naturall love and if it seem to runne too stilly and slow in this channell we have the respect of a friend and comforter to turn it into in which our affections may be said to runne downward in respect of their pleasant current and so to have the quicker motion thus hath the divine charity fitted all the sympathies of our rationall nature with competent and attractive motives to ingage our loves unto it selfe Doth not then this Method prove what God saith by the Prophet What could I do that I have not done for this generation shall man then leave any thing undone that his love may retribute When the Prophet aslaeâ—h in admiration of Gods condescendence What is man that thou art thus mindful of him may we not answer that though man was nothing but by Gods minding him yet now by that act of bounty he is become sonne brother and friend to God Then may we not ask now with greater wonder What is man that he can be unmindfull of God and attend to the loving himselfe who is nothing thereby deducting from his love to God who offered him yet more for his affection the becoming even like himselfe for but loving him all he can and specially when selfe-love which opposeth this integrity reduceth him to worse then nothing surely no body can seriously ponder this state and obligation of man and not cry out with the Prodigall if he have hitherto mispent and dissipated his love Father I am unworthy to look upon thee in this relation and if he have not been such an unthrift neverthelesse if he find much mercenary drosse sticking upon his love let him humble himselfe with the unsetled father in the Gospel confessing Lord I love thee but impurely and do thou purge the impurity of my love and love that calleth in for this succour groweth strong enough by this displicence of his weaknesse This indulgent dispension with our defective love floweth from that gratious relation of friends to the Son of God which dignity seemeth so firmly instated in our nature as the conferrer of it did not degrade even Judas after the forfeiture thereof he was received with the title of friend when he came to renounce all his rights to that concession it seemeth he was yet in a capacity of being restored if he would but have pleaded by love and sorrow for his restauration he might have sold God and yet have injoyed him if he would but have loved him after he had sold him had he instead of casting the price of his dispaire into the materiall temple brought but back his faith and his love to the living temple casting himselfe forward at his feet as a counterfall to recover his falling backward when he fell from them had he then with penitent kisses repai'd unto Christs feet besought the taking off that perfidious impudence which stuck upon his lips we may well believe Christ would have received him in this returne with Friend thou art welcome comming with these kisses to signe the Sonne of man's being the Sonne of God and it is very probable he would then have equalized the good theef O what cannot love obtaine of him who loved us so much as he seemed not to love himselfe in the expression of it Let us then copy this love as well as our disproportions allow us and aspire to such a dilection of him as may seeme a desertion and even an exinanition of our selves which were as the Apostle saith the degrees of his love to us and in this our imitation of his love we have a strange advantage of him for he was faine to take upon him the forme of a servant to expresse his excessive charity and we put on a divine similitude in this our exhibition of pure disinterested love to him for we manifest our partaking of the divine nature in this denudation of our own when our love is refined and purged from mercenary respects And when we penetrate into the divine nature we perceive that we are so farre from losing any thing by this self-post-posure as we lose even no time in point of our remuneration For there is no interim between our loves looking on God for himselfe and the seeing our interests in God since in the same instant our loves look directly upward upon this mirour of the Deity it reflecteth to us our own blessednesse and the lesse we looked for our selves the more we
their own unreconciled hearts an Altar whereon they offer up to Christ crucified all their angers and animosities which have this property of smelling very ill while they are growing and of making an excellent perfume when they are burning and consuming in the fire of Charity God smelleth these divers savors in them in both these conditions and surely S. Paul leaveth us no hope that any act can move God which turneth not upon the Centre of Charity to on◠Brother since even that compassion which should break down our own houses to build up harbors for others and that Faith which did remove our Mountains and our Meadows into the possession of our necessitous neighbors all these actions I say would be but painted schrines wanting the substance of what they figure and represent if Charity were not the engine that carryed all these motions there may be many works that hold this analogy with a tinckling Cymbal the making their sound out of their hollowness the being conscient of this emptiness of sincere Charity may counsel the raising noise and voyce of their Piety by the sound and report of exterior Charities to such the Angel declareth I finde not your works full before my God Nor can we now excuseably mistake in the measures of this Charity since Christ Jesus hath left us impressed and stampt upon his own life a new model of compliance with this new Commandment how unanswerable then is the method of many who in stead of copying this exemplar draw their charity to enemies by their own designs by fitting this figure rather for their own Cabinet then the Church of Christ this is the course of such as form their observance of this precept by the square of their disposition and facility to forgive some particular offences that do not much sting their Nature and allow enemies but such a sort of love as savoreth of contempt which taketh away the taste and gust of Revenge And so this maner doth indeed rather but change the dyet of our Nature then keep her fasting in this precept from all her flattering appetites for her vicious palate relisheth no less scorn and undervalue of enemies then revenge and vindication So that the figure of this Charity is lame and mis-shapen and appeareth not taken off from that mould which we have of our original the form whereof is Loving one another as he hath loved us and in his model we shall not finde the least oblique angle of contempt to enemies and sure though we cannot keep in the forming of our Charity an Arithmetical proportion to that of Christ yet we must observe a Geometrical one in this our conformity which is to say Though we are not able to attain to an equality of his Charity in point of quantity and greatness yet our love may be in some sort at least adequated to his in point of form and proportion loving just so as he did though not just as much as he therefore we are commanded to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect upon this occasion of our demeanor to enemies which signifieth a conformity and similitude not an equality or commensuration to the Divine perfection As little Lodges may be built by the same model of the greatest Pallaces so we are to design our Charity to our enemies by the figure of Christs unto his which excludeth all sort of animosity or malevolence against adversaries and interdicteth all self-reparation by contempt or despection of them which voideth all the merit of sufferance and forgiveness and they who neglect the making their charity like unto that of Christ in these proportions I have explained will finde it so ill done when it cometh to be set by that figure it ought to resemble as it will not be known for Charity so far will it be from becoming eternally like the Original Charity by looking on it when every well copyed Charity shall pass into that configuration §. IV. The inordinateness of our love difficilitateth this Duty dissimulation in this conformity reproached and many benefits derivable from a sincere compliance represented As also presumption upon the Theory of this Duty disswaded THe misapprehension of the Nature of Love seemeth a great occasion of our mindes being so aliened from the love of enemies pleasing objects do commonly strain our affections into such excesses as we often know no love but under the notion of a distemper in the concupiscing faculty and while our affections are accustomed to this inordinateness we can hardly comprehend how love should be compatible with displeasures and contrarieties So that the perversion of our amities induceth this alienation from our enemies Could we then hold love from straining into passion we might easily stay anger from passing into sin as is evidenced by the lives of all those who have discarded the pleasures of this age whom we see keep in their hands so contentedly the injuries and offences thereof We finde it verified in such estates the growing potent when they are infirm and the imitation of receiving Judas with Friend why art thou come they who are past being betrayed by the worlds kisses are beyond the being disordered by the spittings of his ministers But that even those who are not called to this upper story of Christianity may not mistake the nature of this love assigned to enemies by the image of that love they figure due to friends they may be satisfied That we are not enjoyned the same state and composure of minde to the adversaries and offendors as to the friends and allies of our Nature There is a certain inviscerate tenderness of affection growing in our hearts for children and kindred which is a kinde of spring of natural love rising in our mindes and running from thence in our blood through our senses and carrying with it a sensible joy and delectation in such affections This sort of love is not ordained to be communicated to enemies and there is an intimacy and union between friends resulting from an intercourse of mutual sympathy which raiseth a pleasant alteration in the sensitive appetite referring to such correspondencies These sorts of consonancies and kindeness are not assigned by God to the persons of our enemies and maligners this constraint is not put upon our Nature To finde a refreshing air in the furnace of Babylon is a transcendent grace and rarely conferred but upon such as have been polluted with the meats of the Kings Table Those who from their youth have disrelished the vain pleasures and honors of the world may be gratified with this special benediction of being tenderly affected to the persons of enemies and the being solicitous to serve them in conformity to the perfection of our patern our Savior Christ But our precise obligation reacheth no farther then a sincere and cordial remission and forgiveness of all our offendors never seeking the least indirect retaliation upon the persons fame or fortunes of our enemies Upon the deficiency in these points is
part in the connexion though they seem the onely rings and links whereof it is framed Hence is it we so often see unruly and disorderly activity and pursuit of some appropriation occasion a separation from the world as falling out with it upon the rejection of some unduly affected propriety And upon these terms many do often break with the world and retire in defiance of all other company after this defeature of their particular pretence and so in effect they rather flie from the world upon a repulse in their assault then leave it in neglect of what it possesseth Wherefore in this quarrel with the worlds party many do often change their side at first in despight rather then their minde in a sincere distance of their affections from it yet on our first estrangement from the world upon difference with it God is so Divinely compassionate as he doth not upbraid us with our first infidelity in adhering so firmly to the advers party in all our successfulnesses which we take as the pay of his enemies All which truly understood are but the excesses of Gods plenitude who can afford even to his enemies as his waste and redundancy these his temporal Bounties since The earth is his and the fulness thereof Insomuch as the infiniteness of the Divine goodness is very often manifested most in the reception of such as come in to him upon the worlds cashiering of them For God accepts even his enemies Reformado's and preferreth them often to great Trusts in his house We cannot therefore discountenance this breach with the world though at first it be not in direct order to the following of Christ for he to whom St. John forbade the casting out of Devils because he was not of Christs train was notwithstanding authorized by Christ himself God resolveth often in this case of an indirect address to him as Christ answered St. John in the forecited occasion He taketh those to be for him who are not against him for many of such who are but so near Christs side as a declaration against the world he doth often retain and setle in his service S. Pauls Charity was a copy of this his Masters who rejoyced at an accession to Christ whether it were either by pretence or in truth So God is glorified in some degree in many such relinquishments of the world which have at first more animosity then sincerity of Devotion because this defiance hath always some apparence of victory over the world which still gives a kinde of alarm to the worlds party and shews them the contempt of the world standing before them in such a posture as stirs up some reflexion upon the despicableness of it or at least upon the distresses and dangers in it and so moves in some measure towards a consultation on their estates Yet do I not upon this foundation advise any hasty inconsiderate Sequestration of our selves from the world though there are many who like some criminal and Banditi retiring into the the Sanctuary onely for safety have by the frequenting Gods domesticks been sincerely converted into the family and have taken up the arms of the Spirit with which they have combated onely the rest of their life against themselves by continual mortification In this maner many upon civil enmities with the world have in their retreat out of it and taking the Sanctuary of Solitude found by degrees that Sanctification which at first they did not chiefly seek as God said to the Prophet I am sought of those that asked not for me before and I am found of them that sought me not This was the case of many who sought Christ at first meerly for recoveries from incurable diseases by the worlds Art which had given them over and found Spiritual reparations of their Souls above what they projected Many such bedrid Palâ—ies benumb'd and stupified in their passions which are fain to be carried out of the world by the violent hands of divers afflictions being brought to Christ into such solitudes wherein he doth most manifestly reside receive not onely the cure of their passions which they sought chiefly at first but are often staid and scaled with a Divine impression of the contempt of the whole world and a sincere consecration of themselves to Spiritual affections This happeneth when God in some rare cases useth instrumentally the worlds sharp tools as fit and proportionate to work on some stony hearts wherein his Image is much defaced which he hath notwithstanding from all eternity designed for figures to stand in his house But such are precedents of Gods Mercy to reverence onely not to relie upon for God as the Prophet saith doth often take out a stony heart and put one of flesh in the room of it whence the Apostle telleth us He hath mercy on whom he will and whom he will he hardeneth yet he will harden none but such as like fire-stones resist and grow harder by the heat of his love or the flames of his judgements which he hath first applyed to soften them They who study Gods hand in all the various designs and colourings of his Works shall discern it even in all those pieces of Providence which are of such different maners as have made many mistakes in the world upon this Conclusion §. III. How God worketh and how the Devil countermineth in this vocation wherein a safe course is directed THere is no notion under which we can more apply look upon God then as a Physician to our weak Nature He who knows all the properties of Actives and Passives applyes to all constitutions their proper remedies and as some Medicines are not proper both for Beasts and Man in regard of their different tempers So for brutish sensual persons there are required stronger Drugs then to more reasonable and ingenious dispositions The Word of God makes this difference often between voluptuous and sensual habitudes and between pious and vertuous constitutions calling the one Dogs and the other Children wherefore as the Physicians minister to some tempers onely such Drugs which they call Benedicta blessed simples which work kindly and yet effectually upon them to others they are fain to prescribe Minerals and more violent Ingredients to move them So there are some such insensible habits of minde as Gods Benedicta his Blessings and his gentle voyce of vocation doth not move but their strong Nature rather works upon them and alters them turning them into the nourishment of their passions while all their temporal Benedictions are converted into aliment of their sensualities Therefore to such indurate tempers God ministers often rude and violent Minerals so unprepared as they seem to the world to be poysons these we may call Affronts Losses Dishonors and all kinde of Disappointments and these violent compositions work upon their Natures and alter it by which their cure is performed so that oftentimes the worlds Injuries prove Râ—ceits ministred when it intends ruines For while the enemies of our
Nature viz. all kinde of crosses and vexations seem to chase us out of the field they convey us into that retreat whereunto God hath designed us This is a frequent contrivement by Gods Providence to secure his friends by the chase and pursuit of his enemies and theirs as he preserved David from acting against him by the malevolence of the Princes of the Philistines who thought they had shamed him by rejecting and casting him out of their Troops when indeed they preserved him innocent from staining himself in the blood of his Brethren So God excites very familiarly the adversities of this world to remove and seemingly to expel his servants out of it to deliver them from the guilt of loving the world providing thus against their longer engagement with his Adversary who is the Prince of this World And as God vouchsafes to serve himself sometimes of the storms which the Prince of the Ayr raiseth in this world by making them carry such wracks upon his coast of Solitude as he designs to save with the loss onely of their temporal fraights So the Prince of the World doth sometime make use of this Shore for the casting away of many to whom he shews it as a secure harbor or shelter which they have under their Lee and can reach when they please upon any distress of weather And thus as an Angel of Light he promiseth this Sanctuary of retiring to God as a security which cannot fail even after all the provocations of him whereby he perswades many to sport themselves with him in his large alleys in the days of their youth and fortune Leave no flower ungathered as the Wise man says of thâ—s season And when either the winter of Nature or of Fortune hath withered and blasted all those sweets then it is time enough to retire to Gods cover for shelter who refuseth no sort of Refugiats These insinuations do work with many so as to embolden them to live profusely upon the present stock of their Time and Fortune with this purpose of taking Sanctuary either at some assigned time of their Age or upon any pressing Contingency Hence is it that taking their Councel of Gods Enemy he presents such Clients to him as have robb'd him all their life in a purpose to repair to him for protection against the Law and exemption from his hand of Justice and thus in effect the house of Prayer is turned and designed by such Projectors to be but an harbor of Theeves How often doth the Prince of Darkness amuse many with this falacy who walk with him in his large alleys even by this light he shews them by which they conceive to see a safe issue out of this broad way into the narrow paths of the Kingdom of Light But alas how many lose themselves in this labyrinth and are founder'd in this calm Sea of the world even while they have this coast of retreat and Solitude in their eye And how many others who are entred into the Port sink there by those leaks they bring in with them never being able to stop those overtures in their mindes through which worldly affections and passions soak continually into their thoughts some ill habit or other still keeping intelligence with the world And for this cause many either revolt back openly to it or else hold some private treacherous correspondence with it in a nauseousness and distaste of all Spiritual aliment and a tepid irresolution between breaking off and holding on that course and remaining in this nauseousness we know how disagreeable this temper is to Gods stomack so that many presuming to take this Water of Tryal being polluted by a long co-habitation with temporal loves it proves to them rather putrifaction then purgation and their mindes in stead of a Spiritual conception and improvement break out into an unsound and fruitless dissipation Likewise as this deceitful project of relinquishing the world is often preferred by the Father of Lyes to many sensual and brutish lives so me thinks it hath this property common to many Animals who believe when they have hid their head that their whole body is covered because such whom St. Jude calls bruâ—e beasts seem to conclude that when their bodies shall be retired and sequestred from the world their mindes are removed and estranged from it But they quickly finde the brutality of that opinion by the blows and wounds wherewith the Images of the world assault and charge their mindes by this disabuse they perceive her nakedness and exposure to all those vexations from which they thought themselves guarded and covered and God who regards only the posture and nearness of the heart to him doth adjudge a punishment sâ—ted to this presumption in revenge of their promising themselves the being able to carry their mindes out of the world into his Sanctuary at their own assignments he often receives the body onely and leaves the minde still in this habitual loosness making the bodies division in this separation from the world the revenger of this presumption of adventuring to dispose of one of the most dear properties of Grace namely the retreat of our mindes by the right of Nature For nothing is more peculiar to Grace then to impart the joy and peace of the Spirit in a state of contradiction to all the cases of the Flesh It is in some sort a design of Simony to expect the gifts of the Holy Spirit upon the exchange of a local transaction of our persons Holy King David had not onely stept into the way but was running in the way of God when he had his heart dilated and enlarged unto him so as his Flesh and his Spirit both joyned in an exultation in the living God Therefore it is very useful Animadversion not to relie upon the Covenants of our own private Spirit for the conveyance of this so happy condition to us of a godly retreat and â—eposure of our selves since the more Nature promiseth the less interest she hath in it this self-arrogation being an evidence against our title to this possession of Grace Upon these considerations I may advise such as are come to labor under the burthen of their mundanities which they have been less cautious in loading themselves with in respect of this final discharge they have proposed to remember when they come to Christ to be disburthened that precedent in the Gospel which relates aptly to their cases which is that of the ten Lepers who when they came to Christ stood after off and lifted up their voyces with JESUS have mercy upon us the consciousness of their pollution kept them at that reverend distance And Christs answer in this case is a very pertinent direction to such Spiritual Lepâ—â—s Go and show your selves to the Priests take advise of Gods Ministers and their opinions of the clâ—anness and purity of their intentions before they venture into the communion of this Sanctuary of holy Solitude otherwise their present offering may prove of as
s 2. Inconstancy of vain affections p. 41. s 2. Incredulity in prayer a mental stammering p. 83. s 1. Imitation of Princes is very familiar for the reasons of gain p. 91. s 2. Iustice for our first fault requireth the love of enemies p. 272. s 2. Injustice prospering not to be wondred at p. 307. s 2. Imperfection of Mans Will in many election consisting with his liberty p. 325 326. Iealousies nature treated and the good use of it in Gods love p. 155. sect 1 2. Instincts of expressing our passion sheweth our loves to be due to God p. 161. s 2. L LOve justifieth the Incarnation of God p. 13. s 3. Love from man enjoyned by the Incarnation of God p. 13. s 2. Love rendring it self to Devotion is not ill treated p. 38. s 4. Love to enemies forgot in the Law and revived in the Gospel like the fire of the Altar after the Captivity p. 266. s 2. Liberty rather given to our Souls then restraint made by the Precept of loving enemies p. 267. s 1. Love of enemies proveth a counterpoison to the forbidden fruit p. 269. s 3. Love to enemies misinterpreted in a figurative sense by many p. 273. s 2. Love to enemies not ordains as they are simply enemies p. 275. s 2. Love irregular causeth our aversion to the love of enemies p. 282. s 1. Liberty dear to Humane Nature p. 339. s 2. Learning how it becometh most useful towards consolation p. 348. s 1 2. Liberty of minde gained overpays the captivity of the body p. 354. s 1 2. Love of the world recovereth often after our having wounded it by Grace or Reason p. 376. s 1. Lecture proved necessary for the passage to Contemplation p. 394. Liberties of jesting how they are allowable p. 131. s 1. Liberties indecent though little disfigure the reputation of women p. 147. s 3 Liberties of scurrility excused by the presumers in them p. 137. s 2. Love though mercinary how to be accepted p. 182. M MAns nobility by creation p. 2. s 3. p. 3. Mans excuse of his fall p. 3. s 2. Mans self-deceit p. 6. s 1. Meditation conducent to peace of Spirit p. 58. s 2. Meditation on the changeableness of all the pleasures we enjoy serveth towards the securing our happiness p. 61. s 3. Moral Philosophy answereth not to the promises of Speculation in our necessities p. 62. s 1. Mans reason for his forgiving the first injury of women p. 275. s 1. Morality more studied at Court then Religion p. 117. s 1 2. Moral civility useful to improve the zeal of religious duties p. 118. s 1. Mirth a great disguise of Medisance p. 128. s 2. Morality single is insufficient for our support in great pressures p. 342. s 3. Moral Philosophy set in a due order for consolation in distresses p. 345. Meditations on the vain figure of this world p. 361. s 1. Meditation on eternity a relief against all temporary pressures p. 367. s 1. Mortification of the flesh requisite for all acts of pure Speculation p. 392. s 2. Medisance most entertained by the encouragement of great persons p. 129. s 1. Mercy of God misconâ—â—ived p. 156. s 2. more 158. s 1. Mercy rightly understood p. 158. s 〈◊〉 Mercinary love how far allowed p. 185. Mercinary love of the nature of dwarfs p. 185. s 1. N NVns eminent purity p. 18. s 〈◊〉 Nature gives some light towards the sight of God p. 1â— s 2. Nature discredited single for happiness p. 57. s 2. Naturalists shall rise up in judgement against ill Christians p. 277. s 3. O OPinion of Temporalities confuted p. 7. s 2. Order given by God for direction in Religion p. 28. s 1. Opinion why it prevaileth often above Truth p. 68. s 2. Obligation in point of love to enemies p. 283. s 2. Orders of Providence not discerned occasioneth all our wonder p. 305. s 1 2. Order described p. 327. Order for disposing our time pleasantly and usefully in Imprisonment p. 351. s 1. Order of the three Persons of the Trinity residing in a Contemplative Soul p. 389. Order of rising up to Contemplation p. 391. s 1. P PRide first introduced and how continued p. 3. s 3. Philosophers deceived in the Divinity p. 21. s 2. Piety advised in all religions p. 24. s 2. Passion it self maketh use of Religion to express it self p. 32. s 2. Passion transferred may honor God in a double respect p. 33. s 1 2. Piety doth the office of a Law-giver not of an Insulter p. 35. s 3. Piety not incompatible with pleasure p. 37. s 2. Pleasures allowed by Devotion p. 41. s 1 2. Propriety in temporal goods abateth the value and Piety repairs it p. 42. s 2. Philosophers variances concerning happiness p. 51. s 2. Prayer assigned for the way to finde truth and consequently happiness p. 79. s 2. Prayer must be sincere and fervent to become officious p. 82. s 2. Prayer is often accepted when the suit is not accorded p. 84. s 1. Princes vertues may make Courts schools oâ— Piety p. 91. s 1. Princes especially obliged to piety p. 91. s 2. Prudence for Courtiers p. 97. s 1. Praises allowable in many cases and how they are to be applied p. 110. s 2 3. Princes obliged to forgive personal injuries p. 280. s 1 2. Providence not to be judged of by pieces p. 295. s 2. Prayer against Gods menaces allowed the Prophets p. 301. s 1. Providence seemeth as it were disguised upon earth p. 359. s 2. Presumption on our power to resist the temptations of Beauty is dangerous p. 166. s 2. Q THe quality of peace expectable in this life p. 84. sect 2. The quality of private conditions towards the discernment of the worlds instability p. 105. s 1. Quarrels with the world do sometime occasion good vocations to sanctity p. 328. s 3. The qualities of prophane passion p. 152. s 2. The quality of temptations slighted at first as easily masterable p. 171. s 2. R REason much degenerated in our faln Nature p. 〈◊〉 sect 2. Reason injured by opinion p. 7. sect 2. Repaired Nature by Christ exalted above the original innocence p. 15. s 1. p. 16. s 2. Revenge contrived unto piety p. 17. s 2. Reasons course up to Divinity p. 21. s 1. Repentance may convert even our sins into good fruit p. 30. s 2 3. Remedies extractable out of the meditation of our frailty p. 60. s 1. Riches possessed and improved towards piety p. 70. s 2. Religion lightly considered may perplex us in the judgement of events but more profoundly looked into setleth on us p. 292. s 3. Religion the onely refuge in the perplexity of advers events to a good cause p. 302. s 2 3. Reason of distracting events not to be hoped for in this world p. 304. s 2. Retreats out of the world turned into delusions by the Devil p. 332. s 2. Reason single vainly overvalued by the Philosophers p. 340. s 2 3. Remedies drawn
out of the evils themselves of our life p. 362. Remedies for the correcting indecent liberties in jesting p. 132. s 2. Remedies against foulness of speech p. 142. s 1. S SIn vainly excused p. 4. sect 2. Solomons glories are ascribed to a special reason p. 8. s 2. Sin removeth man more from God then his own first nullity p. 12. s 2. Sensual men excluded from happiness p. 55. s 1. Success ought not to assure us of the goodness of a Cause p. 294. s 1. Sorrow allowed in ill successes p. 298. s 2. Solitude described and treated truly p. 316. Sanctity in great persons affords more communicative influences then in other p. 120. s 1. Sociableness of Mans Nature in order to common good p. 327. Spiritual joys suppresseth the love of the world p. 376. s 2. Speculation distinguished from Contemplation p. 397. s 1. s 2. Sensible delight afforded by Contemplation p. 401. s 1. Self-love keeps us in darkness p. 163. sect 1. Self-love a kinde of punishment of women p. 163. Self-loves motion p. 185. s 1. T TRuth defined and duly valued p. 66. s 2. Truth to be sought in all temporal fruitions and to be found as the ground of our happiness p. 68. s 4. Truth impugned by the Devil to seduce our happiness p. 74. s 2. Temptations most frequent in Courts p. 100. Temptations of Courts resistable by Prudence p. 100. s 2. Temptations against the love of enemies p. 272. s 1. Toleration of injuries easeth more then revenge p. 277. s 2. Temptations in Courts how to be overcome p. 122. s 2. Time to be weighed in Solitude p. 352 s 3. Time weigheth heaviest upon when it is least applied to particular designs p. â—5â— Time neglected brings us in debt even of our eternity p. 369. s 〈◊〉 Temptations to be resisted at the first approach p. 160. s 2. Temptations of the Flesh dangerous though they appear little at first p. 169. s 1. V VAnity in our fancy argued p. 5. sect 1. s 2. Vanity of riches beauty p. 7. s 1. Voluptuous persons exceptions against Devotion p. 34. s 3. Vanity of Philosophers concerning the power of Reason p. 52. s 3. Vses to be made of the Stoicks Opinions p. 54. s 1. Verities intended do not dull the joys of our sensitive appetite p. 75. s 2. Vnhappiness mans own fault always p. 80. s 2. Vulgar errors in judging of Causes p. 297. s 1. Vocations supernatural to Solitude solaced by God p. 319. s 3. p. 320. s 1. Vanities do truly captivate those they pretend to give liberties p. 353. s 1. Vniversal changes may confort all private calamities p. 358. Vanities of this world sacrificed to God afford a sweet savor p. 380. s 1. Vocations respectively allowed more or less application to the world p. 383. VV THis world was never meant as an object of mans love p. 377. s 2. The worlds contempt is ordained by God by his subjecting all things in it to Man p. 379. s 2. The world easily contemnable by the consideration of Christs demeanor in it p. 381. s 1. Women obliged especially to much purity in conversation p. 146. s 2. Words equivocal wrested to an unclean sence very blameable p. 143. s 3. Women prejudiced by flatteries p. 164. s 2. Women more commiserated then men in faults occasioned by mans temptations p. 164. Z ZEal and Charity make the best temper of a Religion page 26. sect 2. FINIS The Printer to the Reader BEhold a Printer extraordinary both in his fault and his confession who acknowledges the having offended all the severall parties of these times can think of no excuse unlesse it be the influence of the erring Planets of this Conjuncture raigning over our Presses working Errata so commonly either in the matter or the form of our Trade and the piety of the Author having preserved his Pen untainted the malignity of our Stars hath prevailed much upon our Pensils in miscopying his Pen Insomuch as the Author is the onely abused person in this new Book who having for some yeers past enjoyed no liberty but that of his Pen wee must confesse it a great injury in us to have so often restrained his sense in this excellent piece of spiritual Inlargement his Prison hath presented the whole Nation For my indulgence from the Author I will take sanctuary in his own charitable Treatise of forgiving Injuries And for my pardon from the Reader I may resort to a contrary pretence namely the merit of having been the deliverer to him of so over-weighty a Piece of Piety Reason as may beare a deduction of more sense then I have clipt from it and consequently the delight of the Reader may well endure the allay of so much pains as the looking often upon my Errata ERRATA PAge 3. line 35. after Wiseman sayes adde What art thou proud of dust and ashes p. 5. l. 15. r. momentarinesse p. 5. dele Rom. 8. in the marg p. 6. l. 25. r. often p. 7. l. 15. r. this manifest p. 7. l. 19. r. futile p. 8. l. 18. r. clarity p. 8. l. 20. dele I. p. 8. l. 24. r. become p. 9. l. 25. r. â—er p. 10. l. 8. after seen r. the. p. 17. l. 2â— r. receiveth p. 23. l. 9. r. giant p. 27. l. 21. r. them p. 31. l. 19. r. wherein p. 35. l. 5. r. mutiny p. 37. l. 12. r. immaculate l. 14. r. born p. 40. l. 25. dele not p. 45. l. 35. after also r. there p. 48. l. 15. r. my fetters p. 50. l. 16. r. treat p. 56. l. 7. put the Coma at point p. 58. l. 23. r. portable p. 61. l. 10. r. we should p. 63. l. 17. r. habit l. 38. make the full point at delighted p. 64. l. 3. r. no exterior p. 65. l. 20. r. debasement l. 18. r. his issue p. 66. l. 31. r. present p. 76. l. 33. r. but in p. 88. l. 12. after method r. they p. 89. l. 18. r. to this p. 90. 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