far forth as our Lord hath been graciously pleased to give it and is still pleased to continue it Now in this doth the third degree of humility consist saving that no poor words of ours can arrive to express the profunditie and great perfection which is therein notwithstanding all that which we can say sometimes after one manner and sometimes after another and not only is the practise hereof hard but even the speculation also This is that annihilation of a mans self which is so often repeated and recommended by the masters of spiritual life this is that holding and coufessing a mans self for unworthy and unprofitable to all purposes Which is set down for the most perfect degree of Humility This is that distrust of a mans self and that being still depending upon God which is so recommended to us in holy Scripture This is that holding himself in no account at all whereof we are ever talking and hearing but O that we might find it once for all in our very hearts That we might understand and feel in very truth and practically as a man who sees things with his eyes and touches and feels them with his hands that for as much as is on our part we neither have any thing but misery nor can do any thing but commit sin and that all the good which we effect or work we neither exercise it nor have it of our selves but only of God and that the honor and glory of all is his And if with having said all this you yet understand not fully the perfection of this degree of humility do not wonder at it for this is a very high peece of Divinity and therfore it is not strange though it be not so easily understood A certain Doctor saith very well that it happens in all arts and sciences that every body arrives to know such things as are common and plain but as for such others as are curious and choice they are not to be reached by every hand but by such only as are eminent in that science or art And just so it is in our case for the ordinary and usuall things belonging to any vertue are understood by al the World but such as are extraordinary and choice and nice and high can only be comprehended by such as are eminent and fully possessed of that vertue And this is that which Laurentius Justitinianus saith namely That no man knows well what humility is but he vvho hath received the gift of being humble from God And from hence it also grows that in regard the Saints were indued vvith such a most profound Humility that they thought and said such things of themselves that we who fall so far short of them cannot understand exactly what they say but their speeches seem exaggerations as namely that they were the greatest sinners of the whole world and the like where of I will speak ere long But if we cannot say or think such things as they no nor even understand them it is because we have not arrived to so great Humility as theirs was and so we understand not the curious and subtill parts of this faculty Procure you to be humble and to grow up in this science and to profit therein more and more and then you vvill understand hovv such things as those may be said vvith truth CHAP XXIX The third degree of Humility is further declared and how it grows from thence that the true humble man esteems himself to be the least and worst of all TO the end that vve may yet better undestand this third degree of Humility and may ground our selves vvell therein it vvill be necessary for us to go back and take up the matter neerer the fountain And as according to vvhat vve said before all our natural being and all the naturall operations vvhich vve have vve have from God because we were nothing and then we had no power either to move our selves or to see or hear or tast or understand or will but God who gave us our natural being gave us these faculties and powers and we must ascribe our being as also these namral operations to him so in the self same manner and with much greater reason must we say in the case of a supernatural being and of the works of grace and that so much more as these are greater and more excellent than those We have not our supernaturall being of our selves but of God In sine it is a being of savour and grace and therefore it is so called because out of his meer goodnes he added that to our natural being Ephes 2 3. We were born in sin we were the children of wrath and the enemies of God who drew us out of that darknes into his admirable light as the Apostle Saint Peter saith 1 Pet 2.9 Of enemies God made us friends of slaves Sons from being nothing worth he brought us to be acceptable in his own eies And the cause why God did all this was not for any respect either of our merits past or services to come but only for his own bounty and mercy and through the merits of Jesus Christ our only Lord and Saviour as Saint Paul saith Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ Now then as we were not able to get out of that nothing wherein we were into the natural being which now we have nor were able to perform the acts of life nor see nor hear nor feel but all this was the gracious gift of God and to him we must ascribe it all without taking the glory of it to our selves so could we never have gone out of that darknes of sin wherein we were and in which we were conceived and born if God of his infinite goodnes and mercy had not drawn us out from thence nor could we now perform the works of spiritual life if he gave us not his grace to that end For the vertue and worth of good works grows not from that part thereof which they have from us but from vvhat they have from the grace of our Lord just so as the legal value which curtant money hath it hath not from it self but from the stamp or coyn And therefore we must not ascribe any glory at all to our selves but all to God from whom both our natural and supernatural being is derived carrying ever that of St Paul both in our mouths and in our hearts I am whatsoever I am by the meer grace of God But now as according to what we said God not only drew us out of our nothing and gave us that being which now we have but after we are created and have received our being we do not subsist in our selves but God is ever sustaining upholding and conserving us with his hand of power that so we may nor fal into that former profound Abisse of nothing from whence he took us before in the same manner is it also in the case of our supernatural being for
whatsoever we are possibly able to suffer in this life is meerly nothing in comparison of that which any one of all our sins hath deserved Will you perhaps conceive that he deserves not to be dishonored and despised who hath dishonored and despised God do you not think it to be reason that he be lightly esteemed who set light by God Will you not confess that that will which durst offend the Creator of the world should never from thence forward do any one thing which it pretends or desires in punishment of so vast a presumption It serves also for a spur towards good works and to keep a man from being negligent and to make him walk on with fear and humilitie in the sight of God begging pardon and mercie of him as we are advised to do by the wise man Blessed is that man who always fears And be not without fear even concerning those sins of which you have repented This consideration of our sins is a very efficatious means to make us put little value upon our selves and to be ever humble and to live as it were even under ground for there is much to be gotten and digged up from thence If besides we would stay and consider the defects and wounds which original sin hath caused in us how copious would that matter be which we might find therein for our humiliation How is our nature perverted and corrupted by sin For as a stone is inclined by the natural weight thereof to fal downward just so by the corruption of original sin we have a most active inclination to love honor and profit and satisfaction of our sence and we are extreamly awake towards all those temporal things which concern us but stark dead towards those others which are spiritual and divine That commands in us which in al reason were to obey and that obeys which should command And to conclude under the out-side and posture of men the appetites of beasts ly concealed and we have hearts which grow groveling towards the ground the heart of man is wicked and inscrutable and who can arrive to the malice thereof The deeper you dig into this wel the greater abominations will you discover therein as was shewed in that figure to Ezekiel And if now we wil apply our selves to consider our present defects we shal find our selves very full of them for these grow ever out of our own store How slippery are our tongues and how il guarded are our hearts How inconstant are we in our good purposes and how earnest for our own interest and contents How desirous are we to fulfil our appetites How ful are we of self love How strong in the abetting of our own judgment and wil How lively do we still find our passions how intire our bad inclinations and how easily do we permit our selves to be transported by them St. Gregory saith very wel upon those words of Job Wilt thou break a leaf driven too and fro Job 13.25 that a man is with much reason compared to the leaf of a tree For as a leaf is turned and tost with every wind so is man by the wind both of his passions and temptations Somtimes he is troubled with anger somtimes he is dissolved with vain mirth somtimes he is transported by the appetite of avarice somtimes of ambition and somtimes of lust somtimes he is hoysed up by pride and somtimes cast down by inordinate fear And so said the Prophet Isaiah As the leaves of trees are shaken and carried away by the wind sâ— are we assaulted and subdued by temptations We have no hability or strength in virtue nor in executing our good purposes but indeed we have enough for which we may humble and confound our selves and that not only by the consideration of our miseries and sins but by the weighing also of those works which seem in our eyes to be very good For if we will consider and examine them wel we shall find occasion and matter enough for which to humble our selves by reason of the faults and imperfections which commonly we mingle with them according to that of the same Prophet We are becom as one unclean and all our justice is like som filthy and polluted rag But of this we have spoken els where and so there wil be no need to inlarge our selves now herein CHAP VIII How we are to exercise our selves in the knowledge of what we are that so we may not be dejected or dismaid OUr misery is so great and we have so much reason to humble our selves and we have so hourly experience thereof that we seem to stand in more need of being animated and incouraged to the end that we be not dejected and dismayed considering our selves to be so ful of imperfections and faults then to be exhorted to the consideration thereof And this is so very true that holy writers and instructors of men in the way of holines teach us that we must dig and sound into the knowledg of our miseries and frailties in such sort as we stop not there for fear lest the soul should sink down by distrust into dispair in regard we see so great misery in our selves and so great inconstancy in our good purposes but that we must then passe on towards the knowledg of the goodnes of God and place our whole confidence in him that so the sorrow of having sinned may not as Saint Paul saith be so great as to cause dejection and despair lest perhaps such a one should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow 2 Cor 2.7 But it is to be a well tempered sorrow and mingled with the hope of pardon casting our eyes upon the mercy of God in Christ Jesus and not fixing them wholly upon the only consideration of our sins and the deformity and grievousnes thereof and so they say that we must not dwell upon the consideration of our own poverty and weakness lest so we be dismayed but onely that we may thereby find reason to distrust our selves observing that on our part we have no leaning place on which to rest and then instantly to look up to God and trust in him and thus we shall not only not remain discouraged but we shal rather be animated revived thereby because that which serves to make us distrust when we behold our selves will serve to strengthen our hope when we look up to God and the more we know our own weaknes and the more we be distrustfull of our selves by looking up to God and relying on him and by placing all our confidence in him we shall find our selves the more strong and full of courage in all things But the Fathers do here advertise us of a point which imports very much namely that as we must not dwel upon the knowledge of our infirmities and miseries lest we fall upon distrust and dispair but pass on to the knowledge of the goodnes the mercy and liberality of God in Christ and place our whole confidence in him so
which he discerns in himself For the goodnes and mercy of God upon which he hath placed his eyes and his heart doth infinitely exceed and out strip al that which can be ill in us And with this consideration being rooted in the very strings of the heart a man unties himself from himself as from some broken reed and ever goes resting upon God and confiding in him according to that of the Prophet Daniel Not confiding in our selves nor in any merit or good work of ours do we presume to lift up our eyes to thee O Lord and to beg favour at thy hands but by putting our confidence in thy great mercy CHAP XIII Of the second degree of Humility and here it is declared wherein this degree consists THe second degree of Humility saith Bonaventure is when a man desires to be held by others in smal account Desires to be unknown and dis-esteemed and that no body may have you in account If we were well grounded in the first degree of Humility we should already have made most of our way towards the second If really we esteemed our selves little it would not seem very hard to us that others should also esteem little of us yea and we would be glad thereof Wil you see that this is true saith he All men are naturally glad when others conform themselves to our opinion and think the fame that we think Well then if this be so why are we not glad when others have us in smal account Do you not know why Because we esteem highly of our selves and we are not of their opinion Bonaventure upon these words of Job as they are read according to the vulgar latine I have sinâ—â—d and transgressed truly and I have not received as I was worthy chap 33.27 saith many with their tongues speak ill of themselves and say that they are this and that but they beleeve not what they say for when others say the same yea an lesse then that they cannot indure it And these men when they speak ill of themselves say it nor with truth nor do they feel it so in their hearts as Job did when he said I have sinned and really transgressed and offended God and he hath not punished me according to my great demerit Job said this with truth of heart but these men saith Saint Gregory do humble themselves only in apparence and with the tongue Whereas in their heart they have no Humility They will needs seem to be humble whereas they have no mind to be so indeed for if in earnest they desired it they would not be offended so much when they were reprehended and admonished of any fault by others and they would not excuse themselves nor be troubled so much as we see they are Cassianus recounts that a certain religious man came once to visit the devout Father Serapion who in habit jesture and words seemed to be of great humility and contempt of himself and never made an end of speaking ill of himself and of saying that he was so great a sinner and so wicked a man that he was not worthy to breath in the common air nor to tread upon the earth and much lesse would he consent that they should wash his feet or do him any service Wise Serapion after he had dined began to treat of some spiritual things as he had been accustomed and applied also some little thing to his guest and gave him this good advice with great mildnes and love Namely that fince he was young and strong he should be careful to keep at home and labour with his hands for his food according to the rule of Saint Paul and not to go idly up and and down to the houses of others The young man was so much troubled at this admonition and advise that he could not possibly dissemble it but shewed it evidently by his countenance Then said Serapion what is this my son that till now you have been speaking so much ill of your self and so many things of dishon our and affront to you and that now upon an admonition so easie as this which contains no injury or affront at all but rather much love and charity you have been so much offended and altered that you could not hide it Did you hope perhaps by means of that ill which you said of your self to hear that sentence of the wiseman out of my mouth This man is just and humble since he speaks ill of himself Did you pretend that we should praise you and hold you for a Saint Ah saith Saint Gregory how many times is this that very thing to which we pretend by our hypocrisies and counterfeit Humilities but that which would fain seem humility is great pride For we humble our selves many times to the end that we may be praised by men beheld for humble and good And if you will not grant me this I must ask you why you say that of your self which you will not have others to beleeve If you speak it from your heart and if you walk in the way of truth you must desire that others may beleeve it too and may hold you for such as you said and if you desire not this you shew plainly that you pretend not thereby to be humbled but to be valued and esteemed This is that which the wiseman saith There are some who humble themselves after a counterfeit manner and their heart is full of deceit and pride For what greater deceit can there be then by means of humility to be honored and esteemed by men and what greater pride then to pretend to be held humble To pretend to the praise of humility is not saith Saint Bernard the vertue of humility but the perversion and subversion thereof For what greater perversion can there be then this What thing can be more unreasonable then to desire to seem to be the better for that for which you seem worse What things more unworthy absurd then to desire to seem good and to be held for such even for the ill which you have said of your self Saint Ambrose reprehending this saith thus Many have the apparence of Humility but yet they have not the vertue of humility many seem exteriorly to seek it but interiorly they contradict it This pride and inclination of ours to bâ— esteemed and valued is so great that we seek a thousand inventions and wayes how to compasse it Sometimes we do it directly and sometimes indirectly but we are ever procuring to bring the water to this mil. Saint Gregory saith that it is the property of proud men when they conceive themselves to have said or done any thing wel to desire such as saw or heard it to tel them the faults thereof their intention yet being to be praised They seem indeed to humble themselves exteriorly because they desire men to tell them their faults but this is no humility but pride for their designe thereby is to be praised At other times you shal have a