since hee breatheth downe such a suavity and savour upon all their most asperous regularities which are of so ill an odour to nature as the holy Spirit must needs incense and perfume them to make them tolerable And surely the purity of these living hoasts doth mediate powerfully for Gods patience and longanimity which he affordeth to many multitudes of such members of Christs body as doe rather crucifie againe to themselves the Sonne of God as the Apostle saith Heb. 6.6 then exhibit themselves images of Christ crucified And thus Christ is so infinitely mercifull as he suspendeth the justice of his Father against those in whom he still seems to suffer by presenting to him that part of his Church which suffereth in him whereby God hath stil various remonstrances set before his eyes of the passions of Christ to ingratiate his Church to him in these later ages wherein God hath been pleased to take the sweet savour of his Church more from the Altar of odours and incense within the veyle of the Sanctuary then from that of bloody sacrifices that is from the consecration of the religious orders of his Church which doe as it were evaporate their lives in a continuall fume of self-consumption by the fire of mortification In this estate the Church may say Psal 39. Sacrifice and oblation thou wouldst not but eares thou hast perfected to me Sacrificium oblationem noluisti aures autem perficisti mihi For God hath been pleased to perfect the eares of his Church in the attention to his Evangelicall counsels of chastity and relinquishment of all to take up the Crosse And this is remarkable for evincement of the single legitimation of the Catholike Church that no other communion of Christians have their eares so much as opened to the counsels of Christ It is strange that they who have their eares open to nothing but the letter of the Word should be so deal to those so literal words as recommend these Evangelicall counsels 1 Cor. 1.18 The word of the Crosse but as it is Verbum Crucis we may feare it seemeth stultitia to them but to the Catholique Church The power of God it is Virtus Dei. For sure it must be a singular operation of the Spirit of God to dispose the corruption of our flesh and blood to vow it selfe to such a lasting martyrdome in which as out of an ingot or wedge of gold the Wyer is hammered and drawne out by continuall macerations and percussions upon the flesh and as the matter may be said to endure more by being wrought and drawne out into small Wyers then when a piece of gold is stamped and coyned at one blow upon it so those bodies which are extenuated and filed away by lingring mortifications and macerating austerities may be truly said to have a more painfull kind of Martyrdome while they are thus wrought as it were into the image of Christ then those who have it marked impres'd upon their bodies all at one incision which is the case of Martyrs that at one blow have Christ stamped upon them the others are long under the Presse whilst as the Apostle saith Christ is formed in them Gal. 4.19 And these are such as according to the advice of Saint Paul doe exhibit their bodies a living hoast holy and pleasing to God which he calls A reasonable service to wit a spirituall and rationall offering of soule and body by internall purity accompanyed with extinction as it were of the life of the flesh by vigilancie abstinence and attention to divine offices And surely there are many of these unbloody sacrifices which are no lesse acceptable to God then the victims of the Martyrs For certainly it is a harder work to keepe our blood continually from running the course of nature in our veines then it is at once to poure it out of them The first is a continuall combat and an uncertain victory for the enemy who is overcome every day is still equally to be feared The last though it be a sharper conflict yet it is a present dispatch and a perpetuall extinction of all enmitie Wherefore S. Chrysostom saith He admireth more Joseph remaining unscorched in the flames of such a sollicitation then the three children coming with no scent of fire out of the furnace and S. Bernard saith he accounts a chaste soule not only to be celestiall by origin but even heaven it selfe by similitude And thus Christ who hath carried our nature into heaven above that of Angels hath left it a capacity even on earth to become Angelicall So we may say now that Christ in his Catholike Church presenteth his Father with Crucified Angels to represent to him his passion for the Virgins who crucifie their flesh with all the vices and concupiscences of it may well be sayd to be Angelicall Crucifixes And thus the wisedome of the Holy Ghost hath as it were varied the manner of Martyrs in the Church and subrogated crucified lives to officiate in the place of the sanguinary victims of the Primitive ages to make the same representation Whereupon as Christ did leave the unbloody sacrifice of himselfe to commemorat and apply the virtue of his passion so it seemeth the unbloody obligations of the religious bodies of his Church were instituted by the Holy Ghost to continue that part which was acted in the victims of the Martyrs which was a representation of the passions of Christ to God the Father wherby a continual influence of fresh graces is impetrated for the support of the Catholike Church in all her pressures Eph 5.32 This is a great Sacrament in Christ and in his Church so as we may say with the Apostle Sacramentum hoc magnum est in Christo in Ecclesiâ All this tendeth to illustrate to you how the Church is designed by her head Christ Jesus to remain a suffering body in this world to the end you who by Christs great mercies are members of it may not be tempted by the infirmity of nature to reply with Gedeon to the Angels of the Church Judg. 6.13 If our Lord be with us why have those evills apprehended us but rather in an holy assurance that God cannot be removed from us but by our owne diffidences let us answer with Eli to the message of ruine to our houses 1 Reg. 3.18 It is our Lord let him doe what is good in his eyes It is observable how to that Church of God to which no temporall sufferings were medicinally appointed there was no reward but temporall felicity manifestly proposed for as all the sacrifices of the temple were but figures of the blood of the Church of Christ so all their promises were but darke shadowes of heaven the which is as much cleerer and better exposed to us as the sufferings of men are worthyer then those of beasts and it was but just that they who had but water appointed for most of their purgations instead of the fire of
of tentations so as being furnished with this ability adequate to our charge we may well be concluded eased by this extenuation of our burthens for being thus entred into Christs yoke we finde that gentle and our cariage very portable God doth then give vertue and vexation concomitantly as the Apostle affirmeth God is faithfull 1 Cor. 10.13 who will not suffer you to be tempted above what you are able but will make also with temptation issue that you may be able to sustein So that I may safely promise in Christs name what he did to his Disciples when they were entering into the lists of persecutions that all these signs shal follow all those who do intirely strip and devest themselves of the pressures and incumbrances of their conscience They shall take serpents in their hands without offence Mar. 16.27 and though they drink poison it shall not hurt them though they remain incircled with the thorns and stings of affliction they shall not feele any noxious sharpnesse or asperity in them and they shall drink of the cup of sorrow without any aversion or nauseousnesse but shall rather cheerfully pledge Christ in it saying in conformity to him shall not we drink of the Cup which our Head hath given us And this cup which the Psalmist calleth the Wine of compunction shall then have a much better relish then that of Babylon which we have eased our hearts of For as the Holy spirit saith Pro. 27.7 A soule that hungereth taketh all bitternesse for sweet and such soules Christ calleth blessed in their hungering and thirsting and yours after this pious motion and exercise in resorting to this call of Christ and unloading themselves of all their spirituall onerations will certainly get this good appetite which our Saviour calls a blessed hunger and shall be satisfied with present peace and tranquility of spirit and an hopeful expectation in a future blessednesse The sooner then and the sharplyer we deplore our sinnes the readier and greater deduction we make from all our other sorrows according to the assertion of the Apostle 2 Cor. 7.10 The sorrow that is according to God worketh pennance unto salvation that is stable Upon which words S. Chrysostome saith excellently sorrow is given us not to grieve for any thing we cannot remedy and so it is onely a receipt for the cure of sinne for it augmenteth all other evills whereunto it is applyed and recovereth us onely out of that extremest of all mischiefs Therefore sorrow was onely made for sinne out of which it was first extracted and so like a moath corrodeth and consumeth the matter that produced it And this holy corrosive is so powerfull as it will eat away not onely all the dead flesh whereunto it is applied but even take out and obliterate the foulest brands can have been impressed upon our hearts Therefore if any for feare of a little burning in the hand in the heat of these times hath chosen rather to stigmatize his heart with the marke of apostasie let not even such a desperat character doubt of an effaceing by the virtue of sincere contrition for as soone as it is rightly applyed the operation is unquestionable Let not then any such set Caines stamp upon this his first brand for could Judas have applyed this corrosive he needed not have used his cord to suppresse the noysome stenches of his conscience This receipt would have broken his heart so happily as to have kept his bowells from bursting for we know that a broken and contrite heart repayres even all her owne breaches If in these evill dayes then there should be any that hath done worse then the disciple that left his mantle and fled naked to save himselfe for if any to save their clothes and coverings of conveniencyes should have left Christ and have joyned with the party armed against him yet even he is called by this voice of Come all ye that labour to come back and unload himselfe of this unfaithfull pusillanimity No weight that sorrow can bring in can be too much for him to take off who carieth all things by the power of his word and whose mercy is above all his works and consequently must needs be far above all ours Wherefore Despaire seems miserably to vie against the superiority of Gods mercy in this accursed dejection there is this derogating contention whereas faithfull sorrow hath alwayes an obliging confidence He therefore that cannot find in his heart to give so much as sorrow towards the redemption of his sinnes ought not to expect so much as pitty even in their eternall vindication Wherefore in this particular prescript of Consolation I may aptly say with the Apostle 2 Cor. 7.10 2 Cor. 2. Who is it can make me glad but he that is made sorry by me For the efficacy of all I can minister unto you dependeth upon your orderly application of this godly sorrow for your sinnes which may reconcile you to the man of sorrow who under that notion was the mediator between God offended and man condemned and so admitteth not even his owne merits to mediate peace between God and man after his offending him without the intervention of this sorrow of man so that this house is as much better then that of feasting as reparation of a house is better then ruining in so much that though you have no other house left to put your heads in this of penitence which it may be the ruines of your other have built up for you may prove such a receptacle of peace and rest when your sinnes are rased and demolished as you shall confesse in comparing the change of houses that Your bricks are fallen down Esay 9.10 and you have built with square stones and have by the hands of this holy contrition converted your ruinous tenement into reedified temples from whence all the devout fighes are breathed up as an odour of perfume unto heaven and as the fire which was to light the odours upon the table of Incense was to be brought from the Altar of the bloody Sacrifices so the incense of our prayers and petitions must be kindled first by the ardency of our sorrow and contrition for our sinnes which answer to the outward and first Altar From thence the fire of all our zeale must be first taken that is all our petitions must take their rise from our penitency and when they are offered up in this order they doe often impetrate more then they sollicite for they obtaine not onely spirituall acquiescence but even temporall refreshments We must remember then that this holy sorrow is a kind of spirituall Baptisme which is the first gate of the Church triumphant through which all our requests must passe up to the altar so that we shall doe well to set this inscription of the Psalmist upon this portall of contrition Psal 117.20 Open ye the gates of justice to me being entred into them I will confesse to our Lord this is
sufferance out of any of which I hope in God there is not any of you would agree to be ejected even upon this contract of being raised from Josephs chaine up to his chariot and dominion in Aegypt The first is as you are men the second as you are Christians and the third as you are Catholikes A MISSIVE OF CONSOLATION CHAP. I. Of the Covenant of Suffering as Men the Sonnes of Adam TO the first Covenant of sufferance you know we all give our voice by a naturall instinct before we have scarce enjoyed so much as light for it and our eyes may be said to set their mark to it before we are able to set our hands to this article of eating in the sweat of our browes for our eyes pay their sweat which is their teares for what we taste even before we be able to receive bread for it and as we grow into a state to set our hands to the Covenant of labour we know there is scarce any thing we relish much that doth not cost us sweat and contention nay we are of such a constitution that we can have no kind of delectation the which some want and suffering must not precede to affect us with the gust of it So as we are sentenced to pay a great Fine of Pain before-hand for all those fleeting and transitory pleasures which at best doe but run over our senses and so passe away and leave them againe in their drouth and privation And most commonly the advance of all our paine and passion rendreth us nothing of what they negotiate So as a man when he looketh upon himselfe in the best reflexes his temporary wishes can make him shall find this brand and stigmate of Adam upon his forehead Gen. 3.10 Thou shalt eate in the sweat of thy brows In sudore vultûs tui vescêris pane And this is a mark which God stamped upon Adam of another kind of signification then that he set upon Cain for this directeth all things that occur to man in this life to strike him and wound his temporall estate in some kind or other insomuch as all the creatures do in their severall manners execute this sentence upon the sons of Adam not allowing themselves to be enjoyed by them without stinging them in some sort either with the anxietie of their appetite to them preceding fruition or the distaste of satiety following it or with the vexation of a deprivement of them during the ardour of their affections to them So as we may well say that every thing we finde now assaults our felicity in this life in some sort to kill it and to revive to us the memory of our Covenant of sufferance we entred into as soon as we entred into light For which reason the a Ecclesiasticus 40.1 Great travell is created to all men and a heavy yoke upon the children of Adam from the day of their coming forth of their mothers wombe untill the day of their burying in the mother of all their cogitations and fears of the heart imagination of things to come and the day of their ending from him that sitteth upon the glorious seat unto him that is humbled in earth and ashes Wiseman proclaimeth elegantly the tenour of it saying Occupatio magna creata est omnibus hominibus jugum grave super filios Adam à die exitus de ventre matris 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 usque in diem sepulturae in matrem omnium cogitationes corum timores cordis adinventio expectationis dies finitionis à residente super sedem gloriosam usque ad humiliatum in terrâ cinere Neither need we look back upon the defaced images of all conditions in the dead prints of story we have such living figures of them before our eyes as must needs imprint upon our thoughts a lively character of the deplorable state of all mortals Whereby out of the ruines of those houses whereof you lament the demolishments you may pick up some materials to build in your minds this frame of the instable constructure of the greatest strengths of humane happinesse Eccles 10. I have seen servants upon horses Princes walking on the ground as servants and thus your friends may in their fall some way support your vertue and your patience when you consider how incident it is to the vicissitudes of this world to expose unto us that changeable Scene whereof Solomon reporteth this to us Vidi servos in equis principes ambulantes super terram quasi servos And in such capitall Letters as these you may now read the articles of the Covenant of sufferance which man is engaged in whereof Job maketh a manifest is signed even by all the Princes of the earth for we find this under their hands in all records of them in some part of their lives Job 14.1 Man born of a woman and living a short time is replenishâ—d with many miseries Homo natus ex muliere vivens brevi tempore repletur multis miseriis In so much as after man by sinne had made misery for himselfe in this life it seemeth a mercy of God to have joyned death with it before which even the light of nature is sufficient to shew the Philosophers that none can be counted happy And in order to this proofe we may remarke that he who first abused death by imploying it to make sinne was thought worthy of no lesse a punishment then the protraction of life which he had made so afflicting by his fearing to dye and thus he was made his own torturer by the ignorance of the evill of life and of the good of death which he had so much demcrited the knowing of for his brothers goodnesse was thought worthy to be quickly relieved by death and his malice was adjudged to the paine of apprehending it and to the supplice of a long life With good cause then may this be well reflected on that the first vertuous and godly man was quickly removed out of this hedge of thornes his father had set and re-conveyed towards Paradise and the first impious murtherer was sentenced to live in the pungencie and asperity of these pricks and bryars of the earth But yet such is Gods Wisdome as he can extract medicines out of all the Brambles thistles our earth is over-run with and minister them to our infirmity for he applieth even those griefes and sorrowes which sinne introduced to the expulsion of sinne it selfe So as this is an operation worthy of Gods invention by the labour and exercising of the body to enlarge the freedome of the soule even by this unfortifying of her prison in which she is kept the closer the stronger the dolectation of our senses groweth upon us Therefore the distancing of the conveniencie of the flesh dilateth the commodities and freedome of the spirit so as it is a divine artifice which God useth by hanging weights of sufferings and pressures upon our senses to wind up rather
to accept the injuries of his maligners without converting all the dutifull offices of his adherents into seed of affliction This was the uneven and painfull way wherein Christ chose to passe through this life who is the way the truth and the life of Christians and since one drop of his blood had been a price sufficient for our redemption shall not the effusion of it all and the immensity of his griefs and labours be sufficient for our example It being especially notified unto us by the Apostle 1 Pet. 2.23 That he suffered for us to leave us an example that we might follow his steps wherein this print of sorrow seemeth unto me one of the most admirable markes of it that he suffered not so much by his passion as by his compassion He felt the torments of the Martyrs the miseries of the Confessors and the distresses and desolations of his Church which he foresaw in all ages more then the persons themselves who are under them can doe Vere labores dolores nostros ipse tulit He truly bore all our labors and our griefs All the anxieties and contristations that now oppresse you were in a sharper degree pressing upon his heart and since he was content to aggravate all his sufferings by taking on him the sense of your grievances may not you very easily alleviate all your heavinesses by taking into your mind the resentment of sufferings which were designed for your succor in your tentations by the reflection upon his precedent so that his example is not a simple injunction on you to suffer but a conferment of an ability to sustaine it and a meanes to improve and ameliorate your state in your coinheritance with him For the Apostle enforceth this Doctrine with this energy of 2 Tim. 2.12 A faithfull saying for if wee bee dead with him wee shall live also together if we sustain we shall also reign together Fidelis sermo si commortui sumus convivemus si sustinebimus conregnabimus This deserves well our contemplation that the fulnesse of the Divinity did inhabit in Christ and the cleere vision of God did alwayes illuminate him notwithstanding this it was so miraculously disposed by God that the affluence of joy springing from the Deity should not overflow his body and possesse the inferiour portions of his soule that there might be left room for paine and anguish the which was manifest in his Passion insomuch as stupendious miracles were requisite for an admittance of so much sorrow into his most sacred minde if God were pleased thus to multiply miracles that affliction might have accesse to his beloved Sonne in whom he was so well pleased shall we with whom he hath so much cause to be displeased wonder at any calamity or tribulation whereby he is pleased to correct us especially when it is a marke of our filiation and fraternity with Christ We who cannot be exempt from sufferings without a miracle as we are sons of Adam shall we be astonished at any imposition under this notion of Brothers nay even members of Christ In which respect S. Bernard saith excellently That delicate and tender members are not decent and becomming a head stuck full of thorns Therefore the pressures and pungencies of this life make the symmetry and proportion of the body of Christianity to the Head Christ Jesus who since he did not so much as speak one idle word all his praises and beatifications of the poore and the afflicted must needs verifie the good of adversity Mat. 5. And surely Christ did much lesse doe any idle deed and if the exemplary life of his labours and onerations had not been directed to our conformity therein there might seeme some supervacuousnesse and redundancy in his continuall hardnesse and asperity of life Would God have afflicted his onely Sonne so Rom. 8. if it were indifferent to doe or not to doe as he did or that it did not concerne those whom he had fore-known and predestinated to be conformable to the image of his Sonne in this point that he might be the first-born of many Brethren Our fraternity therefore is derived to us by this similitude Our sinnes might have been effaced not onely by a drop of Christs blood but even by a drop of his sweat wherefore this seemeth one of the chief reasons that did induce the atrocity of his passion and the austerity of his life the necessity of such a pattern for our imitation since our nature was grown so degenerous and effeminate as no lesse then Gods participation of all the sorts of grievances and injuries thereof would serve to forme in us a cheerfull disposition to the sufferings and infelicities of this life God therefore did not intend to vex us when he placed our salvation in difficulties and in our natures aversions for to sweeten the bitternesse of this strong necessity which was to work upon our nature to purge us from the love of this world he was so gracious as to infuse the company of Christ into this receipt that the tast of his society might make more pleasant to us the ill savour and acerbity of the remedy Well therefore may we say A greater then Elisha is here who hath mended these waters by but tasting of them and hath left neither death nor barrennesse in them for they are become rather waters springing up to life everlasting And we may observe that in conformity to Gods method with his Sonne Christ continued the same style to his Mother for she whom all generations were to call Blessed was not allowed any of what this world calls Blessings for She who had borne the Redeemer of the whole world was not able to go to the highest rate of the Temple for his Redemption her poor estate did not reach to pay so much as a Lambe for the Sonne of God and the Lambe who was to take away the sinnes of the world had not so much as a Lambe for his ransome The lowest price that was set for any of the Children of Israel was the rate her low condition was taxed at None was set at lesse then a paire of pigeons or a paire of turtles and the Mother of God was in this inferiour forme of the daughters of men This may serve to sweeten the bitterest waters of poverty When we ponder this that Christ would not allow his Mother to taste of any other spring and though he would not let her taste of the sowrenes of the forbidden fruit yet he fed her more then any other with these bitter leaves which grew out of the same root that is though he was pleased to exempt her from sinne yet he would not dispense with her in sufferings which we know are but the productions of sinne and so she whom we may suppose to have been excepted out of the rule of sinners was exalted above any in the state of sufferers And this seems to be very consonant that as she was Mother to the
be violated and offended nay he subjected himselfe to his greatest enemy the Divell himselfe when he suffered him to carry him up to the pinnacle of the Temple so there is no creature from the sublimest to the meanest from the best to the worst to whom Christ did not humiliate himselfe And thus you see this arche of humiliation set as it were on another bow in the clouds of his humanity for a signe of this Covenant of sufferances wherein I have suggested to you your ingagement and this bow of his Covenant is so extended as it makes a perfect circle it reacheth from the sphere of angelicall to that of inanimate substances to both which we see Christ did submit himselfe and so his subjection toucheth the highest and the lowest point of his owne creatures Which consideration of his ineffable humility must needs assure us of that admirable effect it hath produced of converting crosses into the nourishment of his body left upon earth and so to bring that which separated his soule and his body now to be the meanes of reuniting the body to the head For the Crosse is left in his Church to conjoyne and consociate the members unto their suffering head Christ Jesus and we may well adde that this Divine signe of the Crosse set in the Heaven of his Person so conspicuously remains as a sensible marke of his promise to the Church of never being drown'd in any inundation of crosses falling on her Looking up therefore to the heavenly object of Christs sufferings we may be comforted by our similitude and we may rejoyce at our security which this Covenant recapitulateth to us as often as we contemplate it insomuch as there is none of you who groan under any pressure or tremble under any oppression Heb. 12.2 that looking up upon the anthor and finisher of our faith Christ Jesus may not see him bearing the same crosse with joy despising the confusion of it Whether you sweat under your burdens or whether you bleed under the edge of these times you shall find your persecution both civill and sanguinary patternd to you in the person even of God and Man Christ Jesus who hath not left so much as your feares and terrors out of the exemplar of his passions Mar. 14.33 He began to be heavy and to feare his Caepit taedere pavere was designed purposely as a cordiall in your fits of fainting and if there were any point in your afflictions which were not exemplifide to you in Christs passions that circumstance ought to prove to you a sufficient consolation in that you had some suffering to offer to Christ of your owne besides the copye and pourtraicture of his But alas all that we can imagin in our own paines wherein there is imitation of his is that which we may better blush at then boast of for it is only the guilt of deserving more then we can endure in this life this is simply ours in our afflictions wherein we find no resemblance in the figure of Christs sufferings which part of our cases may make us offer up to Christ a thankfull alacrity in all temporall penalties inflicted on us for having taken off from us the burthen we could not remove by any sufferings and having left us only such pressures as may aleviate the weight of that intolerable gravation which is the guilt of sinne for our crosses in this life by the vertue of the Crosse of Christ whereof our heaviest are but chippes or shavings doe not only keepe our sinnes lower but also weigh against the temporall penalty of those which are in the scale It may admit a question whether it be a more precious Christian exercise to doe good or to endure evills That state is certainly the best in which both are conjoyned when suffering many grievances we act as many good as we are able yet God hath provided matter of meriting in both conditions severally let them then who have nothing left to give to God by way of actions rejoyce in the faculty of sorrowes which furnish them meritorious offerings in all their necessities When King David extols the dignity of man he raiseth it upon this ground that God had made him but a little lower then Angells Psal 8. But in this respect we may say that God hath advantaged him above them by furnishing him with more instruments of meriting then they have by having coupled a body to this spirit in which he may suffer for Christ when many other capacities of expressing his gratitude are suspended For man hath not only all the severall powers of his minde but also the senses of his body given him as organs of meriting by carrying the Crosse upon them With this corporeall furniture man is enriched above Angells so as man may even out of the greatest infirmities of his constitution extract matter of glorification This vertue hath been imparted to the vility of flesh and blood since God vouchsafed to be invested in it our flesh received this priviledge not only of being admitted into heaven but of contributing to the soule 's degrees of glory by the proportions of the bodies fufferings and as S. Paul saith Rom. 8.13 It is no wonder that God having given his owne Sonne to human nature should have given all these other prerogatives with him Out of this state of our mortality the Saints shall rise as high as they should have done from the state of innocence immortality which shews that they are equally sanctified in the brevity shortnesse of their life now to what they should have attained in many ages if they had remained immortall The multitude of sorrowes and crosses by the grace of Christ countervaileth and compensateth the numerousnesse of the yeeres of our service Our Redeemer hath left this compendious way of meriting by the necessities molestations of our flesh the which he would not expunge in it that he might present his Father the children of his most precious passions as much purified in a little time as they should have been in the efflux of many ages He who raised above the highest heaven the heavinesse of our earth upon this Engine of the Crosse hath left it us to winde up the easilyer our terrestrial qualities upon the same machine This was the means which S. Paul made use of in all his elevations up to the third heaven Christo confixus sum cruci Gal. 2.20 With Christ I am nailed to the Crosse carryed him up to that sublimity and he kept himself so close nayled to the Crosse all his life as when he was weak he was strongest and never esteemed his raptures so much as his revilings and ignominies He professeth to glory willingly in nothing but in his humiliations Libenter gloriabor in infirmitatibus meis 2 Cor. 12. Gladly wil I glory in my infirmities in contumelies in necessities in distresses for Christ c. in contumeliis in necessitatibus in angustiis pro
out of the strong shall issue sweetnesse The Lyon of the Tribe of Judah hath infused honey into the teeth of all these Lyons he le ts loose upon his Church and a resigned patient shall taste more the honey then he shall feele the teeth of the beast that quartereth him They therefore who will finde the suavity of persecution must suck it out of Christs Passion where it lyes ready made and not amuse themselves to work it out of the order of Gods providence wherein it rests implicated in the folds of many mysteries and our curiosity in seeking it will return us rather Sauls anxiety upon his enquiry of Samuels ghost then Sampsons sweetnesse in the Lyons jawes which he found when he looked not for it And out of S. Pauls mouth who was once a raging Lyon till he was killed by him of whom Sampson was a figure we may take this hony to dulcifie all those bitternesses of our lives 2 Cor. 4.18 Our tribulation which presently is momentanie and light worketh above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory in us Quod in praesenti est momentantum leve tribulationis nostrae supra modum in sublimitate aeternum gloriae pondus operatur in nobis HAving thus seene and considered Gods hand and manner in the figure of his dearly beloved Son upon the Crosse by which he conveyed him to his Coronation let us now consider also Christs method in ordering his Church after he professeth that all power is given him both in heaven earth so as the sufferings of the Body to such an Head must needs be by order not infirmity For after he had suffered sufficiently for more worlds then he shed drops of blood and for as many ages as worlds he might well have allowed the members of his body all joy and felicity for the rest of those few Ages this world was to subsist But he who was Wisdome it self chose another method as he told his dearest friends Ego dispone vobis sicut disposuit mihi Pater meus regnum He copyed his Fathers hand upon himselfe in his drawing and figuring his Church upon earth Lu. 22.29 I dispose to you as my Father disposed to me a kingdome so as after his glorious body was enthroned at the right hand of God he left his mysticall body hanging as it were upon the crosse in Calvary for some Ages wounded by the launces of the Gentiles and vilified by the scornes of the Jewes In this posture it hung exposed many yeers a scandall to the eyes of the one and folly to the understandings of the other insomuch as the extreme passions of this body might well have extorted out of flesh and blood a Deus meus ut quid dereliquisti me The afflictions were so intollerable as no body that had not a God for the head of it Mat. 27. My God why hast thou forsaken me could have growne and prospered in so bleeding an infancie It seemeth Gods unsearchable Wisdome designed Christs mysticall body to be formed on the face of the earth as his naturall body was in the wombe of the Virgin in the composition whereof there was onely the Spirit of God working upon the pure blood of the Virgin and in like manner the vertue of the holy Ghost came upon the blood of the Martyrs forming and animating the Primitive Church For in those times we find the vertue of the Spirit working most upon blood to forme and procreate the body of the Church And thus by the admirable vertue of Christs Passion it seemed not an effusion but rather a transfusion of all the blood was drawne conveying it into other veynes and the same spirits seemed to be carryed in it into other bodies which successively making the same use of it might make one think it had been the very same blood infused into other veyns which like channels rather then owners of it poured it out againe so freely and in this way of generation the Saints and Martyrs procreated the descent of the family of Christ for above three hundred yeeres The Apostles seemed to poure out their blood into the veynes of their Disciples and Successors and they in like manner to transfuse theirs into those discended from them and by this successive transmission the Progeny of the Church was deduced through the Primitive Persecutions This was the operation of that one heart Act. 4.32 and one soule the Apostle saith was then in the multitude of the Beleevers And indeed the records of those times may well make one reflect on the doctrine of Pythagor as in his transmigration of soules for in those times the spirit of acting and suffering which was transmitted from one to another seemed so much the same as one might fay there was a transmigration of the soules of the first Martyrs into the surviving issue of their spirit Herod is said to have suspected that the soule of S. John Baptist had passed into Christ when he said Mat. 14.1 This is John the Baptist he is risen from the dead and therefore vertues work in him Hic est Joannes Baptista ipse surrexit à mortuis ideo virtutes operantur in eo The doctrine of transition of soules from one body to another was much followed in those times But we may wel in a pious and sober sense say that the soule of S. Peter seemed transmigrated into his successors for many yeeres for the same spirit of fervour in watering with their blood the Rock whereon Christ had planted his Church possessed above thirty Popes successively after S. Peter and so all their bodies seemed to be cast as a mold of earth upon that rock whereupon the faith of the Romane Church did spring the plants whereof even all acknowledge their Churches to be who have now severed themselves from that radicall communion and forgetting the benefits of those Josephs who sed them in the famine of their Faganisme are now laying burthens on their children In this manner the Primitive Church was nourished in her cradle instead of having milk given her to make blood of she sucked blood and made milke of it by the which she hath nursed the succeeding times for in all the Churches following persecutions the faithfull have been sustained and refreshed by that milk which the blood of those times did make for them for their examples descending with their doctrines hath confirmed and strengthned as well as alimented all their future progenie It is an admirable evincement of the truth of Christian Religion to remark that as it was founded upon a supernaturall conjunction of a body that might suffer to a person that was impassible so it was propagated by the destruction of those bodies which were the organs of tradition of it to posterity for the wounds of the Apostles and the Martyrs seemed but so many more mouthes opened to speak out louder the mysteries of the Gospel and to prove those verities by daring to dye for them which were not to
be demonstrated by the cloquence of any living men or Angels and thus the tongues of the Martyrs spoke more plainly the mysteries of their faith when they were torne out of their mouthes by their tortures then while they were tutoring their Disciples Whereupon Tertullian saith to the Persecutors Exquisitior quaeque iniquitas vestra illecebra magis est sectae the more exquisite their iniquity grew the more efficacious allurement it proved to Christian Religion For as he explains it every one being struck with wonder at the vertue and patience of the sufferers began to think that worthy the enquiring into which men thought so much better worth then their lives and these reflections converted more then the best verball expressions to such auditors as thought life not to be equivalenced by any compensation Wherefore Saint Cyprian who was one of the brightest mirrors of these reflections saith The Heathen were wont to conclude that it deserved to be studyed and fully penetrated that perswasion which could induce a man to suffer so much and to dye so willingly And this Lecture of the bodies of the Martyrs convinced more then the books of the Fathers it wrought more upon flesh and blood to see as it were the whole body set to their faith then the single hand as we saw in Malta the Vipers teeth moved them more then S. Pauls tongue and in like manner this wrought those present effects frequently upon multitudes the considering the mindes of Christians shaking off the stings of tortures which hung upon their bodies the peace of their soules remaining inviolated and unoffended by them And those admirable effects of such causes as were naturally opposite to them were demonstrations of this dictate of Saint John You are of God 1â— Joh. 4. and overcome the world because greater is he that is in you then he that is in the world whereof he was one of the most egregious marks being preserved for a spectator after he had been himselfe a patient in the scene of Martyrdome for being condemned to suffer at Rome in a caldron of scalding oyle he came out of it more refreshed then the Emperor out of his baths of precious oyntments he rested in it with little lesse case then he had done in the bosome of his Master For Martyrdome may well be termed the bosome of Christ as it is the neerest part of his body joyning to the suffering head upon the Crosse and as it is the neerest accesse towards a conjunction with the glorified head in heaven And thus the Martyrs did daily verifie this position That he that was in them was greater then the world for they who had subdued the world could not suppresse Christianity Christ chose to triumph over the tyrannie power of the Emperors of the world before he would vouchsafe to be served by them to evidence this for his glory that it was not his necessity that required but his grace that admitted Kings to be nursing-fathers Queens to be nursing-mothers to his mysticall body upon earth This also deserveth our animadversion that soone after the Church came to suck at those brests she fell into fits of Convulsion interiour Heresies which endangered her more then all the exteriour wounds of Persecution she had received Whereby appeareth that the milk of Princes was not so healthfull for her as the blood of Martyrs For even in Constantine the Great his time who was the first Princely Foster-father of the Church Arianisme began to breed in her The denying the Divinity of Christ and this disease in his time notwithstanding all his cures and remedies administred lay still so neasted in her as presently after his death the corruption broke out into desperate convulsions and the very brest of her temporall nursing father was cancer'd with this Heresie For the second sonne of Constantine named Constantius to whom in the partition of the Empire the East was assigned revolted professedly to Arianisme and in a few yeeres this poyson had so spread by his diffusion as the leprosie had over-run almost all the Easterne Churches insomuch as Christianity seemed more endangered by this canker in the breast of an Emperour professing to nurse it then it had been by all those raging Lyons that sought to devoure it So much more dangerous was it to part Christs Divinity from the Church then to have the whole world united against her while that was acknowledged and relyed upon for the support This perill sprang out of Prosperity when the Emperours of the East seemed to think their Religion supported strongly enough without the Divinity of Christ whereas Rome which was then fallen away in all temporall diminution maintained the intire profession of Christian faith against all the gates of hell which the Emperours under pretence of being watchmen upon the tower had opened against her and for many yeares S. Peters barke floated as it were in an Ocean of Arianisme which had covered the Eastern and had broke in upon many parts of the Western Empire It were too long a work to make a journall of the voyage of S. Peters barke through all those ages in which it hath beene exposed to the stormes of diverse persecutions and the sands of innumerable heresies it hath passed over with safety That which respecteth most my purpose is to clucidate to you how temporall adversity and tribulation have alwaies contributed to the purity of the Doctrine and manners of the Catholike Church for I doe not meane to touch any Controversie but in defence of those you may unjustly account your adversaries which are the crosses and afflictions of these times and to dispute for the use and benefit of them against your diffidence and irresolution in this hower of your examination which I hope by the grace of God may be effected in some degree by this suggestion to you of those Covenants and obligations of suffering wherein you are engaged which I may urge to you in the termes of the mirror of sufferers S. Paul 1 Thes 3.2 I have sent this to you and exhort you for your faith that no man be moved in these tribulations for your selves know that we are appointed to this Me thinks this should lenify and disasperate all the sense of our afflictions to reflect how under these two notions of the Sonnes of Adam and the Brothers of Christ we are designed to sufferings For as men the holy spirit telleth us Job 5.7 Man is born to labor and the bird to flight insomuch as we should wonder no more at our troubles then at our nature Wherefore S. Gregory upon Jobs scraping his soares with a piece of a broken pot saith He made clean one dirt with another for the holy man reflected from whence that was taken which he wore and with a fragment of one piece of clay he scrapes another broken vessell so as considering himselfe in that fragment of clay in the cleansing and extersion of his sores he did also dresse and
obedient to death even the death of the crosse for the which thing God hath exalted him So that here Christs power is referred to his purchase of it by his passions Therefore a Christian that repineth at any affliction in this life seemeth to forget what he oweth the Crosse for his redemption from misery and to what he was sealed by it when it was laid upon him in water to ingage him even before he could beare it in a heavyer matter and to oblige him to serve under all those crosses of fire or water this life should passe through for after this comes a stronger baptisme of fire in the tryals of a Christian Those who are not Christned with the signe of the Crosse may have some pretence not to understand the use or obligations of it but you on whose heads it hath been laid in Baptisme and pressed as it were into them by Confirmation can have no colour to mis-conceive the use of Crosses and since it is a defence against evill spirits the making but the signe or figure of the Crosse with our hand it must needs be of greater efficacie against both the world and the devill the having of them made upon us by the hand of God who chastiseth every child he receives and so crosseth his children alwayes either to expel some evill spirit or to mark a lodging for the better reception of his holy mission into it In this signe thou shalt overcome Look up therefore to heaven and you shall see In hoc signo vinces ingraven upon all your Crosses I will close up this proofe of your second covenant as Christians with this advise to you how in all the shipwracks of your lives or fortunes in this storme you may save your selves by a right use of the Crosse The Fathers doe usually call the Crosse Tabulam naufragii that plank whereon humane nature was saved when all her goods were cast away and you must take the manner of saving your selves by your crosses from that conception of making them planks to beare you up and you know the same piece of wood lying upon you will sink you which would carry you if you lay upon it In like manner if the weight of your present crosses lye upon the sensitive part of your soules and you consider them meerly as sensible oppressions and gravations in this world flesh and blood will be dejected and sunk by them when that feeleth all the charge upon it the mind may easily be cast downe by the heavinesse of the senses but if you lay your minds upon your crosses that is extend your thoughts orderly upon the meditation of the Crosse of Christ from which all yours derive a vertue and efficacie to work upon you the image of the Sonne of God laying your minds in this posture upon your crosses they will beare up your hearts instead of sinking them and thus this storme shall but drowne your worldly and earthly affections and your crosses in this posture under your minds shall carry and land you in the land of the living Wherefore I beseech you to cast your thoughts in this posture upon the Crosse of Christ 2 Cor. 13. For although he was crucified of infirmity yet he liveth by the power of God for we also are weake in him but we shall live with him by the power of God resting upon it with confidence that it will support you and rest your minds upon your owne crosses as conceiving them to be rather carriages of your soules to spirituall aspirings then materiall onerations upon your bodies and then you may easily apply to your selves this comfort of S. Paul out of the crucifixion of Christ Nam etsicrucifixus ex infirmitate sed vivit ex virtute Dei nam nos infirmi sumus in illo sed vivemus cum eo ex virtute Dei CHAP. III. Of the Covenant of suffering as Catholiques the Champions or true Church of Christ IN my preceding discourse having I hope in God sufficiently proved this your second bond of sufferance by the two irrecusable witnesses of Christs life and his death I shall proceed to put the third in suit against any reluctant and querulous humor which flesh and blood may breed in you to plead against your spirituall conformity to your temporall condition that in poverty of spirit you may be suited to the penury of your fortunes when you consider seriously your selves bound by this triple cord to crosses adversities in this life The third of your Covenants I proposed to you was the being Catholiques which notion seemeth to be like the wheele in the middle of a wheele in EZekiels Vision for the Catholique Church is contained within the greater circle of Christianity as a lesser sphere within a larger and we may properly say that the spirit of life is in this smaller wheele for the being a Christian in the large acception of it will admit many stations of Religions without the inclosure of the Catholike Church wherein the Symbol of the Apostles incircleth the true Christian Faith and because this terme Catholike is now the notionall distinction of your true Religion from all other whose sects are comprehended in the amplitude of the terme Christian it will not be impertinent to explain unto you in a few words the Churches sense of this denomination Catholike We know the first followers of Christ were called Disciples It seemeth Christs humility would not admit so much honour in his life as the faming of his name by this celebration of it which men affect especially to set upon the front of their intellectuall edifices for Christ all his life endured the meannesse of his earthly habitation to be branded upon his Disciples who were called Nazareans or Galileans rather then the gloriousnesse of his office to be charactered upon them For his sirname of Christ which is Anointed hath a reference to the highest dignities of the world so as it was long after his death before he admitted his followers to that honourable name of Christians for you know it was at Antioch that the Disciples began first to be named Christians and he who never sleepeth was early up sowing tares for Simon Magus Act. 11.26 who was his first seeds-man sowed even in the same furrows the Apostles were plowing and his followers wore the badge of his name and many other Heresies sprang presently up all which covered themselves with this large cloake of Christian in so much as the name of Christian was justly odious in that apprehension the Gentiles had of it For the Heresies that were clothed with that upper garment were in their owne nakednesse foule and execrable in all sorts of pollutions For those we call now Simoneans and Gnosticks and Ebionites and many other which by the Authors of their Sects are now stigmatized in those times were all involved in the latitude of Christians Whereupon before the death of all the Apostles this denomination of Catholique was peculiarly affected
Christian discipline and mortification should have but earth measured out to thē for their possessions when the others who had all sorts of afflictions prescribed to them had heaven fairly laid open to their expectations And so there is more difference between the joyes glories that are proposed to Christians in the sight of God and the tasting the grapes and figs of Canaan conditioned with the children of Israel then there is between the being but aspersed with blood from the hand of a Priest and the being our selves the bloody sacrifices All our sufferings are then compensated by that measure of joy running over into our bosomes which is a promise of becomming Gods while the acquisitions proposed to our elder brothers were but the prosperities of men Wherefore we may note that untill the Crosse had opened the gates of heaven God did not make that the key wherewith his children were so precisely ordained to unlock them For the ancient Patriarks who were to stay long without the doores were not set to forge this key out of the fire of tribulation with so much sweat and labour as those who were presently to be let in upon the perfecting of their worke prescribed in the Gospell And so we may observe a far differing order in the promulgation of the Law and of the Gospell For to the Generalls of the Law there was given a promise of great temporall victories triumphs and subjugations of their enemies but we know the Champions of the Gospell had very different Commissions which consisted in all temporal sufferings defeatures and distresses These were the articles which Christ pend for their instructions That they should fly before their enemies from place to place be taken scorned scourged vilified under all worldly indignities In the world you shall have distresse John 16.33 In mundo pressurā habebitis is one of the last orders Christ gives his Commanders so that we may see S. Peter and S. Paul diversly equipaged for their expeditions to what Moses and Josuah were for their enterprises And yet the conquest of the first was to extend to the whole earth and the victories of the last but to a mole-hill in respect of the other So much more virtue Christs person hath conferd upon crosses and sufferings then God did allow to temporal prosperity Upon this foundation Christ to raise this point of afflictions which is annexed to his Church as high as nature can carry it exalts it by a revolt of nature it selfe against all innate inclinations advertising his Church that even their fathers brothers friends shall deliver them up to persecutions And I pray God you have the next following mark of the Disciples of Christ as evidently upon you as you have these which is Luk 21.17 19. In your patience you shall possesse your soules This is the onely shield Christ hath given his Church to cover her in all those showers of fiery darts which are to fall upon her He hath left her patience and permitted the world to furnish her with passions as necessaries for the exer I se thereof So then as you are members of the Catholike Church you must stock your best possession and resolve to live upon that in all your other sequestrations which is the possessing your soules in patience For indeed no body can possesse his soule that is remain master of it but by this security for without this hold of our minds the world hath power to alienate them by all casualties and violences that invade them and this is the reason why Christ who considereth nothing in his Church but soules having left this safeguard for them hath exposed all the rest to the injuries of the world as not worthy his protection so as having a sufficient power given us to maintain the possession of our soules we need not feare any dispoyling of such things of which the deprivement may improve that possession more then the fruition for the burning of our houses and the consumption of all our temporalties make such ashes as are the best soyling can be cast upon our earth for the bearing of patience and so we may fructifie this possession of our soules even by the perishment of our fortunes since I may then say with the Apostle Heb. 10.36 Patience is necessary for you that you may receive the promise of possessing your soules I may assure you consequently that you may improve the best part of your estates as Catholikes in all your sentences and sequestrations under that notion for you have the best treasure of the Church to undamage you which is the conformity to Christs sufferings which are better then indulgences granted out of the redundant treasures of his passions for these doe but deduct from temporary pains and the other doe improve eternall glory All you therefore who are suffering under the predicament of Catholikes have no worse a cause to claime that disposition of you which S. Heb. 10.34 Paul commends in the Church of his dayes in those great fights of affliction she sustained when the Christians took with joy the spoyle of their goods knowing that they had a better and a permanent substance since the same permanent assignment is made to you for all your privations and in some respect your portions are mended since that day though the purchase cost you not so deare as it did the then persecuted Catholikes for the accidentall beatitude of heaven is augmented since those dayes by the addition of many millions of glorified soules every one of which is some encrease of joy mutually to each beatify'd soule by a participation reflected from one anothers joyes and so the number of the blessed soules in this regard as it riseth raiseth the glory of heaven Wherefore it may now be better challenged of you this rejoycing in your traffique for heaven with the losse of your goods since you give lesse for it then the tortured Primitive Christians and have more in it For this consideration then you who as the Apostle saith have accesse through your faith into this grace wherein you stand Rom. 5.4 and glory in hope of the glory of the sonnes of God ought also to glory in tribulations knowing that tribulation worketh patience by which Christ hath ordained you shall possesse your soules And it may well be that those who spoyle and dispossesse you of your houses and lands doe restore your soules to you which were too much possessed by them and thus you may be re-estated in the best part of your selves which peradventure was sequestred by your owne estates For you know this was the case of the young man in the Gospel whose soule was under the seisure of his owne possessions which did put a worse restraint upon him then is upon any of your persons when he had nothing to hold him from following Christ but the bands of his owne abundances the which proved both sequestration and imprisonment of his soule Whereupon Christ asketh
patient in tribulation knowing all our hope must rise out of sufferances as they are the ligaments and connections of the body to a crucified head Wherefore I will desire you for your comfort as well as your conviction in this point to cast your thoughts upon the Crosse and consider only the last miracle which Christ was pleased his body should exhibit to us after his soule was departed from it You may note how out of that wound which Longinus the Souldier gave him after he was dead there issued the two greatest mysteries of the Church to oblige us to beleeve that much more the head himselfe never woundeth or permitteth to be offended any of the members of his living body upon earth but upon some speciall reason which alwaies resulteth to the good of that part he striketh unlesse the part it selfe prove the impediment by some miscarriage in the state of cure Wherefore that portion of his body amongst you which is now bleeding under his hand need feare nothing but their own ill diet irregularity in their hurts for they may prove so healthfull to you as they may convert even the diseases of your naturall bodies into a good constitution of your souls and the regiment of your selves in this case is prescribed by S. Paul 1. Cor. 16.13 Watch ye stand in the faith doe manfully and be strengthened upon occasion of the same infirmity in his time Vigilate state in fide viriliter agite confortamini This prescript containeth a direction to your three constitutions of Sufferers Doe manfully relateth to you as you are men Be strengthened belongeth to you as Christians Watch and stand in the faith respecteth you as Catholikes and if you apply these remedies respectively to your infirmities even every one of these your three Vae Vae Vae's upon earth shall afford you a Sanctus in heaven and so as Men Christians and Catholikes weeping here you may attain to the singing eternally of Sanctus Sanctus Sanctus in heaven CHAP. IV. Of the manner of discharging these duties of Sufferings WE may observe that Christ spake neither so frequently nor so cleerly of any one thing to his Disciples as of the sufferings and passions he was to undergoe and yet they never understood him in them They were alwayes either in such feare or such wonder concerning them as they never durst aske the question for the explication of their perplexities They quickly sought the explication of all his Parables Mar. 9.31 that seemed referred either to his power or his promises but in this point of his disparagements and his passions they seemed so little desirous of an illumination as when he was ready to be seized according to his prediction and upon the point of separation from them he is faine to reproach them that they were dejected only not desirous to be informed whither he was going John 15.5.6 whereupon depended all their reperations The apprehension of sufferance and passion seâ—meth to have such a quality as is reported of the Torpedo for it often stupifies and benummeth our nature so as it leaves not so much as even curiosity stirring in it towards an inquisition of reliefe In like manner there may be many who have heard much of our exposure to sufferings and afflictions in this life and yet remain little inlightned in the right conception of them and which is worse little inquisitive of that method whereby we must extract benefit and utility out of them Wherefore it is requisite to exhibit as faire a copy of that method as I can let forth to their comprehensions that they may not be dismaied by this Onus Domini Jer. 23. The burthen of the Lord. nor be deluded by this supposition that they are all the spirituall children of Abraham who have this marke of the Covenant of sufferances upon their bodies or their fortunes for it is not this moral circumcision or uncircumcision that intitles us to the promises but the spirituall signature of Christ upon the heart it is not the exterior infliction of misery that qualifies us for the reward proposed nor a present immunity and quiet that ejects us out of the society of Christs passions it is the interior disposition in both cases that constituteth the rightfull title to remuneration In those who are actually exercised under their crosses it is the patient and pious resignation which intitleth them to the conditions of the Covenant and in those who are in a present suspension or truce enjoying a serene conveniency it is the preparation and disposure of their hearts to accept humbly all orders of God in how sharp a stile soever they shall be issued against their persons or estates This frame of the mind is their evidence before the eyes of God of their right to the contract of suffering members of Christ Job's disposition in his quotidian sacrifices was no worse an odour to God then the suavity of his patience fuming up from that meane altar whereon he lay offering up his ashes The materiall part of affliction doth not sanctifie no more then the same part in alms or charity doth expiate they are both but Egena elementa Gal. 4.9 Barren elements of themselves the heart and the spirit wherewith they are designed animateth and enliveneth them Wherefore we may say of sufferings that which Christ said of a case not much unlike to this Mar. 7.15 That no affliction which goeth into a man doth actually sanctifie him but it is the spirit of sufferance which resideth in him that must render him holy for out of the heart only good intentions and humble conformities doe issue so as the externall crosses that fall upon the man doe not formally purifie him it is what comes out of the heart as the emissions of humility patience and charity which his heart sendeth forth to meete and imbrace all Gods pleasures which can onely hallow and sanctifie the man Therefore I may very fitly say if any man hath eares to heare let him heare that you may not prove so unhappy as to beare the weight and heat of the day and to forfeit at last your hire for though God saith He chastiseth every child he receiveth he doth not say He receiveth every one that he chastiseth S. James therefore when he proposeth to his distressed country-men The esteeming it all joy their falling into various trialls and temptations coupleth this reason with his proposition James 1.2 Knowing that the probation of your faith worketh patience So that the benefit must be derived from the effect of tribulation which is the producing of patience the which doth not naturally spring out of misery for this is but the matter or the subject whereon this virtue is exercised not the spirit or forme of this holy disposition For which reason the Apostle compleateth his advise by proceeding to direct them how to compasse this necessary adjunction to the matter of their afflictions to render them subjects of joy saying
If any of you want wisdome let him aske it of God who giveth it to all men abundantly So as this joy is a spirit extracted out of patience not inherent in the matter of passion and patience is a virtue too celestiall to be educed as it were ex traduce by the materiall body of affliction It is infused by the holy spirit which S. Paul confirmeth when he saith Rom. 5. that Tribulation worketh patience shewing the reason of this operation in the next words after the sequence of many good productions derived from one another he setteth this for the effective cause of all because The charity of God is powred forth in our hearts by the holy Ghost Rom. 5.5 So as it is the spirit of God moving upon these Waters which divideth the light from the darknesse not the Chaos it selfe that actively produceth these two lights of patience and hope although the troubles and confusions of this world may be the elements out of which the spirit may extract them For sufferings seeme to be to patience that which matter is to the artificer for though the art be seated in the minde yet it cannot be actuated and expres'd but by some matter that supports it so patience though it be a spirituall disposition inherent in the soule cannot be exercised but upon some passion and contrariety which is the subject that renders it visible and discernable for the Theory of this virtue can no more assure us of our abilities in it then the studie of all the Geometricall rules of Sculpture can ascertain a Statuary of his sufficiency untill he hath experimented it upon either stone and brasse or waxe or clay at least some matter is requisite to reflect to him the sight of his notions formed and reduced to their last terme which is a visible exhibition of them So there must be some afflictions though not the severest yet some at least of a softer quality which must minister some matter of contrariety and vexation to be as the ground and subject exposing to our selves the worke of our patience upon it Wherefore as joy in tribulations must be derived from Patience so this vertue must be acquired by Prayer They who look lower then God for patience doe commonly look also lower then heaven for the order of their afflictions and so fall short both in the knowledge of the nature of their evils and their remedies For they who rely on nature or morall reason for their cure may well be judged to impute their malady to Fortune Whereupon S. James giveth this further advise to that of our petitioning and postulating of wisdome James 6. that We must aske in faith without any doubting or haesitation not tossing in an irresolution of referring our crosses to the eye of Providence or to the blindnesse of Fortune Such a wavering aestuation of spirit the Apostle saith must not expect to receive any thing Our prayer therefore must be as fixed in the beliefe of Gods speciall providence in all contingencies as it is in the confession of a God for the one involveth the other and then we shall finde such a joy in patience as our reason it selfe shal witnesse to be divine as being beyond her reach so much as she must avow it to be Digitus Dei Wherefore I beseech you to beware of the fluctuation of these times betweene the strength of morall reason and the rest of faith for there is nothing so injurious to reason as under the pretence of exalting it to raise it out of the owne sphere of activity exacting such effects of Reason as are not to be found lower then the orbe of grace For they who assigne themselves peace and repose in all tribulations out of the stock of Phylosophie prejudice Reason much by their over-promising for it For Morall Phylosophie at the highest is but as it were a Meteor suspended in the ayre betweene the earth of a meere sensuall 1 Cor. 15. The first man of earth earthly The second man from heaven heavenly and the firmament of a spirituall man It is not so much raised above the man who is de terrâ terrenus as it is below him who is de coelo coelestis wherefore all the sweet-sounding and harmonious tongues of the Phylosophers are but sounding brasse or tinkling cymbals when they come to be used without the charity infused by the fiery tongues of Sion We shall find the hollownesse of such tongues which raised their noise to our eares very light when we take them into our hands to weigh against the heavinesse and gravations of sad crosses and oppressions Methinks many of the Heathen Phylosophers supposed in their prescripts concerning the minds insensiblenesse in all the passions and pressures of the body that the body had but such a coexistence of place with the mind as we say those bodies of aire have with the Angels that assume them in which those spirits are onely as movers in a moveable subject not at all united or affected thâ—â— matter appeareth about them which is not informed by them but assumed by them to expose them to our sight and so is only moved by them without any connexion to them So sure their suppositions that the minde may remaine unconcerned in all the sufferances and tortures of the flesh require that our bodies should be but such ayery matter rather moved only then informed by our soules For that apathie the Stoicks propose in all the bodies distresses cannot hold in that connexion our soules and bodies have with one another and so whosoever shall relye upon their conclusions shall finde their conceits ayery and vacuous and their owne bodies too solid and too closely conjoyned to their souls not to be affected with the burthens and pressures of it Wherefore our faith teacheth us to resort to a higher Principle residing in our soule and yet is no part of it which is the Holy spirit of God infused by his grace whereby we are instructed in the incapacities and deficiencies of our owne nature and the detection of our minds inability in her own single power proveth her enforcement nay inablement to resent all the bodies grievances yet to bear them without distraction or reluctancy and this discernment of that obnoxious state the soule is exposed unto showeth her That as she can doe nothing of her selfe but suffer and complain so in virtue of that supplementall aid she can rejoyce in tribulations and professe Phil. 4.14 I can doe all things in him that strengthens me Omnia possum in eo qui me confortat Whereupon we must be possessed of this principle that peace of minde doth not spring up in affliction as the plants did in Paradise Genes 2. without either raine or culture Patience which is the dew of heaven must be drawn from thence and this as it is attracted only by the meanes Elias used to open heaven so likely it holds this analogy with his small cloude he could
it to you with this petition of S. Paul for the Thessalonians upon the same occasion Dominus dirigat corda vestrain charitate Dei patientiâ Christi CHAP. 7. Of the great benefits may be extracted out of affliction AS I have produced your obligation to suffer signed as you are men sealed as you are Christians with the signet of the Crosse witnessed and delivered as you are Catholikes in the Sacrament of Confirmation wherein you deliver your consent as your owne deed whereof the chiefe officers of the Church are witnesses I have also suggested to you the most expedient meanes of losing nothing by this engagement which is to procure Patience to be given you for your counter-security from God to whom you stand bound in this contract of suffering This is a celestiall manner of negotiating the demanding of him to whom the Indenture is made the meanes of discharging it but this is the method of God and worthy of himselfe to require nothing of his creatures but what they may be furnished with first from him for but asking it I have therefore proposed patience for your discharge and Prayer for your acquisition of patience and since Prayer may accommodate you with what you have most need of your necessities may be said to provide against themselves for commonly they are infallible furnishers of Prayer And having thus brought you out of the Hospitall into the Temple desiring you to raise your thoughts out of the infirm and wounded part of your condition to the contemplation of your being imitators or rather types and figures of that glorifyed body which chose this way you are now passing in to enter into glory I may hope the having disposed your taste for the good relish of this chalice of Mount Calvary whereof you are now to take your part And this draught you are making hath more of the cup which Christ promised his Disciples should pledge him in then the Sacrament of the Novellists hath of the cup of the last Supper since they receive it but as a bare figure and simple commemoration of the blood of Christ so as you may comfort your selves that even in the interdiction of your Religion there appeareth as good an image of the passion of Christ as in the highest exercise of theirs For even the unbloudy part of your sufferings are signs images and symboles of the passion of Christ and they challenge no more even for the honour of their Sacrament Wel then may this serve you to answer that common reproach of your wanting halfe the Sacrament that it ill becomes them to object this who themselves want it all having taken both from Clergie and Laity that reality wherein consisteth all the vertue and efficacie of it But this hath intervened as a Parenthesis of offensive Arms in this contexture of defensive which is the work I have onely taken in hand I will therefore reconnect this thred of my discourse to that web I have my pen upon which is The extracting of benefits out of afflictions Many things have usurped the glorious title of goods by the power of common fame which in our naturall bodies is a conspiracy of the multitude of our senses against our soule whereby the received felicity of the world is placed in things so perillous and obnoxious as they are really the lesse goods the more they are reputed so Which easily appeares in the testing and tryall of all those flecting fruitions which our cupidities pursue as riches honours pleasures and the like the duration whereof is likely the lesse the more the desire proves solicitous thereof The prejudging of our senses induceth this so unsafe opinion for their ruling and injuring of us is coetaneous with us and our reason is not of the same age which is the cause why our senses anticipate the apprehension of good and evill insomuch as our reason being much later called in to advise us can hardly confute this preoccupation even by a demonstration of the abusivenesse of such received fallaeies For Man as if he studyed nothing but to elude the sentence is upon him seemes to set his heart upon nothing but the eating of his bread without any sweat and the meeting with no thornes upon the earth So far are our senses from acquiescing to the sentence of God as even the society of God himselfe in labours and crosses doth hardly convince us of the benedictions contained therein albeit he hath not onely read this lesson upon them but hath personally infused that quality into them And shall our faith assent to so high a mysterie seeming so contrary to our reason and shall we not credit this assertion of the good of sufferings because it is averse to our senses Shall we beleeve that under the sordid and despicable veyle of flesh and blood the Creator of heaven and earth was covered and shall we not easily accord that under the dark and obscure covers and cases of temporary miseries afflictions there remaine reall glories and benedictions since as the first is cleerly De fide the second cannot reasonably be denyed to be Proximam fidei Me thinks this sense of Crosses should easily be accepted by Catholikes who are imbued with the beleefe of so high mysteries when they beleeve that which appeares Bread in the blessed Eucharist to be really the glorious body of the Sonne of God there should be little difficulty to allow those sufferances which seeme ills to our senses to be really such goods as they are asserted by our faith for surely if they have but neere so much patience to make this conversion as they must have faith to beleeve the other all crosses and adversities in this life are really converted into blessings while they remaine under unhappy and unlikely apparencies after such a manner as the body of Christ is truly present in the holy Sacrament though covered from our senses under the veyles of no way resembling species Since God then covereth and retecteth the greatest blessing he can conferre upon his Church it being even his own Sonne under so improbable appearances we may easily beleeve his corrections though they are overcast with never so unlikely out-sides to have an interiour goodnesse and benediction according to his word especially since we are sensibly convinced of this verity by frequent experiments in our selves and others but in the other sublime mysterie our faith is alwayes put to straine up to it and that never descendeth to a manifestation to our reason Besides most of the things of this world which seeme to us never so veritable and sincere are but veyles and cases of somewhat else then is extant in their superficies For we see the substances and essentiall forms of nothing onely the figure colour and other accidents of all things sensible and so the colours and shapes of evils in this life cover and infold eternall goods and the specious figures and appearances of pleasures Psal 11.8 It is good for me that thou hast
the honour to be types of Christ we finde but one exempted out of the list of his precursors in diverse passions and afflictions and Solomon onely passing through the smooth delicious alleyes of this world fell so dangerously as the holy Ghost hath not set him up again before us whereby we may conclude that God intended the leaving of Solomons case undecided as a terrible admonition to us of the perillous estate of prosperity since so great an organ of the holy Ghost is not manifestly restored to his place where all the rest are evidently fixed following the suffering Lambe whom they had the honour to precede and to prefigure So as although we may hope well of Solomon we may safely condemne continuall prosperity as a formidable seducer since worldly felicity leaveth us in suspense of the salvation of Solomon and affliction giveth us great hopes of the reconciliation of Manasses And it may well be observed that the first Angel which is recorded in scripture to have been sent to the earth was upon the occasion of an extreme distresse Gen. 16.12 which was to Agar flying in the desert and the Angel giveth this testimony of the reason of his mission Because the Lord had heard the voice of her affliction so as Agars being in misery bringeth her to be honoured by the ministery of an Angel sooner then Sara's being mistresse and in authority and so distresse had quickly obtained pardon for undutifulnesse Wherefore all they who have faults to expiate may be glad to have sufferings for intercessors for they speak in vertue of that blood which calls for better things then that of Abel they mediate reconciliation and deprecate revenge And therefore we finde God vouchsafe to say Cum ipso sum in tribulatione I am with him in tribulation and his presence is often so manifested in tribulation as they who had scarse heard of him before come to know him and acknowledge him in that apparence Which made S. Bernard to say very elegantly Dâ—n 3.93 that God appeared so visibly in the tribulation of his children in the fiery furnace that even the heathens themselves confessed he was there affirming that the fourth was like the Sonne of God so that it seems God will permit the divell to passe for a God with them who are in the power and dominion of the world rather then reveale himselfe to that presumption and chuseth to enlighten the blind of Babylon only by the fire of affliction And for that end he preferd the furnace for his Temple to appeare in before all the sumptuous edifices of Babylon In like manner when God resolved to shew himselfe to Nabuchodonosar he would not vouchsafe to come into his palaces but carryed him out into the fields and laid him as low as the grasse that fed him and then in this posture of being neerer a beast then a King vouchsafed to visit him to shew him how much more he esteemed misery and confusion then temporall glory and magnificence And thus we see how man in honour becomes like the beast that perisheth and man in dishonour being reduced even to the likeness of a beast recovereth and restoreth the image of God in him selfe which his other condition had almost obliterated Nay affliction is so proper to finish and perfect Gods image in us as Daniel had that given him for an improvement of his sanctity which he had by order from God prescribed Nabuchodonosar for expiation of his impiety He for having destroyed those Idols which the other had adored was sent among the beasts for a reward the lions den is given as it were for a recompence of his service against both the spirituall and materiall dragon and devout Toby was brought into darknesse and the shadow of death Tob. 12.14 as a gratification of all his pious familiarities with the dead for when the Angel remembreth him of his owne merits in these offices he telleth him that Because he was acceptable to God is was necessary that tentation should prove him So as the tribulation of this world seemes the penny conditioned for in this life and due as wages to the travail in Gods service And indeed the weight and heat of this day or rather moment of this life may well be accounted our best salary in it since the Apostle telleth us that Light and momentary tribulation worketh in us exceedingly above measure an eternall weight of glory 2 Cor. 4.17 and so God who knoweth how the crownes are to be given out by weight according to that we bring in of crosses marked by Gods stamp upon them he may well load us here in that order to the elevating of us by his justice as well as his mercy Whereupon all the Saints the liker they grow to the image of Christ under Gods hand discern the cleerlyer this designe of God and so rejoyce in their tribulations proportionately to the light they receive by these openings of their owne mudde walls wherein they are immured and so by Gods making as it were through lights in their bodies the soule comes to have the clearer prospect on all sides of her whereby she discerneth that God in this work of breaking down the matter of carnall appetites which are like walls about us removeth but dust and bringeth in light and therefore we see how the Martyrs rejoyce while these windows as I may say through lights were beating out in their bodies while they were made transparent with wounds the soule had the more light given her and so they looked upon their enemies as set awork to break down their prison alwaies paying them their prayers for their labour And we need not look back into story for such lights as these whereby to read the joy of sufferings for I may say of these examples as Moses said of his precepts They are not beyond the sea Deut. 30.12 that you may pretend and say which of us can passe over the sea and bring them to us that we may fulfill them in worke For such patterns are neere you in your owne sight you need not travell into the remote regions of Antiquity for such precedents of hearts rejoycing while these doores of their breasts are breaking open to set them at liberty God hath provided for you the lights of the Primitive times as well as he hath permitted you to remaine long in the same necessities You can therefore have no excuse in being ignorant of the good of sufferings since you have both the matter abundantly among you and the manner excellently patternd out before your eyes It is well said of one that wee may wonder that all the stones under the feet of the reprobate doe not turn into roses for some solace to them now in regard of what they are to suffer And therefore we need not wonder if all things under the feet of the elect doe turne into thornes to punish them for their sinnes since their transitory paines augment so
order to this we see that the bleeding of the mysticall body of Christ hath alwaies offered a kinde of spirituall cement to unite and compact the parts thereof Whereupon the holy Ghost who hath this commission to produce an union in the mysticall body of Christ John 17.21 23. resembling that of the Blessed Trinity whereof he is the union as he performeth this effectively by love so he raiseth this love very often instrumentally by persecution For we know in those times when opposition to this tender body was most fierce this union was so firme and indissoluble as the holy Spirit seemeth to glory in this operation as having wrought this similitude of unity so perfectly as he pronounceth The multitude of beleevers to have had one heart Act. 4.32 and one soule so that here was that similitude accomplished in them which Christ asked thus of his Father for the beleevers in him Job 17.22 that They may be one as we also are one For this seemeth a good resemblance of that union is in the Blessed Trinity wherein there is distinction of Persons and unity of Essence since here the multitude consisting of divers persons were all one heart and one soule This simplicity and unanimity slakned even in those times by the same degrees that the pressures which lay upon this arch of the Church were lightned and removed But in all times we finde that a common persecution hath in some measure straitened and combined the minds consorted in that band of Religion which is the cause of their pressure and gravation So as we cannot doubt but these times have in a good proportion closed and compacted more your hearts in a mutuall zeal and charity towards one another which unity of spirit is very sutable with the uniformity of your Religion and no violence can suppresse a free exercise of this act thereof And as this sort of communication to one anothers necessities is a means left you still to exercise your charities so I hope in God you are very faithfull and active in this commerce with one another and that both sorts drive a greater trade of charity in your severall faculties then ever Those who have beene in the office of giving materiall almes doe now I hope endeavour to compensate the losses of the poore Pro. 19.17 He lendeth to our Lord that hath mercy on the poore and he will repay him the like who are Gods receivers by proving themselves the devouter and better beggers of God releefe for the common distresses and they who have received much from others upon Gods tickets do I hope now bring them in to God more fervently then ever showing him what they have received upon his account and so may be earnest solicitors for the payment of that Interest which they doe witnesse to be due upon this contract of the holy Spirit Faeneratur Domino quà miseretur pauperi vicissitudinem suam reddet ei and thus both parties may still commerce for their severall accommodations those who have beene Gods creditors in the sense aforesaid may seeme more sensible of the suspension of this quality then of their personall deprivements and may most zealously intercede for the supplying of that office by some other means and those who are miserably distituted now by the obstruction of this conduit of reliefe may be so gratefully zealous as to intend more the bringing into God the accounts due to such ministers of his as stand now suspended then their owne private suppeditations and both shall by this means hold their proper parts in this consort of charity the one shall forget their good works before God and the other shall remember him of them Thus spirituall good works may still multiply among you while the one part of you sorroweth most for the intermission of the practicall ministry of them and the other feeleth more their religious gratitude to their distressed benefactors then their private grievances And this kinde of weeping in your widowes and shewing the coats and garments which the Dorcases were wont to make them Act. 9.59 who are now dead to that function is one of the likelyest meanes to obtaine their resuscitation and re-instating in that condition For as the Wiseman saith It is an easie thing for God to accommodate the poore James 5.11 Facile est Dec honestare pauperem and the Apostle S. James proposeth Jobs temporall resurrection and restauration as an object of comfort to faithful expecters of Gods time and therefore these two duties faithfully performed by both your conditions may make the highest poverty amongst you abound unto the riches of simplicity the which may also intercede so powerfully for the other part as it may prove such an Angelicall mediation as is spoken of in Job Job 33.23 If there shall be an Angel speaking for him one of thousands to declare mans equity he shall have mercy on him and shall say Deliver him that he descend not into corruption I have found wherein I may be propitious to him the voyce of the poore bringing in these testimonies of their former equities for your Jobs whom their friends doe not know sitting in the ashes of their consumed fortunes these I say that have not made the eyes of the widdow expect nor have eaten their morsell alone such bills and evidences brought in to Christ as debts wherewith he hath charged his person may perhaps procure Jobs latter daies for such who have passed thorough his first estate and are now sitting in his second translation But in all cases these notes of the hands of the poore shall be sure assignments for that better and permanent substance which the Apostle saith is their inheritance Heb. 10. of those who have susteined a great fight of passions and have had compassion on them that were in bonds and have taken the spoile of their goods with joy For which reason this mutuall commerce of spirituall charity is that I now recommend unto you for the exercise of fraternall dilection that while you cannot turnish the Altar without the veyle with the fat of your flocks you may the more largely serve the table of Incense with these odours of internall charity What I have said in way of direction to these interiour acts of charity is to extenuate the paines of those Tobiasses who it may be are now reduced from being almoners to be their owne almes-men having scarce left for their support that which was heretofore their waste that ran over and fed their brothers But I doe not intend this as a dispensation to any who have yet any thing left which they may prudently deny themselves in contribution to the releife of such who have no portion of subsistance For now every one should square his mind by the new modell of these times and the same clay that the potter hath beene pleased to turn from a larger into a lesser vessell must attend to his present forme and not reflect upon his