humane nature was rendered unworthy of God's grace so that if at any time he communicated his blessings it was by way of advance and upon credit in consideration of the merits of his incarnate Son Wherefore being once come he gave precepts of higher perfection so that doubtless nothing can be better more just and more suitable to Man than the Evangelical Law Nothing more agreeable to the good Government of the Universe and all Creatures nor which contains in its decrees more equity and holiness Insomuch as its perfection alone seems ground enough to pass a judgment that it cannot issue but from the deep Councels of a Divinity Lastly as to good manners or natural precepts this great Architect hath made of them a more clear and ample explication by which the will is rectifyed and carried on to the pursuit of greater things than were proposed in the Mosaick Law What just reason then had our Petitioner to make this edifice of Jerusalem's Wall the object of his most fervent prayer and that all his subjects should subscribe to the petition and offer up their Vowes for the dispatch of this great work in which their heavy Yoak so little beneficial to them would be taken off and in exchange they were to be ranked under the discipline and law of grace and love wherefore let us joyn issue and cry Let the Walls of Jerusalem be built up The next composition of this structure is foretold by the Prophet Esay I will lay in the foundation of Sion a stone that hath endured the touch a corner and precious stone founded in the foundation This is Peter and his successours that rock on whom Christ hath built his Church and which hath been tryed by all the assaults of Earth and Hell Nor hath this stone proved only of right temper in which no engin of malice could work a flaw but it is shaped into a corner stone by which the two walls of Jews and Gentiles are united together and make one Christian Church It is also precious in copiously distributing her Spiritual Treasures throughout the World as the clear explication of her Doctrine by universal consent the rights of Sacraments which delivered with a Harmony and unity in faith is the bond of peace the Life and Soul of Religion Lastly it is grounded in the foundation which shews it to be a secondary foundation The first St. Paul declares no Man can lay any other foundation that is primary and Basis of all than what is already laid to wit Jesus Christ But after him the next groundwork is St. Peter by whom alone and his successours we are to arrive at Christ and what can be to God more glorious than to make use of the feeble to confound the strong and by faith and humility to lead Men unto wisdom and glory This piece of Workmanship in the Fabrick of Jerusalem is like a Citadel which commands all and holds its awful title not by Law of Nations but divine right It governs men in order to their Souls and rather under the notion of being Christians than Men it looks not upon their temporal ease and security but hath an Eye to a life and felicity immortal It is fortifyed with divine Lawes and maintains a perpetual skirmish not only with a few visible adversaries but with an infinity of invisible Enemies After this Rock solidly disposed and fited the Bishops like Watch-towers and strong Bastions are erected whose office is to superintend over the Guards and Sentinels and to protect the weaker part of the Walls from the Enemies assaults this contrivance is set down by St. Athanasius where he sayes O Peter upon thy Foundation the Bishops as pillars of the Church are setled and confirmed Then Priests Deacons and other officers are assigned to render this structure in all points compleat some of these materials are for the beauty and ornament of the Church in her great solemnities others as Priests for the necessary discharge of our duty to God for religion teaching us to pay that honor and esteem we owe to God is the perfection and accomplishment of the World nor can we upon any score be dispensed with in the acknowledgment of these fealties Whence no Nation hath ever been found so ignorant or barbarous as not to own and in some manner or other to pay this Tribute either by way of adoration praise prayer sacrifice festival solemnity or by some external Ceremony Now that these actions might be duly acquitted there appears an absolute necessity that some selected person should be set apart and sanctifyed to this end But above all it was most requisite in the Evangelical Law where a Priest hath power to offer up a victime and Sacrifice by which in a moment he renders to God more glory and service than all the Angels and Men can do in the vast durance of Eternity Where he is daily to represent to the eternal Father Christ's holy passion and by that moving object render him propitious unto Souls where he is to disengage Men from the slavery of sin and jawes of Hell by the administration of holy Sacraments So that all the splendour and beauty of the Church consists in the Ministery of Priests that as the Sun diffuses his beams on all sides no less doth this sacred Character enrich those Souls with a perfume of Sanctity who make themselves worthy by a due cooperation with its vertue so that we ought to esteem it one of the greatest blessings of God to the World in that he hath given us Ecclesiastical persons to dispense his Heavenly treasures and spiritual graces to enlighten the World purify Souls from sin and lead them as it were by the Hand unto a sovereign good Ah! what ingratitude then to throw a contempt upon those without whom Mankind would be but a Fire-brand for Hell in all Eternity The last materials for this Fabrick are lay and secular persons of all sorts so that of these and Ecclesiasticks are composed two different and great Nations under the Jurisdiction of Christ the Office of the one is to give the other to receive the one communicates by oblation of Sacrifice and administration of Sacraments spiritual goods without which Men would be like a Body destitute of a Soul having little tendency or elevation unto God the others passively make up the Hierarchy as being framed instructed purifyed and by Ecclesiasticks united unto God Thus you see our holy Prophet was solicitous in a matter of no small concern for within the limits of this sanctuary are bounded all the hopes of Man's Salvation Christ was made sayes St. Paul cause of eternal Salvation unto all those who obey him Now his Commandements relate to Faith good manners and the Sacraments which are not rightly performed but within the bosom of his Church Let us then joyn our hands and hearts to this noble structure and cry that the walls of Jerusalem be built up The Application If our Holy Penitent was so zealous for
shall I return thee in requital when I would praise thee an Abyss of Majesty exhausts in a moment all Encomiums and my Adorations appear nothing before thy Divine Essence could I unmake my self in deference to thee the Fountain of all Beings it were a poor homage to thy ineffable greatness Nay could I annihilate the whole World for thy glory yet would it nothing equal what thy immensity might justly exact But whilst I thus labour with my own poverty finding nothing created worthy thy acceptance behold the perfect oblation of thy Son a prodigious effect of mercy this I offer to thee he can best speak our gratitude who can only satisfie thy Justice since by this gift the very treasury of Heaven will be exhausted and the Earth enrich'd with a pure Sacrifice whose odour draws upon mankind a continued flood of mercies It is this eternal offering meant by our Petitioner when he mentions thy great mercy whose very thought and foresight at the distance of many ages replenished his heart with joy And if the expectation of him to come so transported what dilation of spiritual joy ought to invade us who now possess what they had only in hope who now reap a plentiful harvest of Salvation when before the World was blasted with sterility and doom'd to darkness untill the bowels of this great mercy were opened to store us with his light and grace Let us joyn our Petitions with Holy David and adore the wonders of this great mercy in which we behold humane flesh hypostasiated in a Divine nature a Creatour link'd to his Creature Death unto Life Glory unto Confusion and Iniquity stamped with Innocence And whilst we contemplate these admirable contrivances of the Divine Wisdom can they do less than ascertain us if we place in the Frontispiece of our supplications this compositum made up of so many contrarieties that our desires will take effect that under this Sanctuary we shall strike off all the scores of guilt and render a satisfaction as great as God can expect or require Hence you see how confidently every sinner may repeat with David Have mercy on me O God according to thy great mercy CHAP. III. Et secundùm multitudinem miserationum tuarum And according to the multitude of thy mercies OUr Holy Petitioner having expressed his relyance in general on Gods mercy next fixes upon its effects in particular and makes a series or list of all his mercies Wherein methinks I behold him just like one in desolation of Shipwrack fastning on a plank and though the storm continue darkness surround him and nothing but the Face of Death appears before his Eyes yet he remembers that many have been saved in his condition how some have been cast upon the shore others upon a Rock some by a passing Boat gathered up In fine he calls to mind a thousand wayes of preservation to consolate himself in this distress and every thought of hope makes him grasp with new fervour his floating support Even so I may say of our distressed Penitent his goodly Vessel of innocence was wreck'd dashed against the powerfull charms of a Woman from thence he was thrown into an Ocean of Sins where on all sides he beheld the menaces of eternal destruction in these perplexities he runs with his thought over all the passages of God's mercy from the World's beginning by the consideration of them a little to keep up his sinking Spirits He fails not to remember the mild proceeding of God with Adam in not punishing him irrecoverably as he had done the reprobate Angels but was contented to Exile him from the delicious place of his Creation and to expose him here to the Whirl-winds of passions in which contest if he proved faithful his reward was to be the same as first designed for him From thence he passes to the conflagration of Sodom and Gomorrah where though God's justice fell heavy upon those miscreants yet he layes it on their impenitency and admires his goodness that would notwithstanding have kept in his shafts of vengeance for the sake of ten just persons if that small number were but found in those populous Cities he goes on to the Ninivites and pleases himself to see them under the Lee born thitherby repentance even when the storm of God's wrath was ready to plunge them in an Abyss of ruine He insists much upon the prayer of Moses which still diverted the rigorous designs of God upon his people he fancies that every Groan and Sigh of his contributes something towards the making up of a brazen Serpent by whose Soveraign aspect his cauterized Soul might be unvenomed and made whole It was no small Consolation when he reflects on God's people in the Land of Egypt whose Oppression which their own Sins had drawn upon them was yet relieved at the rate of miracles and wonders and such as Israel had not seen And why all this But to make good his promise to Abraham Isaac and Jacob that he would never abandon a Truly-repenting Heart Thus he goes on enumerating a thousand other passages of God's mercy from the Worlds Creation until his time nor is he content with this but advances further displaying in his prophetick knowledge innumerable other effects of God's compassion to Mankind and at last begins to make this Application though he could not deserve to partake of his great mercy that is not only to have his guilt remitted but also to become the object of his choicest favours yet at least he hoped he might be hudled in amidst the multitude of his mercies How sweetly did those Attributes Divine resound in his Ears where God is stiled rich in mercies where his Mercy transcends all his other works and where his Goodness and Mercy are proclaimed inexhausted Sources He leaves not a Crany in the World unransacked and after the severest scrutiny finds and confesses there is no place destitute of his mercy no Creature that is not cheered and enlivened by the effects of his mercy this made him cry Lord when thou dost open thy hand all Creatures are filled with blessings and he tells us that every Being looks upwards depending on his Creatour and expects from him a seasonable supply of all wants Nay he excludes not Hell nor Souls doom'd to eternal flames from this mercy for he considers that God is bonus universis good to all and though his Justice have plunged them in that Calamitous State of misery yet that their torments are not more intense and in many circumstances aggravated they owe it to his mercy which still hath something to do even in the punishment of the highest offendours Having then survey'd Angels Man and sensible Creatures the Heavens Earth and Hell and found no Being that could in the least repine for want of mercy upon these reflections with just reason our Petitioner entitles them a multitude of mercies for on all sides they flow as from a natural Source Nor wonder that we have more Presidents of his
misery so likewise it might unto his happiness For doubtless the Combats which a virtuous Man sustains amidst so many Head-strong passions which abound in this mortal frame of ours are no small advancements to eternal Glory nor mean Engins to work our Freedom from the slavery of Sin Hence he takes up arms proclaims Warr against himself and abjures any future compliance with his unbridled appetite He will make his Body a Sacrifice into pennance which before had been a lump of ordures and sensuality His will shall become a Tyrant and check every the least inclination to Evil which till then was agitated and born away with every breath of Vanity and foul delights and if withall these rigours he can break the stamp of his iniquity he will prize that Action beyond all his former Victories and raise more Trophies in Memory of this deliverance than ever were consecrated to the most Heroick enterprize of any person in the World The monstrous shape of his iniquity so confounded him that 'till it was defaced he could not ask any blessing for it is the greatest of evils and wherein all misfortunes are Centered When Rheuben importuned his Father Jacob that Benjamin his darling might go into Egypt he offered his two Sons as pledges for his return and adds for a further engagement ero peccati reus he would be guilty of sin that is exposed to all the miseries imaginable if he falsifyed his word St. Paul expressing how severely God fell upon his only Son sayes he who knew no sin was made sin for us that is he discharged upon him the Tempest of his wrath rendring him the most despicable of Men as a Testimony of sins deformity and the deplorable State of him that lyes under the guilt of a mortal transgression Whence a great Doctor allowing the truth of St. Austin's assertion that one drop of the water of Paradise will be sufficient to quench the flames of Hell yet will it not suffice says he to wash away the foulness of sin Our Holy Penitent knew well that Death concludes all our merit and demerit that though the Just after this life shall perform many glorious actions yet these will not purchase to them any new Crowns no more than the reprobate shall not become more criminal by their abominations acted in Hell Wherefore during the time of this transitory life wherein we are to fix our choice of an eternity good or bad our penitent resolves to play the industrious Merchant whilst he lives his extinguished light of Grace may be enkindled and the hideous Character of his iniquity worn out but if Death surprize him in the obscurity of sin he must eternally remain in darkness deformed with the ugly stamp of his iniquity Wherefore having a clear view both of his present state and danger of delay he will both importunely and opportunely redouble his Note Dele iniquitatem meam blot out my iniquity The Application We may learn by the example of our penitent to work whilst the day of this life endures for the Night of Death approaching our lot is cast As the Tree falls so it will lye no skipping from vice to vertue nor from vertue to vice after Death if here you claw not off the stamp of your iniquity it will be fixed as an eternal reproach unto you and 't is but just where there is a capacity of perfection that a place time and state should be allotted for its acquisition The Angels who excell Men compassed their Felicity by one sole Motion by one simple operation But Man who is more gross and set at a greater distance from Beatitude must usually speaking gain it by several reiterated operations for the period of our merit or demerit takes its beginning where we surcease in the use of our senses for as in flattering their inclinations we offend so in curbing and wisely ruling them for the love of God we perform acts of Piety and Vertue so that in Death the matter of Vice and Vertue expiring with the loss of our senses Man remains confirmed in that State he is then found be it of good or evil Wherefore let us imitate our penitent and whilst our Petition may be heard cry out with Holy David Dele iniquitatem meam blot out my iniquity Amen CHAP. V. Amplius lava me ab iniquitate mea Wash me more from my iniquity OUr distressed Penitent rowses up his Spirits believing he hath already a grant of part of his Petition but he fears lest some relicks may yet remain of his sin that is bad inclinations and proneness unto wickedness contracted by many reiterated peccaminous Acts and therefore he thinks good to stick close unto the same subject till he compleat his design Wash me more from my iniquity It is natural to Vegetables simply to covet a Being to sensitive Animals to seek a well Being and to reasonable Creatures to thirst and long after a Soveraign Being which only can satisfie their God-thirsting Souls So that we see our Petitioner by an impulse of nature is carryed on to his first demand but when with this tendency in nature are joyn'd the seeds and beginnings of Divine love the least stain supervenes not without a sequel of a strange horrour and trembling arising as well from an apprehension of losing the rich Donative of Grace as from a restless ambition of improving it every moment to God's Glory He knowes our life is here as it were between privation and existence between light and darkness by how much we recede from one Extream we approach nearer to the other and to make a hault or stop in this mean is to slide back into that part we would avoid this made our Petitioner not satisfied with a bare remission and to press for a further exemption from his iniquity Amplius lava me wash me more He beholds the Sun to cheer the World with his light not by one continued constant ray but by a perpetual emission of Spirits from his luminous Body Even so he wishes that splendor of the eternal Father which hath already visited with comfortable beams his happy Soul might incessantly oblige him with new influences that if the least exhalation of Sin arise it may in an instant fly and disperse it self before this purifying Globe amplius lava me wash me more His anxiety continues but with this difference before he feared to dye an enemy to God now he dreads to dye not his friend Before his care was to clear himself of sin now it is how to preserve and purchase an encrease of grace He begins to wonder that this spiritual resurrection allayes not all his desires but forthwith he checks himself with the reflection of Man's condition in this life where he is alwayes to seek and never to find because he proposes to himself the Idea of an Entity beyond his reach and hath only this support to hold up his hope that he seeks a thing incomprehensible an Object on Earth designed for our
love and inquisition in Heaven reserved for our fruition And which will be communicated more or less in proportion to the Zeal and Purity of Hearts we have here in seeking It is then in order to this happy enjoyment that our Penitent sues again and again to be more freed from his iniquity Besides Vertues have in them an admirable Sympathy which makes they never jarr but mutually conspire to unite themselves and the Subjects they inhabit to the most perfect Object and since this Union is only found in glory it is consequent we must needs here be in perpetual motion sometimes rooting out this imperfection otherwhiles acquiring that perfection untill we arrive at him who is the beginning and end of all our agitations He remembred with what wariness God gave his command to Adam advising even not to touch the Fruit he must not tast off well knowing the consequences which attend occasions of sin Hence he gathers this lesson if we must not play with danger much less harbour the lest atome of sin within us for it is of such a malignity as the Ocean upon the breach of a bank rushes not in with more violence than sin doth and over-flowes that Soul where once it finds admittance Who will grant nothing must receive no Petitions it was not without reason the Jews forbad the eating of Fat that they might not be allured to devour what was offered in their Sacrifice Our Holy Petitioner implores then a preservative as well as pardon this more implyes not only a fuller deletion of his iniquity but also a stalling of dangerous occasions he now suspects every motion of his enemy he hath seen from his own too dear experience that a spark hath grown up to a masterless incendium and this now happily extinguished should he again dally but with the least resemblance or shaddow of sin would in him appear monstrous after the tast of so signal a mercy This made him cry wash me Lord not only from sin but more even from all danger and occasions of sin For in the midst of imminent occasions of sin not to decline from Vertue and noble resolutions is a possibility more speculative than reducible to practice Nor was our penitent so transported with his change as not to have a solicitude for prevention of the like disaster His repentance was not by halves this made him stand alwayes upon his guard alwayes in fear and still panting after more purity and more relaxation from his chains of iniquity Wash me more that is more than others this clause of his Petition he judged not unnecessary for he believed the stains of his guilt were drunk in more deeply and were more fixt than in the Soul of any other the greatest offendour and consequently his cure required the application of a more Sovereign remedy If the Leprous Condition of Naaman Cyrus found not a compleat redress untill his seventh Lotion in Jordan what streams must he seek out whose infirmity speaks a contempt of God What multiplicity of reiterated bathings will suffice to cleanse that Crimson Dye whose reeking smoak ascends to Heaven to purchase thence a consuming fire Whose numberless offences he himself compares to the sands of the Sea and confesses he cannot entertain a thought of them without horrour He reckons up many signal Favours he had received from the liberal hand of God how he was pickt out from amidst his Fathers flocks being the youngest and least considerable of all his children to be made Author of liberty unto Israel how God had sheltred him as it were under his Wings from all his Enemies and so ordained that their greatest malice proved matter of his greatest glory how God had entrusted into his hands the Rule and guidance of his elect people and given him wisdom and courage to acquit himself of that weighty charge with immortal honour How God had promised not to confine his munificence unto his person but that he would settle the succession of his Regal Dignity to his posterity for ever And above all how from his line and seed should issue forth an abstract of all his liberalities to Mankind the Saviour of the World When he had registred all these Obligations and passed on to survey what return he had made he found so high ingratitude so much of disloyalty that to rank himself with other sinners were to add presumption to his heap of sins He supplicates therefore that to the Enormity of his Crimes may be proportioned the Measure of his pardon that as the deformity of his sin was unparalell'd so likewise might the stroke of that pencil exceed which was to correct all his imperfections and beautify him with a touch of perfection wash me more from my iniquity When he had thus framed his Petition implying in this word more first a necessity of greater helps than others proportionably to the greatness of his transgressions next a desire to be free from the least venial sin and lastly to be secured even from occasions of sin He ventures yet a little further and following the Dictamens of flesh and blood makes instance for a relaxation of the temporal punishment due to his Sin wash me more that is not only in taking away his doom to eternal torments but also the temporary satisfactions he must here make His sensitive part shrinks at the foresight of contradictions he was to wade through and would feign obtain this additional remission Man's natural affection to the Body from a strict Union it hath with the Soul raised in our Petitioner a great tenderness of it insomuch as not to plead for it were to violate he thought the Articles of Friendship made by nature between them Yet he had alwayes such an Eye to the Decrees of Heaven that after all his supplications he totally submits He will not repine at any pressure but with an entire resignation drink in the bitterest draughts of temporal afflictions if his Divine Justice so require He values 't is true his Body in it self God and nature having imprinted this love in him but when its depression may conduce to the purifying of his Soul upon whose happiness it mainly depends reason teaches we must then let it sink and though it be drown'd in an Ocean of torments our Penitent hath this consolation that his Petition is granted as to the effect for he shall see it rise again wholly distained in the waters of tribulation he shall find his past sorrows grown up into Jubileys and Exultations and his heart more sensible of that mercy which gave him constancy in his sufferings than if by a pure act of grace he had been released from sin without any satisfaction in his own person If then he be purified either according to his own wish by an exemption from sufferings which his frail Nature suggests or else by an inundation of afflictions which he hath merited by his crimes He hath still this comfort that he sues not in vain since both will
by the Heavens examine what Splendour hath issued from your Actions by which your Subjects might steer the course of their lives and be guided free from Shipwrack to the Haven of eternal rest For if they lose themselves on the Sands of misbelief or dashed upon the Rock of Vanity unlawful pleasures and the like for want of your directing beams their ruine will be laid to your charge and were it permitted you to hear the sad complaints and dire invectives those perished Souls do vomit forth against their Leaders who have deceived and tilled them on into misery it would certainly have influence upon you and oblige you to a greater circumspection in your wayes and manner of life If you own Nobility and Honour which the Mountains personate remember you are the Object of many inferiour eyes you are looked upon with respect and indeed as the Glass which should convey unto them the true representation of their Prince For he being but one and consequently not so communicable it is your parts who are dispersed through Kingdoms to supply what he cannot do to shew by your Justice Piety Devotion Charity and other Christian vertues that the practice of them can onely maintain your greatness and is the Foundation of all your hopes in another life which Principles lively set forth in your actions cannot but fix your dependants in a strange passion towards goodness and ground them in a Belief that it ought to be the ultimate scope of all their endeavours and enterprizes in this world Nor are those of the meaner rank hinted at by the Valleys exempt from all obligation in this kind There is not a Master of a family but is as it were a Sovereign to those who depend on him He ought to be the first at every pious duty to see his little flock fed with all necessary instructions in order to what Christianity obliges them to know and believe to carry a watchful Eye over them that he may know their faults to correct their vertues to reward and encourage if they fail in this they may say with David I have sinned against thee alone Though there be none under their roof can be a competent Judge yet this will not render them innocent and this our holy Penitent confesses who in this expression acknowledges the excellency and multitude of God's favours in being a King and consequently the highest ingratitude on his part towards the Author of them The Application By this clause we are further taught that if at any time we fail in our duty the principal motive of that ressentment must be in that it is displeasing to God whose onely frown we apprehend For when we trespass against our Neighbour the evil is in reference to God who forbids it whence every sinner may justly say I have sinned against thee alone So that we ought not to regard our temporal but eternal Penalties due to sin for that concerns our Soul which alone is the source of all our transgressions Wherefore our chief solicitude ought to be for its preservation Wherein we are to imitate St. Mary Magdalen who pressed in her spiritual necessity had a personal recourse to her dear Saviour but when concerned in the loss of her Brothers life she contented her self to dispatch away a letter by a servant insinuating by this the distinction she made between a soul and Body I wish we might all in this follow her Example that is espouse the Souls interest as the main concern Since in relation only to that we are to pronounce tibi soli peccavi I have sinned against thee alone CHAP. X. Vt justificiens in Sermonibus tuis vincas cum judicaris That thou mayest be justified in thy words and overcome when thou art judged OUr holy penitent tells us in this clause why he brought his guiltiness as King upon the Stage because by it the petitioned will be justified in his words which are these that he will never reject a truly repenting heart and he thinks they were never put more home to the Test than in his Person for who can despair after his admission into favour who had broken all the chains and tyes of duty wherein a Creature is linked and obliged by a most loving and liberal Creatour Besides the pardon of his ingratitude will serve as a fence against the rash judgements of the impious who are apt to lay severity to God's charge upon the reprobation of a sinner this makes our penitent to add that thou mayest overcome when thou and judged that is when his case shall be alledged it will stop and silence any blasphemous Tongue I believe also he reflected on the promise made by God that out of his lineâ— should issue forth the hope of Israel the Redeemer of mankind and lest his sin might divert the streams of God's mercy and frustrate his succeeding stemms of that glorious off-spring he minds him first of his promise to receive with open arms the most enormous if repenting Soul nextt his Foundation laid he would insinuate since by an act of mercy he was again planted in the Region of grace his hopes now are that the promises made by Heaven to him and his posterity might stand good that their accomplishment would be a confirmation to him of a plenary indulgence and a pledge that his punishment should not reach to so heavy a Confiscation in order to his temporal satisfaction But you must know when he sayes that thou mayest be justified c. This particle that imports not the efficient cause of the precedent verse to wit he had sinned against God alone to the end God may be justifyed as if the motive of God's justification gave rise to his sin No no it means only this that the eminency of his condition rendered him guilty of the highest ingratitude and since the torrent of God's mercy had born this clear away the publication of this pardon must needs exalt the divine goodness and testify to the World there is no iniquity so monstrous which may not if we will be overcome by his mercy whence he is justified in his words never to be a stranger to those who return with Repentance unto him How many times hath God been irritated by Man's ingratitude nay so touched to the quick as to declare he repented to have made him that is if God were capable of defect or change this exorbitancy in man might well deserve such a repentance have we not seen a Pharaoh prodigiously unmoved insensible as a statue at the sight of miracles which confounded all his inchanters and false Gods yet had not this unbelieving Prince hardned his own heart God had reserved one greater wonder to work in his behalf that is upon his sumission to receive him unto mercy what can be thought of more indulgent than his amarous care and conduct of his people through the desart and yet even when he was prescribing a Law and Rule for the observance of their Duties they frame
of grief or repentance he might have enjoyed for many years To recover then in some sort those years and lasting joyes we must here denounce war against our senses denying them the least contentment we must drag our Bodies after us as a slave would do his Chain that by this subjection we may preserve our obedience untouched to our Creatour and let our Soul which naturally covets Eternity deliciate her self in ravishments proper to her spiritual substance by this means we may strike off all the arrears of Time which the Apostle so seriously recommends unto us Now for the reason why he puts us upon this task of good Husbandry to repair our losses because the dayes are evil St. Austin tells us there are two things sayes he which give birth to these our unfortunate dayes One the common misery of Mankind derived from Adam's sin For cast your thoughts on the Mass of things created and you will find none so indigent so unsatisfyed and reduced to such straights as Man other Creatures are no sooner brought into the World but nature gives them a capacity of helping themselves Man after he is born for many years hath his understanding so tyed up that he resembles a meer Brute only surpassed by them in an industry to preserve natural life other Creatures find here those objects which quiet all their motions the elementary Bodies meet with their Centers which settle them in a full repose the natural appetite of Beasts encounters that which satiates and gluts all their avidities plants grow to a certain greatness proper to their species Man only is the unsatisfyed Being upon Earth for his understanding elevates his thoughts above the Heavens and all the powers of nature his will frames infinitely more desires than the World hath perfections so that there being found no Object upon Earth adequately proportioned to the vast capacity of his Soul it is necessary he still languish here in a State of dissatisfaction This casts him upon so many shelves of misery and makes him restless hoping still to find something to allay his desires Sometimes he fancies riches would do it but finding them ordained to the purchase of other things it cannot be a sovereign good thence he flyes to honour and observing that also to depend upon the breath and will of another he fastens on beauty this likewise he perceives to fade and perish by a thousand accidents this invites him to the acquisition of knowledge and after many a toilsome hour he finds only this proficiency how little we are capable of that the least plant of the Earth will puzzle and confront all his acquired Notions to render the true vertues of it Thus he passes on from the Essay of one delight to another still as unwearied as unsatisfyed and why all this But because my Mother hath conceived me in sin For my Mother conceiving me in sin received by inheritance the doom of Death and of miseries consequent to a mortal Life and so cannot but convey the like direful effects to her posterity Timon an Orator of Athens was wont to deliver so pathetically the miseries of Man in this Life that after his Oration which he held forth in publick it was usual for many of his Audience to hasten their passage unto Death by a course of violence some by precipices others by water some by poyson others by a ponyard or halter In fine they regarded not much the means so it might but have the effect that is to rid them from the Calamities to be sustained in this life In a word his Eloquence wrought so many Tragedies that the Senate was feign to make a recluse of him that by sequestring him from humane Society they might prevent the destruction of Mankind This person was an Infidel who considered only Man 's corporal necessities together with his failings in order to moral vertues and if from this Ground he could draw such efficacious perswasions what would he have done with the addition of our Penitent's Faith which teaches that eternal felicity or misery depend upon our actions here that we lye under the Obligation of many positive precepts against whose observance are laid continual Ambuscado's both from the malice of Hell deceit of the World and our own bad inclinations that in the midst of these imminent dangers we steer our Course to an Eternity of Joyes or Pain What Energy I say would this consideration add to the draught of our misery when we not only suffer here but suffer with so much hazzard of incurring the doom of Torments without end Ah blame not then our Penitent if he set before his Eyes and is willing also the petitioned should glance upon his condition in this state of mortality his own reflections will serve to keep him in a wary humility checked with the frailties and inconstancy of his own nature the notice also his dear Creatour may take of what mould he is made will stand he hopes in good stead for he knowes him so inclinable to pardon that if it may be said with reverence he lyes at catch for an opportunity to save us and if the least hold be given he presently fastens upon it and hastens away like a Souldier laden with a rich booty of which he fears the reprisal till he brings us to a place of security where we shall have no more reason to fear the irregular motions of corrupt nature no more to vent in sadness And my Mother hath conceived me in sin Holy Job that prodigy of humane Constancy amidst the smartest Tryals was yet so sensible of Man's misery in this life as to fall with bitterness upon the very day wherein he was brought forth wishing it might perish and never be reckoned amongst dayes in the course of the Zodiack Nay he goes so farr that he involves in his Anathema's every circumstance which concurred to his Conception or Nativity Expositors of Scripture excuse these maledictions in Job and free them from sin upon this score that he weighing the disproportion of Man's desires unto the objects he encounters in this life which hold him in a continued disquiet how naturally he sets his heart on riches honour beauty and other perishable goods with what difficulty they are attained with more preserved and with little satisfaction possessed Amidst these pensive Meditations beholding himself in the extremity of affliction his sensitive part crushed even to nothing brake forth into this seeming rage as to fly at every thing that had a hand in leading him to so much misery If this pattern of vertue might be allowed such Salleys that speak so much heat without any derogation from his innocence upon the meer consideration of that high pitch of distresses wherein he was plunged Our Penitent having been made a prey to sin and frailty may doubtless with all submissiveness as he doth expose his Nakedness as cast into the World without arms beset with Enemies bent upon his destruction both at home and abroad and
be converted And the impious shall be converted The Application By this clause our Penitent would fortify us against despair and shew there is no sin so enormous which can resist the efficacy of a true repentance for God hath engaged his word not to be inexorable and protests it is far from his thoughts to will the death of a sinner and he excepts none no not the impious but upon submission he will receive them with open arms raze from his memory their iniquities and transport them from a state of perdition to the rich title of being his Children St. Bernard sayes he that assents to what God affirms expresses his Faith and gives belief to God he that acknowledges his Existence and Being is said to believe God Lastly he that places all his hope in God is properly said to believe in him Let us then remember when we say our creed that at the same time we cast all our hope and confidence in God relying on his goodness and power which is infinite and exceeds by consequence all the malice of sin Let us repeat with St. Austin if Paul a persecutour and great sinner is become a Vessel of election why should I despair and why should not I with our Holy Penitent entertain a firm hope when the impious shall be converted Amen CHAP. XXIX Libera me de sanguinibus Deus Deus salutis meae Free me from blood O God God of my Salvation OUr Holy Penitent makes a stop in the carreer of his zeal at the voice of blood from Heaven which beats his affrighted Ears He remembers how Cain wandered like a restless motion beholding alwayes in his imagination Spectres Monstres Fears and dreads the usual mates of a Conscience wounded with homicide And shall he then sit quiet in his Throne whilst Vriah his Veins are opened and emptyed by his command the reeking Vapour which arises from that injured Body seems so to condense the Air that it even stifles him wherefore he begs a little respiration that he may recover a new life and which he shall ever owe to the God of his Salvation Free me from blood c. St. Gregory the great rendering a reason why God will inflict an eternal punishment for a momentary transgression layes the weight of his argument upon the practice of Men who dispatch away into another World by Sentence of Death Murderers and other Criminals of several less degrees by which as much as in them lyes they inflict a punishment for eternity depriving them of life which they can never restore Our Holy Penitent fears the force of this ratiocination for since he hath decreed this doom to his innocent neighbour what remains for him to expect but a torment without end which shall last as long as the injury and this he can never repair All his plea then is to repent to disown his malice to throw himself at the Feet of him in whose Hands are grasped all the Lawes of life and death that he haveing the supream Legislative power to him alone it belongs to dispense acquit or chastise according to the measure of his will Wherefore he sues to this God of Salvation that he may be freed from that heavy doom due to his transgressions Free me from blood c. St. Matthew sayes whosoever shall take up a Sword in order to the effusion of humane blood shall perish by the Sword the same measure shall be returned to him which he hath dealt to others and by the same means he wrought anothers destruction his own shall be contrived and in Gen. 9. the reason is given because Man is created to the resemblance of God We find that upon the score of the excellency of humane nature Man is taken off from the perpetration of several sins as too low for the dignity of his Creation The consideration that he is endued with reason gives unto wise persons an aversion from carnal pleasures lest they should by them degenerate into the condition of a brute The consideration that his Soul is immortal makes him fly Avarice it being sottish for a substance which is to exist for ever to dote upon any thing that is lyable to ruine and corruption The consideration that his Soul is invisible gives a check to Pride and Vanity since her glories cannot appear sensibly and with splendour before the Eye of the World Lastly the consideration that she animates and enlivens every particle of the Body how minute or vile so ere it be warns her from offering any damage or injury to our Neighbour If I say these thoughts work many to decline several particular sins in regard they are misbeseeming the excellent qualities of the Soul doubtless the meditation that she is the fair Image of God ought to make us abominate all sin without reserve fearing by any vitious act to deface the lively Image of a Divinity Wherefore the respect we owe to his resemblance ought to strike in us a terrour of laying violent hands on our Neighbour much less by any force to dissolve that lovely union of Soul and Body in which consists the accomplishment of God's work in framing Man Wherefore St. Cyprian sayes the honour of humane nature is to treat well the pourtraiture of God and from thence discharge our awful reverence towards the Original But when any one is led on by fury and revenge or will usurp in a private person the execution of Justice this is to dash in pieces the Image of God which perhaps he would preserve or at least have it stand untill by instruments of his own he is pleased to undo it Our Holy Penitent confesses he hath committed this outrage he is guilty of this irregular proceeding and hath destroyed God's fair handy work in the Death of Vriah which he was bound to keep decently in repair it being the Office of a King to protect and not destroy his Subjects How many brave designs hath he had to erect a Temple in God's honour and now hurried on by an unruly passion he hath demolished a structure more valuable in the sight of God than all his material edifices the Hands of Man can raise If incendiaries by all Nations are punished with most rigorous Laws what animadversions of severity will be practised upon such as destroy not only habitations but inhabitants who ruine a mansion wherein God hath lodged a Soul immortal and which he hath designed to be the matter of her great merit in this life and an instrument of his praise in the next And if St. Paul sayes the blood of Souls will be required at the Hands of Pastors who starve and famish their flock for want of due instruction and good Example what account shall he have to make who hath not only by omission frustrated his Subjects of good Documents issuing from an exemplar life but more hath effectively concurred to the destruction of them and hurried them to a dreadful Tribunal at a time when perhaps they were little prepared for
of severity Wherefore where he saw reason sweetness and all the Wonders he had wrought could effect nothing with those obdurate and unbelieving spirits he was forced to a course adverse to his meekness and to the love he bare that chosen Nation designing the total subversion of their City and place of Sacrifice and their utter dispersion through the habitable World and this he foretold them all bathed in Tears to shew his resentment for what he needs must do there being no other expedient to draw them from that strange dotage on victimes and immolation of Beasts From these premises we may conclude that whilst the Law was in its vigour Sacrifices as to the universality of the people were the only rules set down for the reparation of their failings and till our Penitent had a particular Patent for his exemption none was ever more magnificent in his exhibitions in this kind Nay he made it the Theam of his exhortations to others that they should consecrate their Vowes and discharge by way of Sacrifice what they owe unto the Lord God But when God was pleased to reach unto him the fair draught of the mystery of the incarnation wherein he read the Lawes evacuation the darkness of its Figures to break forth into the splendour of a Crucifyed oblation from whence arises a perfume whose odour would lay open Heavens Gates that to this Law of terrour would succeed one of love and which like to its Priesthood was to be eternal his desires heightned by these prophetick notions were certainly inflamed to a great pitch of charity and strengthened with a vigorous and lively Faith pushed him on to vehement longings to become a Member of that Kingdom of Grace then to flourish in the Hearts of Men. In this manner prepared by internal acts of vertue of repentance for his misdeeds submission to his will patience under the weight of his Chastisements no wonder if the Eye of Heaven pleased to behold an Object so worthy of his special favour should take him out of the Common track of the Mosaick way and conduct him by the Beams of an Evangelical light So that supported with Grace by a firm hope in the merits of the Messias to come he might now void of any blame as to himself say thou art not delighted with Holocausts c. The Application This Clause seems but a confirmation of the precedent Verse wherein our Holy Penitent doth specify in the Example of a Holocaust how little valuable our actions are if they be not circumstanced with the approbation of Heaven For amongst all the Religious ordinations of the Jews there was none that expressed their entire submission and dependance upon God like to that of a Holocaust and yet our Holy Petitioner declares God is not delighted with it that is if performed in his person whom he had instructed in the oblations of a more perfect Sacrifice not so gross and carnal as that of Beasts but which hath a resemblance with what the Angels and blessed do incessantly offer up from their flaming Brests Let us then in imitation ascend from vertue to vertue and proportionably to the communication of his Graces aspire to a life more perfect remembring we are to improve our stock according to the Sum we have to negotiate God grant then we may give a just account Amen CHAP. XXXV Sacrificium Deo spiritus contribulatus A Sacrifice to God is a troubled Spirit AFter our Penitents Declaration that God required not at his Hands the external right of Sacrifice he comes now to specify what homage he is to pay saying a Sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit Now if you look upon the principles of spiritual Masters this oblation seems very opposite to what they design for the main intent of all their prescriptions drive at this as to make us insensible of any Earthly Objects which might turmoil the Spirit and to hinder a quiet repose in the Soul without which no fruit can be reaped in contemplation Nay indeed its necessary in order to the meritorious performance of any good work this appears in Aaron who reprehended by Moses that upon the loss of his Beloved Daughter he forbare to eat of the Sacrifices made this answer how can I please God by eating or any other Ceremony whilest I possess a sad and troubled Mind But you must know there is a two-fold sorrow one that springs from God the other from the World this gives life that Death St. Hierom calls a Soul crushed with austerity and fasting a Sacrifice so that by this oblation of a troubled spirit our Penitent means the combat of a vertuous Man in subduing his passions and this St. Gregory terms a continual martyrdom in which is daily offered up a living victime Holy pure and acceptable to God by which a Man may be resembled to one that flying his Enemy kills himself In Leviticus 12. A command is laid upon the Jews that they should celebrate with great solemnity the Feast of expiation and the manner how it was to be done is set down that they should afflict their Souls Now this seems very incongruous to the nature of a Feast but since our felicity consists in suffering here we must be merry to see ourselves piously sad green wood cast on the Fire both weeps and burns our breast may be sad in one part and cheerful in the other The Prophet Baruc sayes the Soul that bewails her Sins gives Glory unto God for as there is nothing more sad than sin so doubtless nothing more delightful as worthily to deplore it Wherefore this troubled spirit imports not a tortured conscience but a Lancet in the Hand of a dexterous Artist who making a passage for corruption the sooner cures the wound so likewise groans tears wringings of Hands outcryes and such like Testimonies of a disturbed Mind are the several compositions of a Sacrifice pleasing to God A Sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit St. Austin sayes Man comes into the World wrapt up in such a Cloud of Ignorance in order to truth and replenished with such a swarm of desires that were he left to his own inclination there is no evil he would not commit This is evident in the Comportment of Men before Cities were built and pollicy of Laws established which restrain the impetuosity of their passions for it is storied they killed and devoured one another falsifying all equity and justice So that to deserve the name of Man we ought to bridle and check the insolency of our sensual appetites but to become a Sacrifice pleasing to God under the Character of a troubled spirit not only the Body must be macerated and brought under but the spirit likewise must be enslaved and captivated to the Faith of Christ In the composition of this Sacrifice I find spiritual directors are divided some think the most powerful ingredient is to chastise the Body waste it with abstinence and hair-cloths and spend it with labour by which harsh
they are to wade through in making good their fidelity to God they throw themselves upon the points of Halberts and other instruments of severity without the least whining or flinching at their sharpness they take in as it were with the same relish the Gall of misfortunes and desolations and the Hony of prosperities and comforts No stormy season hinders their Journey and that which disturbs soft and effeminate Spirits is to them matter of joy and repose because they possess what they desire to wit affliction so that all things which pass under the name of Adversity are not so but to the wicked who make ill use of them in prizing the Creature more than the Creatour Hence it is that the general spirit of Saints have carried them on to be ambitious of suffering and to reckon it amongst one of the choice favours of Heaven for they had learnt by experience that if God with one Hand reaches unto them the Cup of his passion it is but by snatches and as it were a sup whilst with the other he gives them large draughts of consolation It is noted in the sacred Text that God laid open the person of Job to all the assaults of Satan but with this reserve that he touch not upon his life and this not in regard that death would have ecclipsed the glory of that great Champion but because he would not be deprived of such a Combatant to whose conflict he and his blessed Angels were intent with much satisfaction and so would not lose the pleasure of seeing this stout skirmish fought out to the last 'twixt him and his Enemy And as the Heathen Emperours took great delight to see a Christian enter into the list with a wild Beast so the King of Heaven is solaced with the sight of one of his Saints when he maintains a Fight against those fierce Beasts of Hell Seneca out of the principles of humane wisdom drew this excellent saying that no object was more worthy in the Eyes of the gods than to behold a stout Man with a settled countenance unmoved to struggle with adverse Fortune and truly the delay our blessed Saviour made in sending succour to his Disciples endangered by a storm at Sea sufficiently hints unto us the pleasure God takes to see the Just row against the stream tugg and wrestle with all the might they can against the stream and afflictions of this World Thus you see how happy our Holy Penitent hath ajusted his Sacrifice to the lines of God's will and that he never spake more emphatically than when he said A Sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit St. Bonaventure sayes that honor is due to God in four several respects and in like manner we ought in as many wayes render it unto him First in consideration of many blessings and this is to be returned by our gratitude and acts of thanksgiving Next we owe him honor in that he hath laid his commands upon us and this we perform by our obedience and submission to his Laws Thirdly his greatness and sovereignity exact it at our hands and this is paid by the vertue of Latria and adoration Lastly honor is due unto him in that he hath been offended and injuriously treated by sin Now the honor due to him in this point is restored by Penitential acts and by a troubled spirit Because in regard of his displeasure and to make reparation for the contempts thrown upon his Majesty he is ready to humble himself and apply all his endeavour to works of piety so far as even to afflict himself that he might honor the Divine Justice which requires that sin should never go unpunished Wherefore God is delighted in these painful satisfactory acquittances which we often give him written in our sweat and blood And Jesus Christ makes of them a present to his Father with his own from whence the value of ours is derived and there they find acceptance not upon the score of any contentment it is to God that we are tormented either in Soul or Body but meerly in that by them his Justice is honored and exalted and the Palms of our victory more resplendent This anxiety of spirit supported with a patient resignation and strengthened with a fervent prayer purchased to the distressed Anna and to the Jewish Nation that great Prophet Samuel This same disturbance of Spirit carried on by a generous submissive resolution against all the Machinations of Saul put into the Hands of our Penitent the Scepter of Juda in a word it seems to be a principle setled in Heaven that without this Sacrifice of a troubled spirit he will not part with his blessings It may be objected that God knowes the Hearts of Men and what they will do and therefore he need not this external Testimony Next that Christ's merits being of an infinite value ours appear altogether superfluous to which I answer First that his external glory consisting in the visible homages payd to him by his Creatures this would be wanting should he give them no occasion to make it manifest and shew unto the World he hath dependants who value no suffering in proportion to the duty they owe him Besides the satisfaction we shall take in Heaven to have done something to merit our Beatitude will certainly be a great addition to our Contentment As to the other though I confess the merits of Christ all sufficient yet this will not excuse us from offering what we can in satisfaction for the Honor and glory of all our actions belong to God now it being an Act of injustice to defraud any one of his revenue no less is it against equity to deprive God of the glory due unto him Wherefore a life that contributes not to his glory is perverse and wicked Again he that owns a Tree hath likewise right to the fruit it bears if the Land be mine the Crop also is at my disposal the labour and service of a Horse is due to his Master In like manner all that we are all the good we do or shall do is the work of God and a present with which he enriches us that we might be able to give something to him Wherefore as all is his our duty binds us to consecrate all our interiour and exteriour actions to promote his honor and glory And since it is reasonable sin should be punished our Holy Penitent submits to the decree exposes himself to be wracked and tortured by what punishment the Divine Majesty shall think good either in Mind or Body nor can he ever repine whilst he reflects That a Sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit The Application Here we are taught there is no Sacrifice conveyes an odour so pleasing unto Heaven as that of a Soul angustiated upon the score of God's cause The oblation of a Holocaust imports the reduction of it to Ashes that of a troubled spirit is a transmutation into the Holy Ghost who promises to be the intellect to be the Tongue nay
THE CYNOSURA Or a SAVING STAR That leads to ETERNITY Discovered amidst the Celestial Orbs of DAVID'S PSALMS By way of Paraphrase upon the MISERERE Humanum est errare Divinum quid emendare To do amiss is incident to humane Nature To repair our failings something Divine Si non traheris ora ut traharis If you be not moved to repentance pray you may be moved St. Aug. LONDON Printed by I. Redmayne for Thomas Rooks at the Lamb and Ink-bottle at the Entrance into Gresham Colledge next Bishops-gate-street 1670. To the Right Honorable and Illustrious Lady ANNE Countess of SHREWSBURY MADAM IT is the great Voice of the Church taught by her Heavenly Espouse that according to the ordinary course set down by his Providence none arrived to the knowledge of good and evil can reach their Beatitude but by the wings of Pennance 'T is a Decree passed immediately after our First Parents transgression that he should not eat his Bread but at the rate of sweaty Browes And though God seems to dispense in this severe Sentence in the old Law promising to the exact observers of it long life abundance of wealth a plentiful posterity and the like Yet this was done as he will leave no vertue unrewarded in regard that Heavens Gates were then shut up But when Christ had cleared their passage unto Eternal felicity and clapt the Thorns which were the fruit of our sins upon his own Head then they recovered so high a Being and grew to that value as the heavier God layes his Hand upon us the more his love appears So that now the mark of our happiness is the Son of God not glorifyed but scourged spit upon crowned with Thorns torn with Whipps and nailed to the Cross Hence it is we find our sweet Redeemer born in Tears bred up in obscurity and concluding the upshot of his life with all the circumstances of infamy and pain at the opening of his grand commission to preach unto the World his first Exordium was an exhortation unto pennance as if it were the sole Loadstone to draw Heaven towards us And St. Paul his great Disciple declares it nay he makes no exception that all those who would be happy must crucify their flesh with their vices Thus you see Madam that every Hand whether innocent or guilty whether noble or vulgar ought to be stretched forth to sow the bitter Seed of pennance If we have sucked in vertue even with our Milk and thrived with a daily encrease in the sequel of our life yet we ought not sayes St. Austin descend into the Tomb but by the way of pennance Again if we have complyed with the Frailties of our corrupt nature and trespassed against the duty we owe to our good God pennance likewise must be our Sanctuary So that pennance is furnished with two Wings to bear us up to Heaven the one is fashioned out by love which prompts us to become by a course of severity a true Copy of our suffering Original the other is framed by strokes of Justice and exacts worthy fruits that is such as may in some proportion be answerable to our failings and though this other have not a motive altogether so Heroick yet it speaks a great vertue because it puts us upon a task the most knotty that can be imagined as to appease the face of an angry God Besides it renders that Action just and equitable in that it aims to repair the injury and contempt thrown by sin upon his greatness Wherefore we ought not to blush upon either of these accounts to wear the Liveries of pennance If on the former we mortify our senses upon Earth and vest our selves with the habit of Christ shaped out to the Image of his Death it is a perfect Metamorphosy wrought by the power of love and for which Figure the very Angels were they capable of sensible impressions would be glad to exchange with us If on the latter that is the score of satisfaction it Cancels all our Bonds of guilt it raises us from an Abyss of misery to the high dignity of Grace by which we are adopted Sons and Heirs to Heaven So that a penitential life cannot but find veneration amongst all wise Men and be highly acceptable in the sight of God since by our humiliations we labour to contribute to his honor and greatness But Madam you may perhaps upon this discourse wonder to behold in the Courts of Christian Princes so much of glory pomp and magnificence which suit so ill with the Characters of the Cross I confess at the First glance it might startle any one were it not that a multitude of persons both Illustrious in Blood and eminent in Sanctity have taught by their Example that the glittering of the World and a penitential Heart are not things incompatible It were to groap in the Sun-beams to play the Ignorant in this Truth that is not to acknowledge that in all ages since Christ's visible appearance upon Earth Princes and Ladies of no less extraction have been found who under a Cloth of Tyssue and the richest Ornaments have covered their tender Bodies with Hair-cloths Who amidst the delicacies of the Court have macerated themselves with fasting and seasoned their repasts with bitter ingredients VVho have more valued one hours entertainment between God and their happy Souls than all the Balls and Masques to which external compliance the greatness of their condition in some sort obliged them For the essential part of pennance consists in the interiour disposition of the Mind that is in the operation of the understanding and will The understanding first represents unto us a God disobeyed and scorned and his Justice by this indignity stirred up to vindicate his honor threatning nothing but ruine and desolation in this distress the understanding further suggests that we have no refuge but to the throne of mercy whereupon the will falls to work laments what is passed protests against any future complyance with bad inclinations and seised with a holy sorrow and affliction submits to any compensation shall be required These are the preparatories to justification and when once they are compleated by a ray of Faith strengthened with hope and animated with charity this vertue of pennance growes up to that efficacy as to obtain in consideration of the excellency of its acts and fervency of the Agent a full remission of all sin Whence it is evident this grand work of pennance may be wrought within the precincts of our interiour and consequently the vain appearance of precious attyre and ceremonies of greatness may possibly reach only to the film or out-side whilest within they possess humility purity temperance and other Christian vertues To give a further elucidation of this point you will please Madam to know that Christ our Lord in his copious Redemption had two main designs The one to gain the Hearts of Men to the obedience of his Lawes which were so frozen and marble like as he foresaw a
104. l. 7. nor well p. 106. l. 12. a little after p. 111. l. 3. his future p. 136. l. 23. injure p. 151. l. 12. palms p. 158. l. 6. communicates p. 160. l. 20. object p. 161. l. 1. for that p. 162. l. 16. Deity p. 163. l. 3. most love p. 165. l. 6. heeld p. 183. l. 7. preceding p. 184. l. 16. decides p. 186. l. 21. punishment p. 189. l. 15. account soever p. 202. l. 5. it is only our heart p. 203. l. 5. she seemed and â—… 25. interiour p. 221. l. 21. in his mind p. 225. l. at a more p. 231. l. 25 entertains p. 236. l. 25. possible and l. 27. abstruse p. 237. l. 17. should p. 248. l. 12. incentives p. 263. l. 8. blot out degree and in the place read will p. 278. l. 16. believe in thee p. 280. l. 2. in these p. 284. l. 29. affect p. 297. l. 26. blot out his and read all material p. 324. l. 25. beating p. 325. l. 21. obstructed p. 343. l. 25. Quires p. 355. l. 2. appartment p. 363. l. 9. premises p. 366. l. 19. after love adde to p. 369. l. 8. danger and. l. 15. this instruction p. 370 l. 1. of his heart p. 403. l. 1. word p. 365. l. 5. since as I said it is engraven CHAP. I. Miserere mei DEUS Have mercy on me O GOD. AT the first entrance our Kingly Prophet prefers his Petition and without any circumlocution expresses in direct terms what he would have Miserere mei Deus have mercy on me O God and he do's it with such confidence as if he had a right to be forgiven which minds me of a rare sentence of S. Gregory Nissen that Man cannot more willingly ask pardon than God is ready to give it The Divine Majesty expects if it may be so express'd with passion the conversion of a sinner and no sooner a repenting motion animates his heart but the whole Court of heaven is alarmed with joy and this joy is followed with showers of mercy No wonder then if our Petitioner make his address with so little Ceremony since he speaks to a Judge resolved to mercy upon his submission to a Father who is transported with joy at the sight of his long lost Son to a Creatour who hath framed every particle of his being and perfectly knows how frail weak and prone to innumerable failings he is if left to himself wherefore he cryes Miserere mei Deus have mercy on me O God He shelters this guilty me t'wixt God that made him and Mercy that must save him on these two he anchors all his hopes which being let down by a vigorous faith renders him secure amidst all the storms that hell and earth can raise so that now like a rock he stands braving all his enemies assaults who not long before was handed like a ball from one pleasure to another as if he had been made up of sensuality passion and a neglect of God Next in this exordium our Petitioner would insinuate a great truth that the first grace is a free gift of God and man a vessel of mercy not of merit hence he cryes Miserere mei Deus that is to say let him pine away in sorrow and repentance let him produce acts of ardent affection by which he prizes God above all things imaginable yet when all this is done he is a Child of perdition and clouded with the guilt of Sin unless an act of Grace be made him from his Sovereign Wherefore we must know that Grace expelling Sin by access unto the Soul finds there no merit nothing that can pretend to a justification neither Faith nor any other Vertue strikes the stroak since Grace is the basis or ground-work of all merit whence it s being is derived no less than a beauteous Flower from the Plant that gives it birth This piece of Divinity lay not hid to our penitent hence he acknowledges his imbecility in meriting any favour only he strives by holy acts of love and grief to dispose himself for mercy Nay though he should comfort himself with Nathan's words that he was already possessed of the first Grace yet to persevere in it so as not to fall again he knew must be the work of the same merciful hand for it is no less out of our reach to become just than to remain so without a constant supply of many actual Graces which must issue gratis from Heaven This kept him still in humility as never to presume of his own strength alwayes in fear without any security of happiness in this life So that having throughly scann'd the Condition of Man in this present State he concludes the best lesson suitable to our continual wants here is incessantly to repeat and entreat under this effectual form Miserere mei Deus have mercy on me O God Whil'st he thus layes all his hopes at the feet of mercy he cannot but bless the sweet proceedings of Heaven in requiring of us to compass our happiness that which is so conformable both to our Reason and Nature For can there be any thing more rational and delightful to Man than to love a Sovereign Good to congratulate the Divine Essence Divine Subsistences Divine Attributes and unchangeable perfections essentially seated in God Can there be any thing more just than to desire this greatness and goodness should have his Divine Laws fulfilled the Universe conserved for the Encrease and Accomplishment of his Service and that all praise and Benediction be poured forth before him by all Creatures both in Heaven and Earth Can there be any action more commendable than to conceive an extream detestation of Sin because injurious to His Supream Majesty and obstructive to his glory and yet in doing this we so attemper our selves for the reception of his favours that as in the Order of Natural things upon the Organization and fitted Dispositions of a Body he hath obliged himself to infuse a Soul so he hath no less engaged to vest that Mind with supernatural Grace which by acts of love and repentance shall be prepared for it But alas Amidst these pleasing reflections when he looks into himself he finds a check seeing he cannot even dispose himself for this happiness without a supernatural aid for though 't is true humane Nature by its own strength knowes that God is worthy of all love yet our knowledge in morality is much more capable of comprehension than practice 'T is not enough to have Wings to fly if they be so hamper'd as they cannot be display'd so this natural faculty in Man of loving God above all things is so weakned by original Sin and a million of Obstacles that we find the inclination of doing it far more ineffectual than the dictamens of our reason to have it done And no wonder when St. Thomas affirms our Will by original Sin is much more damnified than our understanding whence self love growes powerful in us and if it hath not a
little raise his confidence that his Judge was not tyed up to Lawes as the Ground-work of proceedings with offendours but his power is absolute to do all he pleases and his will such as to render what ever he doe's good and Just So that the least propension of this Will in order to a remission is sufficient to wipe away all the iniquities of the Earth Besides he considers that when God chastises he doth a thing extraneous to him and as Esay saies a work that is not his But to be merciful he owns it as a propriety annexed to his Godhead not to extenuate his Justice but to insinuate the love he bears to Man He embroyls not his Fancy with the niceties in Schools which dispute how Sin is remitted whether by the expulsion of any positive form and the introduction of another opposite to it Whether it be by the meer infusion of Grace or else only by taking away the obligation of a Sinner to eternal punishment he omits all these curious questions and attends only to the sweet effect to wit that he may be freed from his iniquity oft repeating in his Heart he had rather be a good Disciple than a great Master in the exact knowledge of his own misery When he looks back into his life past and remembers with what satisfaction and spiritual joy he had performed many acts of vertue he begins to be enfired with new flames of urging for a grant of his Petition Since he knowes that whilst he lyes under this attaindour of Treason he is capable of no right nor priviledge in the Charter given us by Heaven that should he do actions which in another condition might be praemiated would now be looked upon as a Jewel counterfeit and of no value He compares himself to a Plant in a Region far remote from the Sun whose Fruit never comes to maturity so his iniquity sets him at a great distance with God the light and life of Souls and consequently nothing can be expected from him which savours not of a Soyl accursed and doom'd to sterility so that as a misfortune seldome walks solitary he finds besides the unhappiness to have offended God this addition to be unable to do any thing acceptable unto him Then he goes on ruminating upon the sad consequences of his Sin which makes him fluctuate in his thoughts wholly unresolved how to comport himself Sometimes he appears like a Statue without motion and would eternally remain so since by no endeavours he can please his Creatour Then again I behold him bent upon the execution of all the good imaginable at least within the extent of his natural Force or Power that he may omit no Homage and Duty he owes to the Author of his Being But after all his restless solicitudes he observes the main Hinge of his happiness depends upon this Dele iniquitatem the cancelling of this Bond by which he is lyable to eternal punishment e're he can hope for admittance unto his wonted ravishing entertainments with his Divine Master He descants upon the proceeding of Almighty God with Sinners and would feign search into the secrets of his Providence why some are drawn from the depth of wickedness even when they seemed to be lost to the World and Heaven whilst others less guilty in the Eyes of men sadly perish without source or redress The preservation of the one he attributes to the immense goodness of God which sometimes dispenses as justly he may in his own lawes as to afford unto an unworthy sinner such powerfull calls that they are never resisted such melting affections as if they had been train'd up in the School of Divine love not in the Forge of iniquity It is fit he confesses the Divine Will which frames all Creatures should so dispose of what he hath made that when he pleases to raise any one out of corruption and render them instrumental to his Glory none ought or can justly repine at it He sustains this Argument with much heat himself being a party interessed still expecting to be the object of his choice mercy He dilates and expands his Soul under this inexhausted source like the Earth without Water thirsting for one drop of that Coelestial stream which might allay the anguish of his Mind and deface all the foul Characters of his iniquity his groans and unwearied sighs are fair Harbingers of that Noble Guest he once entertained with unspeakable delight and if he ever gain the repossession he protests that neither Angels Men Devils nor all the charmes in Creatures shall ever brand him with a new stamp of iniquity his Eyes by which his Soul receiv'd her first wound are become two floods of tears and if they prevail not to cleanse his stains at least they will testifie to the World he repented what he had done He casts not one glance towards Heaven which is not accompanied with hopes of meeting this mercy and this confidence is so grounded in him that were it decreed God would save but one Soul he hath courage enough to hope that his might be that one nay he builds so much upon these hopes that transporting himself to the consideration of many Sinners abandoned in their impieties it doth not at all deject him for he considers that God hath given us a free-will which he will never violence to our prejudice and though we cannot elevate this will to an act so perfect as naturally to merit the first Grace yet it may in such sort dispose us for grace by love and sorrow that God will doubtless gratifie us so prepared Whence 't is clear that as we fall not but by our own default so by vertue of a promise and contract made by Heaven we cannot finally perish but by an obstinate reluctancy of our own Hearts If he sees a Phararh sink into ruine irrecoverably he beholds likewise a Nebuchodonozer for the same crime struck down to rise again They were both Kings the sin of either alike detaining God's people in captivity yet the Fates of both very unequal Because the one retracts his misdeeds and raises a detestation of them the other persists in his Enormities without any truce or suspension At last he makes a Corollary of this discourse and concludes since some are preserved in Innocence by continued showers of Grace others by a sweet violence drawn from an Abyss of Sin to the upshot of happiness and none so entangled whom a true repentance will not set free he will never cease to importune Heaven till his iniquity be rased out let his Throat grow hoarse with clamours his Eyes droop and wax dimme his Heart rend asunder with grief he will spare no Particle of his whole Body nay glory in its ruine if by that means he can but unclog his Soul from the weight of Sin He judged it very reasonable that the Body having contributed to his Sin should share in the punishment as it had done in the crime and as it had concurred unto his
contribute to the drift of his Petition which is to appear every minute with a greater purity in the Eyes of his Creatour Amplius lava me wash me more from my iniquity The Application St. Bernard observes that if at any time God deprives us of what is good it is but to gratifie us with something that is better upon this reflection he reckons it a happiness in St. Paul that he was struck blind for immediately upon that stroke he was raised to the third Heavens and admitted unto secrets unfit to unfold to Man and afterwards receiving the sight of his Body with that restitution was superadded the clear Eye-sight of his Soul God sent Jeremy to the Potters shop that he might see how the broken Vessel was to be new moulded and come out better than before if then the Clay frequently recieves a better form and fashion than at first let us in imitation and with the same confidence of our holy penitent after our failings cry Lord wash me more Let our past harms warn us not to presume of our own strength this humble opinion will separate much of the dross of our actions and teach us to rely more upon God than our selves Let us oft lay before us the Seal of God's pardon this cannot but enflame our love and enfire our Hearts in the zeal of his service nay Christ seems to set it down as a rule that we proportion our love to our Obligations He little loves to whom little is forgiven that where a large score is struck off by his Mercy there must needs succeed an ambition to a more supereminent perfection wash me more from my iniquity In fine this quadrates with Habakkuk's prophecy If heretofore thou madest one step in the way of Death thou shalt now tread for it ten in the way of life So that every sinner is encouraged not only to recover his innocence but to improve it throughout the remainder of his life never ceasing to repeat Amplius lava me ab iniquitate wash me more from my iniquity Amen CHAP. VI. Et à peccato meo munda me And cleanse me from my sin IN the Series of Acts inordinate and deficient from that rectitude required to give them a denomination of good We find some which relate immediately to God as when with contempt we strike at things directly ordained to his glory and service these pass under the name of impiety Others there are whose first tendency levells at our Neighbour as when we traverse the light of Nature in doing to another what we would not have done unto our selves and these are styled by the appellation of iniquity Lastly there are certain treasons whereof we make our Bodyes instrumental and by which we are corrupted depraved and wrought into strange habitual Frailties these are properly expressed by the term of sin because by them we act against our selves Our Holy Penitent drawes the exordium of his Petition from a sense of his impiety when in this first verse he said have mercy on me O God for there he owns his Frailties as a Creature in respect of his Creatour and beggs his Gracious pardon In the next verse he confesses his iniquity whose full discussion as to injustice towards his Neighbour I reserve for another place In this third verse he surveys his own person beholds the Havocks and corruption made there by sin and now would feign apply a Salutary Medicament to which end he inserts this clause in his Petition A peccato meo munda me cleanse me from my sin that is from the filth and ordure which accompany sins of the flesh Amongst all the irregular motions whereof Man is capable there is none which leads unto Labyrinths so inextricable into precipices so disastrous as this unhappy sin of carnality In the first place it drawes a Cloud over the understanding and so depresses the faculties of the Soul as she becomes in a manner terrestrial that is unable to elevate her self beyond the objects of sense for the operations of the Soul are more perfect as they are more abstracted from materiality Now this sin wholly drowns and takes us up in the pursuit of sensible things and consequently must needs debilitate and weaken the Mind in her natural functions In other passions as Anger Fear Joy and the like there are still extant some Seeds of reason this destroyes all that is Man in us and makes Man by a thousand homages and venerations subject to that Sex which God and Nature have designed Mans inferiour as if it aimed not only at Mans destruction but to resolve the World into another Chaos For what shafts of Gods vengeance have fallen heavy upon Mankind that were not directed to the chastisement of this sin It was an inordinate appetite to mix with the Daughters of Gentiles that first gave birth to Monsters and Gyants and from their accursed off-spring the Earth became such a sink of abominations as no less than an universal inundation was able to wash away the stanch and infection of their impieties It was this foul pleasure which ministred Fuel to the consuming flames of Sodom and Gomorrah this blind passion led Israel ensnared by Madian Women in Idolatry a foundation to all the Calamities and derelictions by God which befel that chosen Nation At one time twenty four thousand Hebrews were punished with Death for Adultery and what a slaughter of sixty thousand persons did our sad Penitent behold and this in revenge of his own libidinous Acts as if the stains they had left behind could not be drawn out by a Sea of blood When his affrighted thoughts had layed before him all these dismal passages he trembles expecting every moment to be shivered and dispersed into Ashes by the decrees of a just avenger he approves the fancy of those who compose Venus of the Froth of the Sea brackish perfidious and the Seat of hazzards and disquiets the pleasure he hath had appears to him now but like a Froth or bubble which if not born away as easily it is by every blast will certainly of it self soon dissolve and work its own ruine and however the substance be fleeting it leaves notwithstanding a remembrance behind so bitter and distastful and so hardly clawed off as one would think that alone were a sufficient punishment for a trespass of so little satisfaction and for the storms and wastes it often makes in Kingdoms and private Families scarce any age hath not furnished many sad examples I am sure our Holy Penitent felt the smart of this bitter Truth in the desolation of his house in the dishonor and death of his Children in the rebellion of his Subjects and above all in the forfeiture of those large promises made by Heaven to him and his posterity all which found not their Tomb but in the corruption of this unhappy sin So that in this request to be cleansed from his sin he first declares the foulness of it evident in the horrid Disease Nature gives
to those who use it in excess next he hints the reliques and dreggs it leaves behind that if God's grace joyned with a great resolution happen to dislodge this petulent Guest yet still some footsteps or impressions remain apt to reenter and claim an interest Wherefore he could promise to himself no security unless an inundation of mercy fall upon him to purify and carry away all the remainder of bad inclinations grown into a habit and become as it were a second Nature in him Cleanse me from my sin and as it was not a slight stain he had contracted but all circumstances weighed the most indelible that springs from inordinate acts in carnal pleasures For Lawes Divine Natural and Humane seem to be violated in Adultery Divine in that two persons by marriage are made one flesh and both pass into the incommunicable Nature of individuality becoming the essential part of each other whence violation cannot happen to one without destroying the life of the other and breaking that bond which God hath knit together Natural Law is likewise by an adulterous act infringed because Marriage consists not in the sole possession of the Body but also nay principally in the affections of a reasonable Soul For the bonds of Marriage are not wrought by copulation but mutual consent and under a sacred Vow never to be retracted who then infringes these engagements must needs contract a note of infidelity and consequently strike at the main Hinge of humane Society to preserve which Nature chiefly tends in all her principles and essential motions Lastly a breach is made in humane Law by Adultery in that Marriage is not a private but domestick good which concerns not one but infinite Families strengthened by the Laws of the Church and publick Faith of Nations From hence Nature finds those who carefully cultivate her plants hence Commonwealths are enriched with Citizens the Church with Children By this we may see the malice of Adultery that drawes along with it the violation of so many Laws Christ enjoyns us a love of our Enemies and that the Sun should not set in our anger Yet in the treachery of Marriage-Bed permits a separation between Man and Wife how strictly soever united by indissoluble tyes as if such crimes surpassed the limits of pardon as if an evil so destructive that remedies could find no place and that this individual life once dissolved could no more be recalled than habit from privation Many Tyrants have subdued to therage of their cruelties the wealth liberty and lives of their Subjects who looking upon this power as given from Heaven over them patiently sustained all those depredations but if once they touched upon their wives and would involve them in the Mass of their impurities this rowsed up their fallen spirits cast them into rebellion nay pushed them to that extremity as never to desist untill they had deprived those of life who had ravished from them what was more dear than life untill they had reduced unto ashes the Authors of their infamy and taught them for the example of posterity this violence of all others will not be left unrevenged in this World There hath scarce been any Nation though Pagan or Infidel which hath not punished Adultery with Death or exquisite Torments Some by fire others by wild Horses some by the Halter others in pulling out their Eyes cutting off their Noses some by stones as in Moses Law Whence 't is clear that even the light of Nature taught there ought for the good of humane Society that a stop be made to this disorder Our Penitent having in his thoughts lay'd open all those Enormities of an Adulterous Act is surprised to see himself plunged in so many abominations to have heaped up to himself so much ignominy and infection as the reproach of them would last as long as time How sparingly do good Men treat of carnal subjects either in Writing or in the Pulpit lest the very articulate sound or Characters in this matter might offend chast Ears or cause worse effects in Hearts already tainted If then this poyson carry with it so much of malignity in the very name or lightest thought what corruption and noysomness must the sin it self produce Oh! how strong did this scent breathe in the Nostrils of our Penitent when once his understanding was awake and beheld with an Eye free from passion his Body dissolved into so many contaminations no wonder than if he so oft repeat in this Psalm the cleansing from his sin Every glimps of his past foul delights casts him into a blush beholding no other consequence of them than shame confusion and the threats of eternal destruction notwithstanding all this he sues for a Vesture of innocence and he does it to him who with a fiat or blast from his Mouth drew out of a dark Chaos that glorious Body of the Sun which so revives us To him who hath promised to let fall all the darts of his anger upon the true repentance of a sinner on this basis he fixes his Petition and doubts not but at last to find a happy issue to be drawn out of the mire of his sensualities and his leprous condition changed into the consistence of restored grace after this he sighs and groans nor is capable of any consolation untill that happy moment arrive which shall put a period to this longing demand Et à peccato meo munda me cleanse me from my sin The Application We must consider that God is purity it self who hath nothing more in abomination than an impure Soul That Heaven inhabited by Angels is a place of honour where nothing defiled can have access Wherefore we ought to apprehend any stain of lubricity because most obstructive to our final Beatitude First in that it is according to St. Thomas peccatum maximae inhaerentiae a Sin that clings like Bird-lime to our Souls and of all others most hard to be clawed off it resembles a Phoenix who renews her self with the fire enkindled by the motion of her own Wings so a person inured to that vice even when he would give it over and bury it withall occasion of incentives doth often find the Coals to be blown afresh by the wings of thoughts so that whilst we live we ought never to be secure since 't is a combat of all others the most hazzardous and where the victory is most rare next it is a sin of impudency and when a Soul is devoid of shame what hopes can there be to reclaim her St. Hierom advises to a private admonition of our neighbour and gives this reason lest he break the curb of shame and dwell in his sin for ever By baptism we are made members of Jesus Christ and the chiefest homage we can pay to him as our Head is to preserve it unspotted from any smut of impurity A virginal integrity is so acceptable unto God that the Angels were they permitted would translate them Body and Soul into Heaven that
Death might not prey on a treasure that deserves to be immortal wherefore let us never cease to cry with our holy Penitent à peccato meo munda me cleanse me from my sin Amen CHAP. VII Quoniam iniquitatem meam ego cognosco Because I know my iniquity AFter all these supplications our Petitioner now comes to give a reason why so confidently he requires an Act of Grace At the first view it seems a strange one and to imply his greater guilt It is this because he knowes his iniquity Ignorance where the fact is palpable makes a great plea in offendours our criminal on the contrary acknowledges his trespass declares he knowes what he has done and from thence claims and pretends a rationality in his petition had he in lieu of this inserted a Repentance of his misdeeds a detestation of his past failings this might have carried some weight in order to a remission But we must reflect injuries done to God and Man are things very disparate and quite of another nature For I may consider many disobligations I have thrown upon my Neighbour and yet not retract in my will those ill Offices because I may have received the like from him and many humane Lawes have allowed this retaliation so that to retain a memory of the harms I have done to Man may signifie nothing of vertue or pious amendment But when I look upon any miscarriage in my Duty towards God this glance must needs reproach me of ingratitude there can be no pretence or shadow of excuse to justifie any failing towards the Divine Majesty Since we are overwhelmed on all sides with his favours and benedictions whence the Sequel of such a consideration inevitably will humble confound and cast us upon the storms of Repentance Our Petitioner therefore knowing his iniquity virtually declares by it he disowns what he hath done or rather owns it to be exorbitant and from this confession layes claim to his Justice which upon the conversion of a sinner engages to abolish and raise out of his memory all past iniquities Because I know my iniquity This knowledge evidences the return of Grace to his Soul In the 35. Psalm he describes his own condition in the state of sin My iniquities surrounded me and I could see nothing St. Austin exclaims against that day wherein he committed sin and questions whether he may call it day since he was involved in a profound obscurity and then he goes on saying he will rise and disperse the mists of his iniquities that he may see the fountain of all goodness Our Petitioner again in the 48. Psalm gives Man when enslaved by sin the title of Beast nay with something of aggravation assimilating him to a Foolish Beast He remembred how Adam after his fall was cloathed with Skins of Beasts which attire was but a Symbol of his Mind bestiatized and made Savage by transgressions St. Thomas speaking of those Clouds of darkness wherein poor sinners lye groveling sayes it proceeds from a propension bent upon evil aversed from God and deprived of grace The opposite beams then which fill our Souls with light and serenity must needs draw their source from a love of what is good an adhaesion to God and a sweet repossession of grace and in these splendours our Petitioner finds himself First they raise his Soul to an Object infinitely good and amiable and after vehement affections enkindled towards this Sovereign felicity his Eyes are unsealed and beholds the Ghastly shape of his sins which cast him into exclamations against his own unworthiness upon reiterated addresses for mercy and pardon and at last admitted into favour he learns by that inestimable gift under whose Dominion he now lives what it is to offend God how monstrous a thing sin is and therefore will not conceal his new acquired notions but proclaim Quoniam c. because I know my iniquity It was not an abstract knowledge of his iniquity he alledges for this may consist with the most innocent and spotless Soul and was found in Adam before his fall But 't is what he had learnt by dear experience he had tasted that Tree which imports knowledge of good and evil but alas far different from those pure Idaeas which reside in Souls that were never involved in the shades of sin for such survey with an intellect as it were Angelical the commands of God and in obedience to his Law make use of their knowledge but to avoid the prevarication But our Petitioner looks upon the deformity of sin in all its circumstances of the Abyss of ruine it drawes upon us and having with the Cananean cryed for mercy then he confesses his nakedness then he layes open his failings and blushes not at the knowledge of his iniquity because they are now washed in a Christal stream and their past horrours serve but to raise in him a detestation of them and to invite him at the same time to admire the Wisdom of God that thus by his penitential acts will manifest his Justice and lastly to praise his mercy that hath given him a perfect knowledge of his iniquity as a certain Land-mark to preserve him from future Shipwrack because I know my iniquity I remember the Prodigal Son when languishing in misery and perishing for hunger pitched only upon this remedy that he would tell his Father he had sined against Heaven and him In like manner our Petitioner layes aside the thought of any good he may have done offers to the view of his eternal Father all the wounds of his cauterized Soul and that he might engage himself to a compleat discovery confesses he is not ignorant but knowes all the Windings and extravagant progressions of his iniquity how they had led him from Adultery to Homicide thence to Pride Vanity and Sole reliance on his own greatness and power and when he had summed up all his ingratitudes he gives this account Domine opus tuum vivica illud Lord I know my Sin So likewise I know the temper of the delinquent how he is composed of frailties unable of himself to set his hand to any good vvork to any supernatural motion Wherefore he hopes this consideration may something take off and render his deviations less irregular Yet on the other side he will not flatter himself into a blameless condition he knows a support of Grace ever attended him amidst his predominant passions and smartest tryals by whose means he might have been victorious This brings him on his Knees and drawes from him an humble confession Because I know my iniquity It was this knowledge fixing him on the basis of humility which prepared him for those sublime and supernatural communications he afterwards received from his dear Creatour What are his Psalms but a Series of raptures and coelestial ravishments a Tabernacle of sacred mysteries vvith vvhich his understanding was fed that vve may see to vvhat pitch Man is capable of arising from this knowledge of our Sins How confidently did St.
Creatures to this intent he knowes no better medium than the publication of Man's corrupted Nature brought to that imbecility as of himself unable to give life and birth to one good thought behold sayes he I am conceived in iniquities that from the first instant of his conception he is seized on by sin and though that lineal stain be cleared by circumcision in the old Law and now by Baptisme yet there still remains a propensity to sin which grows up with us gaining strength through the whole course of our Adolescence For many years of our age are spent e're we come to distinguish between good and evil in all which time 't is clear we follow without any stop or haesitation the Dictamens of sense so that at the opening of our understanding we discover a Law Anathemathematizing our former practices the which by many reiterated and continued Acts are so wrought into habit that to break them we must as it were mould our selves into another nature This considered together with the dreggs and relicks of corruption which original sin leaves behind I wonder not if our Penitent deplore his misfortune and hints in his Petition this memorandum that he was conceived in iniquities This Fomes or scattered seed of original sin hath a double effect one an inclination to evil the other a drawing back or declining from what is good This made St. Paul confess he found a Law in his Body contradicting that of his reason and St. Bernard sayes the sin 't is true may be taken away by Baptism but to work a compleat cure that we feel no spice nor itching of the infection is in a manner impossible at least it requires a long course of remedies by a constant exercise and Tryal in vertuous actions For it is an inordinate and habitual concupiscence in the sensitive part so radicated that it becomes as it were a portion of nature Whence Seneca affirms vertues are rarely acquired without a Master but we quickly become expert in vice without the help of any Teacher which shews the pernicious consequence of original sin Our Penitent had found the bitterness of it by dear experience and this pushed him on to the reflection of a main cause of his misery because he was conceived in iniquities Yet our Penitent repines not at God's Justice herein but submits to this smart doom acknowledging a just retaliation that since the Soul had been disobedient to her Creatour the Body in requital should rise up in rebellion against her and punish her by the same Engins she had made use off in her prevarication he doth not scan the motives why God should punish so severely many millions of innocent Souls for the miscarriage of one Man and though he could satisfy himself that since original Justice had been purchased to all Adam's descendents by his obedience it is not unreasonable to share by his fall in the pain due to his transgression Our Penitent I say waves all argumentation looks upon the sentence pronounced and executed and being a Decree from God it must be just His sole hope is that this disordered and depraved constitution in humane nature will draw a more powerful aid and greater compassion towards a sinner when he fails and still the burden of his Song is because he was conceived in iniquities St. Bernard seems unresolved and full of perplexity when he considers Man in this tottering condition it makes him confess he knowes not by what strange bewitching means our will impared by sin is hampered in a kind of necessity and in such a manner as neither the necessity because voluntary can plead excuse for our consent nor the will being allured can scarce break through the necessity for this necessity is in some sort voluntary it is a kind of amorous violence working by flattery and flattering by force Whence the Will having once consented to sin can hardly disengage her self nor yet finds reason enough to excuse what she hath done Upon this score I wonder not to hear the plaining note of Job Lord I suffer violence it is onely you who impose the necessity can answer for me And a little after he cryes O thou Ruler of men why hast thou set me against thee all which shews the sad State of man wrought by original sin if left to himself for he was conceived in iniquities Philo the Jew speaking of Sin gives it a Term of infinity that being once set a flame can never be extinguished he calls it an immortal evil by no death or desolation to be destroyed The truth of this Philosophy who finds not in himself that albeit Baptism hath cleared the channel so as the streams of grace may run yet there are certain exhalations which issued from that corruption always ready to fall and embody with the currant so that if there be not a continual care and sifting it will be morally impossible to preserve our Souls pure and unstained Seneca sayes there are certain vices which are obvious to every Eye and to which we may be led as it were by the hand others there are that lye lurking and are hardly discerned till fastned upon us and these are the most pernicious because against them we can have nither open warr nor a secure peace And this truly is the genuine State of our natures from the corruption wrought in us by sin that we are not said to be clearly sick or well and this fluctuancy if rightly considered must needs be a torment because though we happen not to fall yet danger still threatens so that if we tender our happiness we must stand upon our guard at all times and places because neither Heaven Paradise Religious Cloyster or remote Hermitage is a secure fence against sin and a main reason to us the Children of Adam is because in iniquitatibus conceptus sum we are conceived and born in iniquities Whilst we are invironed and beset with such adversaries as our bad inclinations who watch as I may say but an advantage to undo us surely we ought to work out our Salvation with fear and trembling St. Bernard was not ignorant of Mans inconstancy when he gave this caution Oh sayes he did we but know how small a portion of vertue we have and how soon it vanishes upon how ticklish a foundation it rests unless the giver by a continued flux of Grace secure it to us we would not so easily imbark our selves into dangerous occasions for to indulge our senses and to arm our Enemies is the same but a strange policy How many who have thought themselves like Cedars elevated to a high pitch of vertue by a presumption of their own strength through ignorance of humane frailty and a Supine negligence rashly engaging themselves in hazardous Tryals have been ignominiously blasted and reduced to the condition of a contemptible shrub Lucifer enamoured of his own perfections and aspiring to a parity with God became the most abject of Creatures St. Peter promising wonders of
influence to this Vnion since common reason teaches the stream is not to be regarded with equal esteem to the Source from whence it flowes Lastly what is the final End of all Arts and Sciences whether they ransack the bowels of the Earth or survey the immense bodies of the Heavens whether they examine things past or present but truth it sets all Men on work and can alone render them satisfied so that it may well be defined the source of motion and rest Our Penitent having thus run o're the vast extent of truth and observed how it animates the actions of Men takes occasion from thence to adore God's holy Providence that since he hath obliged us to a precept of confessing and acknowledging our failings with all integrity and fixed it as the sole means to expiate our faults he hath advantaged us with so powerful an inclination unto truth For if we be born so impetuously towards the acquisition the exhibition of it must needs flow as it were naturally from us and it is this motive which invites him to so frequent a repetition of his offences lest he should disguise any the lest tittle for he knows as an exact particular of our Sins accompanied with a perfect sorrow is very acceptable unto God so it is beneficial unto Man the return of such an account being alwaies an evenning of all â—cores an abolition of past Errours and a compleat act of grace Upon this consideration he is not affrighted that his Sin shall be evidenced like the Sun rayes to the World and of this harsh sentence to Nature he himself will be the Executioner he he will prâ—mulgate his enormities and every exhalation of infamy that shall arise from thence upon him he will receive as a blast of Zephir because he speaks a truth animated with Repentance a truth which speaks What he hath been and what now he is to witt an imp of perdition and now is become a subject of mercy because it is a Truth God will ever own in a truly repenting heart for veritatem dilexisti it is essential to one who hath an Eternal love of Truth But it is not enough to trace the steps of of our Lord Jesus as far as he is imitable by Man unless we lay the Foundation of a life of verity which is done by imbracing with a firm belief the Doctrine and Faith he taught and delivered to us for it is certain there is but one God and one truth First we cannot deny this unchangeable quality of Faith to spring from God the Primary Truth since we owe him the Author of Civil and natural Lawes both which are united and receive efficacy from the bond of Religion fâ—r all things are created to the service of Man and he to God's service so that by an act of Religious worship the homage of all other Creatures are involved in that of Man and consequently Religion seems of created things the final End and ultimate disposition unto God Now the means to attain to this Truth cannot be by the strength of natural reason for the matter of credibility is above Nature and Man by consenting to an act of Faith is raised above himself therefore it must be God moving us by his Grace which drawes the motions of our Will to submit to his revealed Truths The Centurion proclaims he believes yet withal adds help O Lord my incredulity which shews though he had done all that lay in his power yet something was wanting It remains then we render our selves fit subjects for the reception of so noble a Guest so rich a Donative as that of Faith the way to this preparation is first to practise a life of Truth that is moral vertues next to lay aside all prejudice that your understanding may work with out biass or restraint thirdly to examine the opinions of those whom the World hath unanimously reverenced for their knowledge sanctity and wisdom fourthly to receive the Decrees of the Church as things sacred since she is styled in Holy Scripture a pillar of truth a spouse all immaculate without any stain of errour remembring also from what authority her infallible placits flow witness the Apostles in their first Synod at Jerusalem who began with this Form to publish their resolves It is judged expedient by the Holy Ghost and by us Where you see that Divine Spirit still swayes and gives life to all Articles of Faith and indeed it was the closing farewell of our blessed Master Christ Jesus who promised to dispatch unto them his Disciples a Spirit of Truth to reside with and animate his Church to the Worlds end A verity of Justice is comprehended in that of integrity of life it being the very Nerves and Sinews of humane Society without which we should be like wild Beasts in desarts no leagues twixt Nations no amities contracted amongst Men no traffick or commerce so that in this sole lovely quality is seated the very life and Soul of humane conversation For behold thou hast loved truth The Application We are further taught in this clause that God hath a true Being that is all qualities suitable to a Divine Nature as to be Spiritual Independent Immortal Omnipotent all good wise merciful Soveraignly happy and a thousand other attributes so that he alone hath the verity of a Divine Being Whatsoever is imaginable and worthy of God this is in him in a Soveraign degree of perfection Nay whatever his infinite understanding can conceive this he enjoys without any diminution or reserve So that when our Petitioner points unto us how God loves truth he means that he loves himself and if herein we play the apt Scholar placing our affections on that inexhausted source of Beauty we shall then move according to the verity of humane Nature For our Being is to be reasonable and what can more decipher the Truth of our reason than by a disdain of this World to aspire unto him who is the final end in which we are to rest and for which we had our Being May our hearts then be ever fixed on this eternal verity Amen CHAP. XIV Incerta occulta sapientiae tuae manifestasti mihi The uncertain and hidden things of thy Wisdom thou hast made known unto me WHilst our Penitent with delight descants upon God's love to truth it were he thinks impious in him to stifle this great truth that he hath called him to his Councel unbreasted to him secret and hidden things and enriched him with the high Prerogative of Prophecy Ah what a change in this Holy King not long before when Nathan laid before him his offence under the shadow of a poor Man violenced in the depredation of his only sheep he is dull unfolds not the mystery and little dreams though it were plain enough himself is pointed at by which we may see what a mist of ignorance as well as other mischiefs sin draws along with it But now he transcends the limits of natural knowledge owns an irradiation
and become an Object pleasing to the all-pure-Eye of his Creatour Wherefore with Reason he inserts this clause sprinkle me with Hysop and I shall be cleansed The Application In imitation of our Holy Penitent we are to covet the bitter draughts of contradictions in this life denying our Will what sensuality prompts us to that we may have a full swinge of our desires in the vast course of Eternity tribulation is the securest clue to be directed by in ease and pleasure vertue must needs run a great risque Fire in its own Sphere conserves it self without any fuel to maintain it so vertue would have done in Paradise where the Goods of the Body concurred with those of the Soul but this Concord was dissolved by sin St. Ambrose likewise sayes of Job that he had shewed himself a valiant commander in peace but not a conquerour in War and that his troubles and afflictions purchased unto him the Palms of a compleat Victory For Earthly Crowns are made of Gold but Heavenly Diadems of the Thorns of tribulation Ah then let us aspire after these Amen CHAP. XVI Lavabis me super nivem dealbabor Thou wilt wash me and I shall be whiter than Snow OUr Holy Prophet thus purified and calcined in the Furnace of adversity will not rest there but is ambitious of a further sublimation he beholds himself much refined the dross of many frailties separated from him by temporal chastisements and in this harsh School he hath learnt a profitable Lesson which is not to advance in a spiritual Course is to loose ground wherefore these sprinkling dews of Grace do not satisfie he must be washed o're and all-bathed in streams of Martyrdom this will give him a tincture outvying the purity of Snow this will consummate all his labours and set on him the last and highest stroke of perfection Thou wilt wash me and I shall be whiter than Snow It is pleasant to read Seneca and other Philosophers in this point of Sacrificing life for a publick interest or on the score of friendship they alwayes place this action amongst the most Heroick whereof Man is capable in this life The Romans had several solemnities to eternize the memory of such as lost their lives in the service of the Republick The Graecians employed all their Eloquence in setting out the Glory of those who dyed for their Country believing that Souls separated from the Body upon such a score were depurated and free from the mixture of any inordinate desires or affections and consequently are disposed to receive the highest beatitude that a created substance can attain unto Xamolxis of Greece for his Wisdom was by the Egyptians ranked amongst the gods whose memory to the Graecians was so Sacred that yearly they sent one of their most learned Doctours to be Sacrificed before his Shrine and at his departure towards Egypt the other Collegiate Philosophers were all oppressed with grief each one repining he was not worthy to be chosen for so glorious a design The reason why this Opinion grew so prevalent amongst them was that love and respect is best expressed by an act of homage and Sacrifice now by the oblation of life we at once give up all our interests of honour pleasure or what ever we can pretend to in this World and witness in that action we more value the cause for which we suffer than our own Being and in a manner do declare the person for whom we dye to have a perfect Dominion over us and destroying our selves would insinuate that we are nothing at least willing to become nothing so we may but pay to the Object of our loves the tribute of glory and greatness The generous Heart of our Petitioner had trampled under his Feet the Enemies of God's people he had purchased many Laurels by his active fortitude and passing from thence to the passive part he had manifested by his patience and perseverance he wanted not this more noble branch of fortitude and that he might crown all his victories he now contracts all the circumstances of a compleat magnanimity in this Petition that he might give up his life and make a publick satisfaction for the injury done by his Exorbitancies to his dear Creatour Thou wilt wash me and I shall be whiter than Snow He knew well this supereminent degree of fortitude which gives a check to Audacity nor permits its Salleys beyond the limits of a just moderation and which charms likewise the retiring spirits of fear and makes them return to their first stations there to stand upon the defensive is a vertue too sublime for Man if considered within the verge of his natural force and abilities For martyrdom implyes a profession of the true Faith which none without a divine Aid can perform It being necessary to an Act of Salvation that it be accompanied with thâ— power and means of Grace wherefore he places the Energy of this Action in the Author of Grace and cryes O God if you will wash me that is if you will shower down the dew of your Grace I will dispose my Soul for the reception and so manage the gift as every reproach every stroke of the Executioner every drop of Blood drawn from my Veins shall have its effect of expiation to cleanse my stains to purify my Soul and give it a whiteness which will surpass that of Snow Again though the Psalms of this victory be never so precious yet unless a storm of Tyranny convey them to him he can only languish in desire For the infliction of Death must come from anothers hand his part in this combat must be only to accept and suffer 'T is true the Holy Ghost proclaims that violence must bear away the wreath of this immortality but it is understood a violence not so much active as passive We must stoop to oppression become a play-game and mockery of the World we must tune forth the praises of our Creatour more by expiring than speaking and from these black mixtures of cruelty will result as from the Phoenix ashes a production far beyond what we could even hope for in recompence You shall wash me and I shall be whiter than Snow We must not doubt but the Soul of our Petitioner ambitious of perfection had all the internal affections which move to this end as charity obedience religion faith hope and an heroick fortitude The first to wit charity raises him to acts of love by which God is more prizable to him than his own life or any other thing imaginable Next this amorous contemplation was accompanied with a perfect submission to the decrees of Heaven whilst Semei threw stones and curses at him he kept close to this principle forbidding any punishment to the Actour lest sayes he God may have ordained it for his tryal or chastisement of his Sins and what he Wills is just and ought to be the Rule of our obedience without any dispute or haesitation The third ingredient to this dye of
purity is Religion by which we are taught to pay the tribute of excellency and respect unto God as the Sovereign Author and Primogenial Source of all Beings other Creatures who cannot comprehend the infinite perfections essentially seated in God have a right that their wants be supplyed by our Piety so that we have a duty of acknowledgement not only for our selves but in behalf of every thing created to our Service by an act then of Religion we return our own Being and all other Beings likewise of the whole World into his Hands from whence they came to be disposed off as he pleases that as we hold it from him so we would not enjoy it but for him and this from two considerations the one of God's immense greatness and Majesty the other of our own smalness or rather nothing as to the one our Penitent defies any Being to compare with God he confesses the Earth Seas and Heavens lye at his beck that his Enemies he disperses as the Sun doth the Shades of Night and having thus exalted his unmeasured greatness he then religiously exposes himself before him acknowledges he is a worm and not a man and if a man the very outcast and opprobry of Mankind He presumes to question God what man is that he should daign him a glance of his careful Eye and declares his opinion that he is but a piece of vanity an empty out-side a heap of dust and therefore it is but just in him to honour the Majesty of God by a profusion of what he enjoyes and that his Being can never be put to a better use than by annihilating it self if possibly to witness by that submission the immense perfections of his Creatour His fortitude in attempting great things needs no dilucidation the Sun-beams are not more conspicuous what Nation hath not received the History of his deeds together with the tydings of Christianity where also is set forth his patience in adversity in many rebellions unnatural stratagems and implacable hatred of Saul against him For his Faith in Christ amongst all the Prophecies of a Messias his Psalms excell in delineating and issuing a lively Character of all the passages of his passion So that all these vertues could not spring but from a hope of enjoying one day that Sovereign good for whose acquisition he was ready to Seal all these actions with his blood and life I confess this tincture of Snow to arise from a bloody stream might seem a wrested interpretation were it not that a passage in the Apocalips doth clear it where it is said they whitened their stoles in the blood of the Lamb that is the effect of this ablution gives innocence wipes off like Baptisme all the spots of Guilt or Pain so that once dipped in this Lavatory he may justly promise to himself a lovely Grain far surpassing that of Snow Wonder not then if our Petitioner touched with a sense of his transgressions and frighted with the memory of that condition wherein he had been plunged should aim at the glorious Palms of martyrdom both to secure his pardon purchase a compleat abolition of his Faults and make himself a perpetual Sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to his dear Creatour Lord thou wilt wash me and I shall be whiter than Snow The Application Let us by the example of our Penitent thirst after these purifying streams one boisterous billow of Persecution carried home to the strugling Patient will have more vertue than all the waters of Jordan St. Gregory saith that the departing of the Body from the Soul is but a shadow but the departing of a Soul from God is a sad Truth And as a shadow is refreshing in Summer so is Death to the Righteous especially if voluntarily accepted and inflicted upon the account of a pious cause But since this Crown is out of our reach and depends upon anothers severity we must be thus severe to our selves as to put on an undaunted look against any difficulty which may obstruct our Salvation or advancement to pâ—…fection and resolve to suffer or overcome them either of which we may by the aid of Grace never wanting at a pinch Next we must rejoyce when harassed with adversities it is St Luke's declaration of the Apostles that they returned from Tribunal seats with joy having been made worthy to be there reviled and scorned for the name of Christ and truly Saints have seemed to measure their hopes of glory according to the proportion of their sufferings Lastly we are to expose our selves to hard and painful things for the spiritual good of our Neighbour if we strengthen our selves with these arms of fortitude we shall be fitted for that last and most glorious proof of valour at least secure an immense reward to our selves Amen CHAP. XVII Auditui meo dabis gaudium laetitiam Thou wilt give unto my hearing joy and gladness WHen the Church proclaims the sin of Adam happy in that it merited to have such and so great a Redeemer Methinks it hath some resemblance wâ—th this clause of our Petitioner where he promises to himself joy and gladness as if they were a necessary consequence to repentance In the precedent verse he minds his Creatour of the Rules he hath set down to purchase innocence to wit by temporal adversity here he opens the secret of God's working with a justifyed Soul which is to fill her with jubilies and consolation For when Almighty God enlightens our understanding to consider his greatness providence goodness and his other perfections and when he gives a touch to our Wills imprinting in them holy impulses of fear hope love and the like by which we are excited and enabled to frame and execute holy and pious resolutions he doth not this by a way of violence as a stone is taken up from its Center but by a way of sweetness he governs and changes our inclinations if we do not prove too stubborn So that the first step to our justification is not made without the concurrence of our Wills and questionless it is no small subject of joy to reflect that we our selves have been Actours in this great work of our justification which exceeds the Creation of Heaven Earth and all that is comprized in Nature for though we owe to God all that we have yet that his liberality may take its desired effect this he will have depend upon us to the end by working our Salvation it might prove an honour and satisfaction in that we our selves have contributed something to it by the consent of our free will by which we can claim the actions we do to be our own The next branch of joy and gladness in a justified Soul is the access of grace a supernatural form infused by God by which we are raised to a supernatural Being that is to say a new Being more prizable than an intellectula or reasonable than Angelical or Seraphical considered precisely in the order of Nature Because Grace gives a new
birth to the Soul and communicates unto her a new Being which is called Divine in that the Soul receives from it a resemblance unto God after a manner extraordinary whose more perfect knowledge is reserved for the light of glory which will make the discovery unto us All we can now say is that no sooner this divine gift inhabits our Souls but we are designed to eternal beatitude Almighty God beholds us with an Eye of satisfaction as his Children received into his Family as Solomon sayes by grace we contract an eternal alliance with God St. Thomas stiles Grace a participation of the Divine Nature for what the Divine Nature doth in God the same Grace by imitation doth in a Soul as the Divine Nature is in God the cause of his most transcending actions to wit love and union So Grace in a Soul is the spring of glory beatitude supernatural knowledge and heavenly affections by which she regulates all her works according to integrity and holiness Nay God obliges himself to give a Soul that can plead the title of Grace the Kingdom of Heaven and possession of eternal bliss No wonder then if after the sprinklings of Hysop that is penitential tears our Petitioner expects a Harmony of joy and gladness since the divine quality of Grace purchased by repentance is attended on by so many advantages What matter of joy to be spiritually regenerated the Son of God the Brother and Coheir with Jesus Christ wherefore St. Leo sayes this gift of being the Son of God to be authorized to call God Father exceeds all his other liberalities for by generation a Father communicates his Nature to his Son producing him in species alike So by Adoption he that adopts gives unto a stranger in desire and affection what he is in himself attributing unto him the prerogative of a Son entitling him to all his inheritance the same as if he were his Son by Nature now what Man doth to another out of affection God doth in effect For imprinting Grace in a Soul he gives himself and is really in her insomuch that were it possible God could be not immense Grace would render him afresh present to and in the Soul Certainly if ever that saying was verified where guilt hath raigned there grace did yet more powerfully sway it was in the person of our holy Petitioner his raptures and Enthusiastick throwes his prophetick notions Nay God's own Testimony of him that Repentance had moulded him even conformably to his own Heart sufficiently proved his Soul to float in floods of Grace and consequently must needs swell with a great portion of joy therefore with just reason he proclaims thou wilt give unto my hearing joy and gladness Again this possession of Grace is accompanied with the expectation of a Sovereign good For the understanding enlightned by Faith knowes that Mans's Beatitude is in God that this Beatitude is promised him as his final end and the means to attain unto this End is by Grace and acts of vertue So that he enjoyes it not but upon the terms of being one day eternally happy this certain expectation of Beatitude St. Bonaventure calls the Anchor and basis of Man in this life It keeps him from dejection placing still before his thoughts an infinite good and which is infallibly to be the abject of his future acquisition it choaks presumption casting him upon the mediums ordained to lead him to this end it draws his affections from terrene things and raises them to God as the supream object alone worthy to be loved and served What joy then to have our VVills carryed on by this gift of hope which sweetly entertains us in the contemplation of Eternity and this not as a thing doubtful for what would Cloud the severity of our comfort but as a reward to which we are entitled by grace and of which by this vertue of hope we have an earnest and pledge St. Paul to the Hebrews prescribes hope as a means to compass whatsoever we would have Let us approach with confidence to the Throne of Grace as if we needed only a firm hope to be able to scale the Throne of God and bear thence what so e're we desire St. Gregory observes there is no pleasure in this World which is not greater in the expectation than fruition by which we see what a strange Operation the very hope of some temporal object hath in us what ravishments then must needs proceed from a hope that is fixed on the source of perfections and to have this addition that after our imaginations have proposed all the delights that humane wit can frame yet they fall infinitely short of those joyes the Object of a supernatural hope will discover unto us Blame not then our Petitioner if he give himself the assurance of joy and gladness when once his Soul shall be enriched with Grace and divine hope inspired into him since their presence brings the highest satisfactions we are capable off in this World I observe after Christ had declared the remission of St. Mary Magdalens misdeeds he bids her go in peace to shew she is no more impious For as they are strangers to repose so rest and satisfaction are the natural effects of a good conscience When the Thief on the Cross had obtained mercy immediately follow the glad tidings he should exchange that very day his Gibbet into a Paradise St. Austin had no sooner stepped into the Paths of pennance but he found himself overwhelmed with joy which he thus describes On a suddain sayes he it grew delightful to me to be weaned from trifling pleasures and what before I feared to loose now with joy I dismiss for thou O supream Diety didst tear them from me and supplyedst them by thy own presence who art in all honour beauty and pleasure excelling You see what he got in exchanging a few Worldly joyes for a life of pennance in quitting a Creature he came to the enjoyment of his Creatour in abandoning that we must needs once lose and which we still apprehend will be ravished from us he arrived to an inestimable and never perishing good Nay reason may tell us as happy experience hath informed Saints that if his mercy be so great and transforms it self into so many Shapes of vertues in reward to sinners it must needs be much more admirable in order to the just For it is but equitable that those who must love and honour him should have a more ample share in the Treasures of his mercies than such who injure and daily offend him If when we are Enemies he fails not to give Testimonies of his love being reconciled and readmitted to his favour what will he not do If he bestow a kiss upon a treacherous Judas with what overflowing sweetness will he visit a loyal heart which breaths forth nothing but love and a conformity to his will if a sound of his voice as Man was so charming that many of the Apostles at his first call abandoned
all their VVorldly interests and engagements to follow him what transports do the sweet whispers of his Divine Spirit occasion unto his dear Servants what internal consolations what tranquility of mind St. Austin terms them certain previous relishes or Antipasts of Heaven which far transcend all the contentment and satisfactions of this world In a word that Seraphim of love St. Austin gives us the perfect Character of a spiritual joy by his own experience Saying O Lord sometimes thou dost lead me into unknown delights which were they compleated in me I know not what they would be but certain I am it would not be this life that is such a Dilatation of Spirits he found to attend those spiritual comforts that he saw were they accomplished a ruine of his mortal Being must needs ensue This is the joy and gladness our Holy Petitioner expects and that he was not deceived in his expectation scarce a Psalm of his that proclaims not the sweetness and superabundant satisfactions issuing from the love fear and service of God and therefore when he had petitioned for persecution adversity and the Crown of Martyrdom he might justly solace himself with the sequel and fruits of sufferings which are joy and gladness To my hearing thou wilt give joy and gladness The Application Ah who would not then protest against the vain joyes of this world to tast the sweetness of spiritual entertainments St. Gregory puts this difference 'twixt Corporal and Spiritual delights that the former whilest in expectation are coveted with much vehemency but when once enjoyed they presently become nauseous and distastful the other we pursue but coldly and with little heat of desire yet when once we have a relish of them we still languish after the encrease This made St. Francis that blessed despiser of the World to make a Covenant with his senses never to fasten with the least Contentment on any sensual object and truly he was so exact in the performance as he went up and down like the meer shadow of a Man that had nothing humane in him but his shape his better part ever dwelling in the Mansion of the Blessed These are joyes that will not be held by Repentance may we then still languish after them Amen CHAP. XVIII Et exultabunt Ossa humiliata And humbled Bones shall rejoyce THis encouragement which our Petitioner allowes himself corresponds with the second part of the former verse where he was willing to Sacrifice his life For he doth not only cheer himself in reflecting upon the reward which repentance will bring to his Soul but likewise upon the future condition of his Earthly mould which he beholds as matter of great consolation and therefore upon the same score he prosecutes the Subject of his hope saying that his humbled Bones shall rejoyce Amongst all the comforts Christian Religion affords there is none hath so much influence upon Man as the expectation of a future resurrection the motive of this consolation springs from the belief we have of God's Omnipotency For as we believe he hath created us of nothing so we must acknowledge his power to restore us and raise our ashes to a better and more happy condition Nay if we observe the course of Holy Scripture we shall find the expiration of Saints hath a particular expression given it For they are not said to dye but to fall into a sleep as if their Bodies after separation retained a certain vertue which had resemblance with their glorifyed Souls In the Fourth Book of Kings Chap. 13. We read that a Carkass being thrown into the Sepulchre of Elizeus was by a touch of his Bones restored to life St. Hierom relates how Constantine the Great conveyed with much Solemnity the relicks of St Andrew and St. Luke unto Constantinople Areadius likewise the Emperour translated the relicks of Samuel the Prophet from Judaea into Thrasia where they were received with great veneration and joy of the people All which shews our Forefathers looked upon the remainder of Saints Bodies not as liveless fragments but as the Fountains of life and health as certain pieces God would make instrumental to miracles and to works above the power of nature Therefore the Bones of Holy Persons endued with such vertue may justly be qualifyed with joy and consequently it is not improper to say That humbled Bones shall rejoyce Again St. John Damascene hath a fine conception saying those who imitate the vertues of Saints may be more truly said their relicks or impressions than the lump and mass of Earth they leave behind He who hath the zeal and ardours of a St. Paul in the Conversion of Souls may be stiled his lively Image Who can claim the fortitude of a St. Stephen in accepting the stroke of Death for Justice sake will infallibly bear the stamp of that Protomartyr Who can perform the humble and spiritual life of a St. Francis will prove a better pattern of him than his own Body which at this day remains entire at Assisium as a Testimony of that Glory his Soul enjoyes in Heaven so that when we cast our selves into the mould of their vertues we become their animated statues and make them rejoyce in our imitation as the Angels do at a sinners Conversion it is not unlikely our Holy Prophet alluded to such living relicks vvhen he said humbled bones shall rejoyce Since good Men are here for the most part crushed in the Worlds esteem that values nothing but what is great in vanity Yet amidst these Clouds of oppression and scorns thrown at them they find within themselves a satisfaction in performing their duty to God for the fruit of the spirit sayes St. Paul is joy peace and a thousand other contentments which attend a state of innocence so that it is an ingenious Expression of our Penitent that humbled bones shall rejoyce I have many times wondered why Almighty God should give unto the Ashes of Saints what he had denyed them whilst they were alive and made not use of any limb or vital motion but for his sake that is many miracles have been wrought by touching the mouldred dust of Saints who living were never favoured with the power of any Miracle but as the lives of Saints are admirable so the proceedings of Almighty God with them seem very mysterious yet I have proposed some reasons of this to my sell First Almighty God will shew by this how dear his Servants are unto him and if he give so much vertue to their Ashes what may we expect he doth to their Immortal Souls Next it argues how grateful a thing humility is in the sight of God that those who have Crucifyed their flesh and daily Sacrificed their Bodies for his name should have the very Ashes of that Mortified Body cure Diseases restore sight to the blind and raise the dead to life Thirdly Almighty God will manifest the difference between a pampered Body and one mangled by acts of pennance the one by all manner of
delicacies sought to preserve a beauty and make it proof against time Yet once grown old or cut off by Death it is cast into oblivion the other kept in Chains and threatned daily with ruine yet at the last proves matter of veneration even unto those who before perhaps contemned it You see then how to live in the Memory of Men what Art is to be used to raise a stately structure of our selves the materials of this must be acts of Charity towards our Neighbour and acts of severity towards our selves the Cement must be Patience Constancy Resignation to God's holy will and the like with these Saints have purchased glory to themselves before God and veneration amongst Men that even Kings have crouched with bended knees before their Ashes who whilst here poor Pilgrims upon Earth were looked upon as Idiots and made as it were the mockery of the World so that humbled bones at last shall Triumph and erect their Trophies where they had been made the spoils of Death St. Gregory Nazianzen affirms the Ashes of St. Cyprian were so powerful as no Disease wanted there its remedy and this Testimony he received from those very persons who had been the Subject of his miraculous Cures St. Ambrose relates of one Severus who being blind by touching only the Casket wherein were enchased the relicks of the Holy Martyrs St. Gervasius and Protasius he recovered his sight St. Austin recounts many miracles wrought by the relicks of St. Stephen and adds The benefits obtained at his shrine were so great and numerous as whole Volumes might be filled with the relation In fine there is not a Doctour of the Church whose writings speak not the wonders Heaven hath owned even in their time upon the score of supplications made in the presence and honour of Saints Bodies Nor did this religious Worship of relicks spring up originally with the Ghospel for St. Epiphanius brings evidence how the Sepulchers of Esay Ezekiel and Jeremy were had in great veneration among the Jews and this from the extraordinary succours God conserred on distressed People at the Tombs of those Holy Prophets We find likewise Exodus 13. that before Moses conducted the Israelites out of Egypt he ordained the Bones of Joseph to be taken up and born away with Ceremony into the Land of promise Now why all this But to verify our Holy Prophets assertion that humbled bones shall rejoyce that Death may cause a separation twixt Soul and Body and so seem to Triumph over this mortal clay of ours cannot be denyed Yet if our members have served in purity as St. Paul terms it and merited in life to be the Temple of the Holy Ghost such as these though exanimated may still retain a vertue by which they give life and joy to other Beings Whence justly our Petitioner fore-declares and humbled bones shall rejoyce Truly it is but rational to conceive there should be a Providence to preserve from common corruption those Bodies who had been instrumental to many acts of vertue and made a daily victime by pennance For since mortality is the effect of sin there ought at least be something that hath the resemblance of immortality to attend that Body which hath much contributed to the Souls happiness Besides we believe our Bodies shall one day be glorified and vested with immortal dotes it is fit then such who have here led a life as it were Angelical without any contamination of sensual pleasures should anticipate in some kind their future glorifyed condition and how can this better appear than by imprinting a Sovereign vertue in their extinguished Ashes since it is decreed a compleat glorification cannot unless particularly dispensed with be conferred till the universal Resurrection This admirable operation given to their Earthly and liveless substance as it is a Testimony of their Souls felicity so is it no less to us a pledge the most dear we could have by which we are assured of their watchful and compassionate care over us In fine how powerfully are we wrought into the imitation of their lives when at their shrines we behold both Death and Nature vanquished and the prodigious effects of humbled prostrate Limbs lowdly declare how precious the Death of Saints is in the sight of God Thus our Holy Petitioner hath laid open unto us First the Jubileys of mind which fill a Soul united unto God by love and repentance Next to compleat the Harmony he tells us our very bones shall not want their portion of joy that if they here be made bare disjoynted or broken Almighty God never fails to sweeten those rigours by internal whispers and consolations which carry them on to perseverance in their pressures and debasements and when Saints have once payed this debt to nature then he gives to the one part the immediate fruition of his Glory and to the other he often communicates such Soveraign vertues that they are as it were certain previous dispositions to immortality 'T is true the relick of a Saint appears but a lump of Earth liveless inanimate and so is not capable of joy yet God making it the instrument of miraculous effects is thereby glorifyed and what ever relates to his honour is matter of exultation Again St. Paul saith that every Creature groans that is feels throwes and longing desires after their Maker If then these resentments be allowed to every Being much more ought we grant it to the Sacred pledge of a Saints Body in which the Omnipotency and other Divine attributes of God do so gloriously shine and humbled bones shall rejoyce The Application Let us then so manage our senses in this life enslaving them to the Lawes of reason that after the short course of their servitude here we may arrive to that joy mentioned by our Holy Petitioner Amen CHAP. XIX Averte faciem tuam à peccatis meis Turn away thy Face from my sins WHen I cast my Eye upon this clause of the Petition I cannot but reflect on that passage of Esay where he sayes it is a bitter thing to have once abandoned God for after a sin is committed though it be secret unseen and none reprehend us for it yet we fear every shadow suspect every look and syllable nor can we ever think our selves secure and out of danger St. Austin sayes as iniquity is alwayes accompanied with a neglect of God and consequently is a kind of Pride by which we value our own satisfaction beyond his honour so sin by a just punishment throwes us down below our selves it first induces us to actions unworthy our reason and after that engagement what Tyranny like to this usurper For having shaken off the fear of God who alone ought to be the Object of that passion we sink into the fear of every thing capable to be the Term of Sense if a sound it is a loud promulgation of our Crime if a Shadow it is some Ambuscado to surprize us if the World be civil they are acts of
through the whole Man in such sort that every particle of him may feel its operation he is not I say so transported as not to consider what he asks and in that the great condescendency of God who disdains not to converse with Men he deals not with them as he doth with Angels where the superiour intelligences instruct the inferiour but by himself an increated wisdom he conveys unto our happy Ears the mysterious wonders of our Faith It is by him we are taught that all sin is forbidden even to the least thought or desire that God is to be loved above all things and sin to be abominated in the highest degree so that the exact observer of his Laws must be holy and enriched with all vertues there is nothing in our Faith that speaks not the greatness of God nothing that is not sublime transcending and what becomes not an infinite Majesty he layes down nothing of eternal things that sounds the least imperfection So that the compleat knowledge of them must needs involve a joy eternal since even in the transitory passage of this life we experience the most solid contentment and satisfaction we have to consist in the sweet Meditation of those Mysteries For alas without those hopes which Faith gives us what Captive more wretched than Man we are as banished into a Land of misery enslaved by sin where we truckle under the insolency of unruly passions which hurries into many disasters and calamities at last we finish a deplorable life by death in whose Face is seated nothing but dread and horrour After this corruption stanch and infection are the last farewell and monument of us so that without Faith we are centered within these myseries unable to carry our sight beyond the low condition of a brute and unreasonable Creature On the contrary faith teaches we are created to a supernatural and blessed end which we are to purchase by acts of Religion That our Souls are immortal by which resembling the Angels we are excluded from putrefaction and approach the nearer to God That he hath created all things of nothing in which belief we acknowledge his Omnipotency and cherish our own hopes that if he could extract us out of nothing with more facility can he after death rejoyn our disunited parts Our Holy Penitent figures to himself all these comforts resulting from divine faith and in sequel implores with instance that a right spirit may be renewed within him But I conceive our Holy Penitent looked not upon himself as wholy deprived of habitual faith for though every mortal sin disposes afar off unto its total ruine and truly merits it should be taken from us yet God is so merciful as to leave that foundation unalterable by sin unless directly undermined by an opposite act of infidelity In this petition then for a right spirit he pretends to the operation of habitual faith that is an actual and firm belief of Objects proposed by Faith His reason is that the lights and irradiations of Faith have a certain blessing from God to stir up and carry the will to what is good so that after an act of Faith produced in the understanding he knew his clean heart would no longer lye a sleep but grow up into a spark which would both enlighten and enflame as the Prophet Habakkuk sayes Chap. 1. The just Man lives by Faith that is Faith actuated and enlivened both preserves the Soul's life by grace and by merit opens a passage to eternal glory Run o're the World's History from the Creation and you will find habitual faith lying dead and frozen within us to have been the source of all our misery The reprobate Angels upon what score did they forfeit that precious title of being the Sons of God was it not in that they preferred a motion of self love before the motives of faith which would have rendered them stable and secure What a frivolous plea made Adam for his trespass lest his Wife upon his denyal might have grown sad as if a fear to offend God and ruine his whole posterity ought not to have prevailed in this temptation Had Cain considered the greatness of God his obligation to observe his Law in loving his Brother a petty suggestion of avarice or sting of envy could never have animated him to an action so horrid the Massacre of so many Infants by Herod's command wherein he thought to have involved the person of Jesus Christ was meerly upon the account of ambition the Jewish Oracles foretelling his raign and Empire which Herod understood to be of this World nor did the Jews put our Saviour to death but in order to the preservation of their City and themselves in the good Opinion of the Romans so that Men have been pushed on in all their crimes by humane reasons and interests whilst they laid aside those disswasives which Faith held forth to them and which had if duly weighed rendered them victorious witness St. John Chap. 5. The power of faith hath made a conquest of the World which is meant not of the habit but act of faith Our Holy Penitent applyes all this to himself having seen the shipwrack that befel him through a sluggishness in not giving life and activity to his faith For when he was tempted to impurity and other his transgressions that sprang from thence had he considered what faith teaches concerning mortal sin that it deprives a Soul of eternal glory adjudges her to the endless torments of Hell that it throwes a scorn and contempt upon a God whose greatness and Majesty is infinite and who merits from all Creatures a respect and love ineffable had he fixt himself on these sublime and supernatural reasons of Faith the Childish baits of flesh and blood could never have taken hold upon his unfortunate senses wherefore to prevent at least for the future he solicits a right spirit may be infused into him a spirit that may not be overgrown with rust like a sword in a scabberd for want of use but that it may prove active even to his very bowels which is to say that this noble quality of faith producing frequently acts by the consideration of its proper objects may gain his will memory sensitive and moving faculties and so happily conduct him to his designed Beatitude renew in my Bowels a right spirit After Faith thus enlivened as a necessary dependent comes in a troop of moral vertues which compleats the rectitude of his spirit he so much desires For vertue is a habit that enclines the Soul to perform actions sutable to a reasonable nature and though the Soul be sufficient of herself by her natural faculties to frame several acts of vertue yet it is with hardship and difficulty whereas this quality of vertue contributes a facility by which the good thence issuing is done with promptitude and delight It consists in a mediocrity between two extreams that is too little or too much For example Charity is between a coldness or
rather a fear to have stopt the sacred stream of God's extraordinary favours towards him For he was so well versed in the wayes of perfection as he knew the foundation of a life of Sanctity consists in the good management of divine inspirations and that the greatest Saints have from thence derived their happy success in a spiritual life We see no King nor Common-wealth if they find any person unfaithful in a slight Office that will entrust to him a more weighty charge and why should we think that God will be less prudent in the Government of Souls St. Prosper sayes that God imparts his graces in order and by degrees First distilling into them some little dropps of his grace and then a greater quantity in case those first be carefully improved it being a good earnest that he who acquits himself with fidelity in ordinary things will in matters of greater perfection come off with no less honour Whereas on the contrary the first step to the misfortune of a sinner is made by the neglect of God's early inspirations in the beginning For there is not any Pagan misbeliever or Christian whom he stirs not up to the common practice of vertue as obsequiousness to our Parents the avoiding Theft Luxury and the like and if they comply with these he fails not to enflame them with desires and gives them abilities to arrive at more sublime perfection Wherefore our Penitent fears he may have demerited in this Nature and begs not to be excluded from his face that is not to be deprived of those endearments wherewith he is wont to overwhelm such Souls as correspond with his inspirations and if hitherto he hath played the Coy one and scorned his dalliances for the future he will change his humour and cherish every the least motion of his dear Creatour He will aim at a perfect resemblance of his beloved in imitation of his wisdom he will discern good from evil and distinguish 'twixt the less and greater good alwayes embracing that which is best In order to his purity as much as is consistent with frail nature supported by grace he hopes to preserve himself from all stain and imperfection That some sparks of his charity may shine in him he will love that which God loves and love nothing but what he loves and upon the same motives whereon his love is grounded In a word he will unite all his faculties with God in as strict an alliance as this present condition of mortality will bear provided he be not exiled from his Face nor the flood-gates of gracious communications shut up in punishment of his past offences Whilst the person offended admits the offendour to his presence it argues there is not an utter breach between them wherefore till a sentence of banishment be passed he still retains some hope his aim then in this petition is to put a barr to this extremity of rigour He confesses it is a bitter thing to leave God but yet a far greater to be left by him and a main appearance of this is when he leaves us to the desires of our own heart like a Physitian who permits his patient in a desperate condition to eat and drink what he please He knowes the anger of God is great when he is not angry with a sinner and that it is a stroke of his goodness when his temporal chastisement immediately followes the offence so that if he please to afflict him and like a Jealous God issue forth his indignation upon the place for every misdemeanour He is ready to embrace with open arms what ever affliction he shall send and is willing to expose his breast to the direst shafts of his fury so it may but divert this great subject of his fears as to bee ternally cast out from his presence Neprojicias me c. The Application We behold by this clause how all along in this petition our Penitent hath been terrifyed with the ugly shape of sin and now he begins to apprehend the effects of sin which is Death For Death and sin considered apart are very frightful but once joyned together that is to dye in sin there is nothing more dreadful and this dismal stroke he fears when he sayes cast me not away from thy face St. John Damascene observes two derelictions of God the one seeming when he permits the just to fall into sin that by experiment of their frailty they might rise more humble and more watchfully attend to their Salvation This happened to our Penitent St. Peter and divers others The other is absolute and a final cashier for ever and this happens when after all remedies applyed a Soul remains stupid and incurable even to the last by his obstinate perseverance in wickedness so that God foreseeing this obdurateness withholds his special grace and so lets him end in his impenitency we are here therefore to joyn with our Petitioner and beg we may not come to this period or consummation of our iniquities but timely lay hold on the shield of his mercy Amen CHAP. XXIV Et spiritum Sanctum tuum nè auferas à me And take not from me thy holy Spirit THe workings of God's Holy Spirit in our Souls are great secrets and if to our selves unknown no wonder that to others they lye hid and though he be in us after a quite different manner than he is said to be ubiquitary by his essence presence and power yet his approach or recess is so insensible as the best persons during this life are left in suspence ignorant whether they be in a condition of love or hatred with their Creatour Of this blessed Job seemed to complain saying Chap. 19. If he come I shall not see him and when he retires I am in the same Cloud Notwithstanding God is pleased sometimes though rarely to dispense with his ordinary proceeding as to give such marks of his grace and friendship to a Soul that it is apparent even to the Eye of the Body Of this we have an example in the Feast of Pentecost when the Holy Ghost descended upon the Apostles in form of fiery tongues so replenishing their Minds with knowledge and enflaming their Hearts with charity as the whole World was in a short time laid prostrate to the power of their doctrine and miracles In this clause of the petition we have likewise reason to pass the same Opinion of our Holy Penitent that he had been gratified with the like visible communication of this divine gift The past transactions 'twixt God and his once happy Soul were fresh in his memory and how he had designed to reveal unto him many secrets of his Providence Nay had given him so many proofs of inhabiting grace as one must be strangely stupid not to acknowledge it Now here he seems to cheer himself with a confidence that after his petition for a clean heart and right understanding he is again in the enjoyment of his blessed presence by grace and charity wherefore he begs
he might alwayes dwell with him and that he may never more tast the bitter absence of his Holy Spirit Et spiritum sanctum tuum c. Spiritual Men who have employed their thoughts on the subject of the mission of the divine persons unto Creatures discover advantages by this Embassy unto humane nature which seem to surpass all the wonders of our faith at least they are conveyed unto us with more sensible delight First they say when a Soul is priviledged with a visit from that divine spirit she doth not only receive inherent and accidentall grace not only splendours which irradiate and ardourâ— which enflame but even the substantial Principium the Holy Ghost from whence they flow Witness St. Paul 2. ad Rom. The charity of God is diffused through our hearts by the Holy Ghost who is given to us The Philosopher sayes that two Lovers if possibly would become but one because this identity would destroy all fear of separation and since they cannot arrive to this at least by conversation discourse and mutual presence they give themselves to one another Now the love of God is all-powerful no obstacle can hinder the perfect union to which it tends wherefore this love enclining the divine person to unite and surrender up himself unto a Soul she finds herself immediately fastned to him by other chains than those of his immensity it is by grace and charity she is enslaved and their efficacy is to prodigious that were not that divine spirit already at the door they would draw him thither and court him to a most intimate alliance Our Holy Penitent well knew the truth of this Divinity by the amorous operations he had once felt within him for this great gift of God was no stranger to him whence I wonder not if he court its preservation since in it is contained the whole treasure of his immense love If then he shall please to secure this present to him he will in return consecrate to his honour all the fruit of his understanding and will his thoughts shall ever dwell in him and from this meditation he hopes to enkindle such a flame within him as all the waves of adversity or allurements of the World shall never be able to quench his constant Prayer therefore shall be withdraw not from me thy holy spirit After he had thus considered the dignity of the person communicated to a devout Soul he then descends to the particulars of his negotiation The first point is that this divine spirit is the Prinâ—ipium or great wheel which gives motion to all her supernatural and meritorious actions by which the Soul exceeds her own strength and gets above all her natural faculties and without this spirit Man is feeble impotent and can act nothing generous in a spiritual life The second advantage of this Treaty is that this divine person becomes the object of our understanding and will so that he is a known object in a knowing will and a beloved object in a loving will then it is that the Soul hath God within her who alone entertains and employes her thoughts and affections it is towards him she raises acts of faith and love setting a value upon him beyond all the World as the most excellent Being to whom she can consecrate herself Another benefit of this mission is that this divine spirit communicates himself unto a Soul as her sole treasure and appropriated sovereign good and in such a manner as she will not only find God within her but likewise that he belongs to her as her proper right the serious thought of which happy possession must doubtless much asswage all the bitterness of this life In sequel of these irradiations our Holy Penitent is at a stand comparing the liberalities of his good God with his own ingratitude For God had given himself up to him to be the instrument of all his supernatural operations to be the object of his thoughts and repository of his affections in requital our unfortunate Penitent rejecting this divine legate hath taken up the arms of sensualities against him filled his memory with Earthly species and consulted with brutish passions O bad exchange When he had thus reproached himself of his disloyalty he then converts his Eye to the shipwrack he had made for by one mortal sin he hath lost God as he is God of grace and glory though not as he is God of nature for as such a one he still remains to cast thunderbolts of vengeance upon his guilty head but he is resolved if the divine goodness shall please to restore and continue to him himself in whom is found the source of so many precious treasures he will for the future manage them to his honour he will glorify him in all eternity and manifest to the world that through his grace he is made worthy not to have his holy spirit taken from him In temporal afflictions we lose it is true the gift but the giver is yet secured to us by sin we lose both So that there is no desolation can happen equal to what is thrown upon us by sin For whilest we lye under the guilt of mortal sin God is no more the Principium of our meritorious operations no more the object of our amorous powers nor to be claimed as our proper good and treasure and though his infinite beauties and perfections render him alwayes a source of all good imaginable yet to a Soul defiled with sin he is a spring that diverts his stream in another Channel he is a treasure locked up whose Key is taken away and all-right of entrance decreed against him These are the miserable circumstances which attend the loss of God's holy spirit of which our Holy Penitent being very conscious incessantly repeats Lord withdraw not from me thy holy spirit Theodoret sayes that St. Peter having heard from Christ's own Mouth Thou shalt thrice deny me would feign have fled many Leagues from that occasion but his love was so great as he held it less evil to follow and deny him than to fly away and confess him He took so much pleasure in his presence that he chose rather to hazzard his Soul than the loss of his blessed sight deeming it less unhappiness to renounce him than not to be in the Eye of him whom he loved so dearly If then his corporal presence so ravished this Apostle what a charm must it be to possess within us a divine spirit what solicitude to preserve this treasure in whose participation consists all the happiness we are any wayes capable of in the condition of this our mortality Ah blame not then our Petitioner if again and again he sues under this forme Lord take not thy holy spirit from me Many Nations have made their gods Prisoners chaining them fast in their Temples the Lacedemonians hampered their god Mars with Cords of Silk Hercules with Fetters of Gold fancying to themselves that if they could enjoy their Company though by violence they
with sadness upon any rencontre since the effects do often prove far different from what they promise and this by the unresistable ordinations of Heaven which can draw riches out of poverty make us great by humility give us honour by contempts In fine who needs no previous dispositions in Creatures to frame his productions Now to lead us in this labyrinth that we may not erre Divines distinguish a twofold joy The one is temporal which hath for its Object riches honour sensual pleasures and the like So that when our joy reaches but to the petty interests of this World this is poor and argues a baseness of Spirit which is angustiated within the limits of flesh and blood and hopes or fears only what may prove distastful or pleasant to their present state of Being The other branch of joy is eternal taking its specification from the object which is God without end or beginning it only looks upon him and it is he alone that gives the rise to all its motions One part of this joy is proper for us here whilest we are in viâ as Divines term it or pilgrimes upon earth the completion of the other we must expect in patria when we shall attain to the mansion of the blessed it is this joy St. Bernard meant when he sayes O good Jesu if it be so sweet a thing to weep for thee what will it be to rejoyce with aâ—d in thee So that we are here by a compunctive sorrow to crucify our selves daily and by this means dispose our selves for that joy which is necessarily consequent to such acts Our Holy Penitent followes this method in his petition he knows the effects of a heart pierced with a vertuous sorrow and repentance is peace joy and the like So that though we labour here to steep our selves in bitterness and anguish there results out of these agonies a certain contentment in performing our duties to God and this so great as it surpasses all the delights of this World Many Heathen Philosophers have been of Opinion that vertue it self was a sufficient reward unto such as embraced it that is there springs from good actions such a satisfaction in conformity to the dictamens of reason as they have preferred it before riches honour or any sensual pleasure we have seen them endure torments of all kind the hardship of want the rough trial of disgraces and all this with smileing looks and meerly from this Principle they took their cause to be good and that vertue commanded it believing her Lawes to be more sutable to a reasonable Soul than all the glory and plenty of the World attended on by injustice and impiety Our Hoâ—y Penitent by his own experience had learnt that in works of Piety there is found something which sensibly affects the agent with delight and be they never so knotty yet they are still sweetned with this that reason is their guide that the whole intellectual part applauds the action which concurrence of the Souls faculties cannot but be followed with an universal dilatation of the spirits and what is this but the height of joy If then moral actions looked upon as apparallel'd in their simple natural colours that is meerly confined to the limits of what is good and just by the light of reason prove such an Antidote against adversity as to make them receive the most embittered Arrowes of fortune with cheerful looks What may we expect when these are directed to a supernatural end when they are enriched with the merits of Jesus Christ after which our Holy Petitioner languished and whose efficacy had influence upon his repentance at the distance of so many preceeding ages as now it hath on ours after so many subsequent revolutions It is then for the joy of this Salvation he makes instance and what a value must this addition set upon his smallest sufferings Whence I wonder not to contemplate much of serenity in the Fore-heads of afflicted persons crushed for vertues sake for the tempest wherein they are agitated doth only bluster about them within they enjoy a Harmony and full peace of Mind even tasting a kind of Antipast or fore-notion of Paradise I observe in the Gospel of St. Luke how Christ our Lord gave a check to his Disciples when returning from the exercise of their Apostolick Commissions they seemed to glory in their power of casting out Devils and when he had terrified them with a Memorandum of the Angel's fall he prescribes rules how they should lay the foundation of their joy and satisfaction amidst their transcending employments saying Rejoyce in this that your Names are written in Heaven First he disallowes not of their joy but rather animates them to it only he dislikes the motive or more properly to say sets down what they ought to lay hold on as the basis of their exultations Rejoyce because your Names are written in Heaven That they were zealous in God's service charitable had the gift of tongues of working miracles casting out Devils and the like these must not be the groundwork of their contentments but that they are by the efficacious Will of God transmitted to a supernatural end upon which foundation are built all the spirituall benefits of God towards them as their vocation justification and glorification From this Root springs their calling to be a Christian to be a member of Christ's true Church by means of which they obtain grace and by the right use of Grace eternal glorification This must give birth and life to their joy and no less to ours as it did to our Holy Penitent before his fall and now restored as he hopes to the wonted caresses of his Creatour he begins to breath after the assurance of his predestination which had often occasioned unto him abundant joy Wherefore he cryes restore unto me the joy of thy Salvation Yet whilest he petitioned for this solid contentment he was not ignorant that his Election must proceed from the merciful hand of God and the Collation of glory from the interest of his own merits God first puts us in an infallible condition to be happy and then so tempers the circumstances as we our selves may be a partial cause of our happiness he offers the occasions of merit this done he seconds our endeavours so powerfully as the effect to wit eternal glory cannot but follow So that the joy he sues for is an assurance to be in the state of grace and eternally predestinate that be his combats and assaults in this life never so furious he shall overcome Be his temptations never so vehement the issue will be glorious having his Eyes still fixt upon the Palms of Beatitude the assured guerdon of his conflicts in case I say he be in the number of the Predestinate But as to the infallible decrce of predestination our Holy Penitent knowes it is a secret shut up in the Cabinet of his great Councels the joy therefore he aims at here is that which arises from the
Penitent insinuates the high contentment he once received when a darling to Heaven he had promises made him that out of his Line should issue forth the Worlds Saviour and as the perpetuity of his blood to continue in the Throne was fastned to his posterity upon a condition that they observed his Lawes which promise was evacuated he fears by his transgressions Wherefore now readmitted into favour he hopes to be restored to all his former priviledges and amongst all he most covets an assurance touching the coming of the Messias This is the joy of Salvation after which he languishes In imitation we must rejoyce in that the Incarnate word is come and redouble our joy in the reflection of his glorious qualities First that this sacred humanity is distained from all the corruptions of our nature and though it be of the same species with ours yet it far surpasses all created things even in the first rank of Angels Next his flesh miraculously framed by the operation of the Holy Ghost of the blood of a Virgin all immaculate was so pure as no ray of the Sun could be equalled to it Lastly into this unspotted flesh was infused a Soul of a beauty ineffable adorned with grace knowledge and all supernatural habits as God himself judged it not unworthy of his personal union Let then this accomplished wonder of all perfection be the subject of our prayer that we may possess the joy of thy Salvation Amen CHAP. XXVI Et spiritu principali confirma me And confirm me with a principal Spirit MEthinks our Penitent by this clause seems to have shaken off his Chains and fortifyed with the Seal of his pardon begins to fly at all He had laid claim to the Holy Ghost next he expostulates for the restitution of his primary effect which is joy Now he would have a principal Spirit which might lead him to perfection and by that means put him into the best posture of security from a relaps as our present condition can bear saying confirm me with a principal spirit This perfection or principal spirit so called because it leads to generous and noble exploits consists in a concourse of vertuous habits disposing the Soul to actions most holy and meritorious Our Penitent aims by it to endear himself to God and to prove just and obliging to his Neighbour As to the first this noble spirit settles the Soul in a perfect repose and as the Needle alwayes points towards the North-pole so all her affections guided by this spirit tend and rest quiet in God She looks upon herself in the condition of his spouse a quality the most sublime she can be capable off by which she is enabled to lead a life answerable to that title She hath no remorse of conscience as being at a great distance from sin she is enriched with peace sheltered under God's special Providence and hath power to bend his will by her prayer to any thing she desires because she desires nothing but what is good Her thoughts are all celestial her affections all pure and her life no less admirable than it is rare No wonder then if our Penitent after a grant of Jubilyes alwayes chearful alwayes ravished with pledges of Salvation should petition for this spirit of perfection which might secure all these advantages to him confirm me with a principal spirit It is this wisdom our Penitent aims at which irradiates enflames and gives to the Soul a rellish of Heavenly comforts this is the Evangelical Pearl for whose purchase the wise Merchant sold all he had and it is a good bargain for St. Paul sayes a Soul adorned with perfection is of such a value as the Earth deserves not to bear her and Solomon preferrs one single person fearing God before a thousand impious Sons nay God is pleased to own a special protection of his perfect Servants styling himself particularly the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob So that I doubt not one Soul endued with Perfection doth alone more glorify God than an infinity of others that languish and consume their lives in coldness and indevotion Our Penitent therefore becomes now ambitious of promoting God's honour supplicates for a spirit of perfection and though he knowes usually it is not attained to but by a long practice of vertues yet Almighty God is pleased sometimes to dispense in this proceeding and in a moment raises to a high degree such as he hath designed for his choicest favours and truly he had so far experienced God's liberal hand towards himself that he might reasonably hope to obtain whatsoever he made the subject of his request as here with all fervour and zeal he petitions comfirm me with a principal spirit Many Divines are of Opinion that Christ our Lord suffered more in the rude combat of his passion for the most perfect Souls than for others For though he offered up his blood for the redemption of all Mankind yet all did not equally share in the fruit of his passion Some only have conveyed to them by it sufficient means of their Salvation without any other effect others also receive from thence the true remission of their sins but perfect Souls are raised by this oblation to a strange pitch in a spiritual life and in consequence to that to a degree of most eminent glory Wherefore the passion of Christ is to them effectively more beneficial This position they prove out of the Canticles where Christ speaking to a beloved Soul sayes vulnerâsti Cor meum that is to say there is not a hair of her head dart of her Eye least motion of her heart or limb which cost him not a wound because they all import acts of obedience humility and love towards him and therefore it was a pleasing wound since it was to be to them matter of all their spiritual benedictions Whence you may see that Christ our Lord doth not like Creatures who love the less those persons that have caused unto them the greater sufferings for one act of gratitude on our part is of a vertue so soveraign as it heals and closes up all his wounds If then his passion however bitter in it self was made delightful to him in regard of the just whom he foresaw would make good use of it how ought it to affect those who reap the benefit it is this satisfaction after which our Penitent aspires for in this a double contentment arrives to perfect Souls First in that his love made him suffer so liberally for them Next in that they have contributed to allay the acerbities of his passion by the foreknowledge he had of their compliance with his grace O what solid matter of joy Now you must know that our Penitent looked upon himself asmuch concerned in the fruit and participation of Christ's merits as those who were to live after his comming and visible appearance upon Earth Our Petitioner in the preceding verse expresses himself in the Terms of thy salvation that is purchased by the merits
of Christ God-man The Church calls it a happy fault in that it merited so great a Redeemer in the same sense our Penitent contemplating the cause of his redemption admires his happy deliverance and urges for this spirit of perfection that as the just was to be the motive of a more copious effusion of his blood so he becoming perfect might asswage his torments to which end he cryes confirm me with a principal spirit Again our Penitent is animated to this his petition upon the consideration that when a perfect Soul whom God hath designed to salvation falls into any notable default as she may not being impeccable he lets her not lye mired in the filth of sin without any feeling of her condition but presently solicits her with his exciting graces and this with such importunity as he told St. Paul it was hard for him to play the obstinate against so many darts of his love and if ever that parable was fulfilled where out Saviour having found the lost sheep witnesses more joy for the recovery of that one than of the Ninety nine he had left in the desart it is certainly in the resettlement of a Soul in his favour whom he hath marked out to be his 'T is true sometimes Almighty God withdraws his sustaining hand and permits them to dash upon the Rock of offence so to humble them that sin might effect what his Grace could not yet the conclusion is alwayes to their greater good and if he makes use of so many stratagems to bring them to their former state of happiness being once reâ—urned with what profusions of his bounty with what inundations of his grace doth he overflow them It is then a Soul makes a new oblation of herself to God renewing her vowes and promises and soon regains her former lustre nay becomes more accomplished improving still her light and vertue and with these penitential ornaments she invites her Espouse to a visit who declares in the Canticles that he is descended into the Garden of Filberts and amidst the Apples of the Valleys Intimating by these words that his satisfaction is to behold a Soul freed from the sink of sin to spring anew and bud forth in the practice of eminent vertues to see her like fire always in motion acting generous things for his service To hear her amidst the baits of this world to send forth amorous Sighs after him passionately coveting to be discharged from the mass of the body so to arrive at the fruition of him and he is so good as to answer every motion of this converted Soul She never looks on him but he amorously casts an Eye upon her she never thinks on him but he requites the kindness with a thought on her she never gives herself unto him but he as liberally bestowes himself upon her These are the entertainments our Holy Penitent doth promise to himself by means of this spirit of perfection he confesses he hath been humbled by his sin Next he hopes he is raised by his Grace and now he expects the consequence of his merciful reconciliation imploring confirm me with a principal spirit When I read this clause it minds me of what St. Paul sayes that where sin hath abounded there Grace doth many times superabound For doubtless nothing adds wings to the fervour of a true Penitent like to the remembrance of their past failings whence I gather our Petitioner upon these seeds of his restauration will add a superstructure of mystick Divinity and raise himself to as high a pitch of Vnion with God as in this life Man is capable of But in this enterprize he is ignorant what method to follow because no certain rule is set down by God for its acquisition it being a pure gift of his like Grace gratis given that we might know we have a Master in Heaven who instructs immediately by himself his Disciples in the maxims of true wisdom Wherefore our Penitent trusts not to his own industry or vertue but supplicates for divine immissions as a thing independent of any other means than his own free Donation confirm me with a principal spirit This Science of mystick Divinity is defined an experimental knowledge of God arising from a most elevated union of the will with him For the will is the Organ of a spiritual rellish by which Man tastes the sweetness of God and by this experience teaches the understanding what God is Now this savour tast or spiritual feeling may be said to be a kind of knowing because love it self according to St. Austin is a knowledge but a knowledge so secret as unintelligible to any but the person in whom it is as it is commonly said of a smart pain none can so justly conceive it as he that suffers Now our Penitent thirsts after this banquet he knowes it fortifies and confirms a Soul in the practice of devotion and at a pinch sustains her in the rude combats of temptations For being united unto God she is above all the attractives and violence of Creatures So that enjoying this delicious guest by an experimental knowledge there is doubtless nothing in this World of force to separate her from God This Job seems to insinuate Chap. 1. Place me near to thee and I fear not the attempt of any And St. Paul likewise apprehending himself in this secure state sets the whole World at defiance who sayes he shall separate me from the love of Jesus Christ As this security must needs give birth to continual acts of joy No less are the ravishments which overwhelm a Soul in the practice of this devotion for it is a certain lively experiment of God's intimate presence of his essence of his perfections and divine operations and this with an experimental affection or strong assurance that we love God that we make his glory our interest that by complacence and friendship we share in what he hath it being the Nature of true love to make all things common The first effect is to work a compleat Metamorphosie in us for to transform a thing is to separate it from its natural form and communicate another not only interiour but exteriour Now when a Soul is arrived to a holy complacence in God and to a strict amity with him she is devested of the form of sin and vitious affections which was her natural inclination and receives within the Center of her heart new affections desires wholly Divine and motions quite different from what Nature prompts her to This made St. Paul cry I live now not I but Christ doth live in me and this same motive gave life to our Petitioners present address that gaining this spirit of perfection he might loose himself and by that enterchange come to know what God is That he is a source of goodness eminency and beauty that he merits all honour glory reverence and praise Then comparing himself to God he beholds how vile captive and contemptible a Creature he is Lastly comparing God to himself he
torment them Jeremy weighs the wrongs Nebuchodonozer had done to Jerusalem by dishonouring Matrons deflowring Virgins killing little Children tormenting the aged burning houses their robberies and spoils and yet all these he passes over in silence though he took it much to heart and presses only the prophanation of the Temple having made of it a stable for his Horses When the Angel appeared to Joshuah with a drawn sword and commanded him to put off his Shooes as before he had done to Moses in the flaming bush enjoyning him the like many grave Doctors assert thâ—… this Angel was the Son of God wherein he would insinuate two things First the reverence they ought to bear to that place where in a manner so particular he was pleased to manifest himself Next that against those who should lose this respect he had Fire and Sword ready to vindicate his honour For the Majesty of a King or regal power upon Earth is respected throughout the whole jurisdiction of his Crown but yet much more where he hath his Throne and Chair of state So God as he is King of Kings and Lord of Lords over all the Nations of the World ought in all places to have homages of submission and obedience paid unto him but especially in places dedicated to religious acts in Heaven at the right hand of his Father is the supream throne of his greatness in the Synagogue he had the propitiatory and in the Temple his Sacrarium and as to a Temple or Church wherein God is to be honoured Nilus sayes a Christian should bear no less respect to this his Holy Tabernacle than if he were in Heaven Because the glory of God is more apparent in the adorable Sacrament of the Altar and from thence a greater reverence may justly be required than from all the Temples that were in past ages dedicated to God's honour For in this dread Sacrifice God is adored honoured appeased loved and served by his Son Jesus Christ in all the Corners of the World where this mystery is celebrated all the adorations and homages of other Creatures contribute nothing to his Glory if compared to what he receives here by his Son because he is an object infinite and as a King receives more honour from the submission of a Prince than of an ordinary vulgar person in like manner the adorations rendered to God by Jesus Christ do glorify him more than those of all Men and Angels together by the Mouth of Malachy the Prophet God sayes my name is great among the Gentiles because in all places a pure oblation is offered up unto me which Theodoret explicates an unspotted Lamb taking away the sins of the World and which is Sacrificed unto him in this mystery The Master of the Family Matth. 20. having had his Servants ill treated by the labourers in his Vineyard sent his Son to reduce them to obedience saying they will respect him So God the Father would render his Son present in this mystery to induce all Christians to pay their duties to his greatness Who would not then Combat in the presence of their King We may reasonably expect to live with Angels and with them contemplate the divine essence since now we live with Jesus Christ himself who is the Food of our Souls he who gives himself to be eaten here will not deny us to see and behold him in eternity Now our Holy Penitent in his prophetick view beheld this Hill of Sion as a place marked out for the admirable structure of the Evangelical Temple whereof the Messias was to be the Corner stone and therefore he calls it holy wherein Sacraments conferring grace by their proper vertue were to be administred upon this score he preferrs the Gates of Sion before all the tabernacles of Jacob He forespeaks the building of this Sion and that God will there be seen in his glory as much as the Cloudy Scene in this World can represent him and as on mount Sinai the written Law a carnal and Earthly Law was given so on Mount Sion should be enacted a Law Evangelical holy spiritual and heavenly These fore-notions imprinted in our Petitioner a reverence to this model of perfection and stirrs him to implore his mercy in her behalf that since it is to be a Law of love all powerful to conduct Souls unto a great pitch of sanctity in this life and glory in the next he will hope his prayer may contribute somthing to draw from his liberality a confirmation of his gracious promises unto her in this confidence with much fervour and zeal he repeats Deal favourably O Lord in thy good will with Sion The Application We have a Lesson here of Charity which shews us inexcusable if we fail to endeavour the succour of our Neighbour For there is none so impotent but may lend the assistance of his prayers and how powerful that is to avert danger appears in that God seems willing to prevent the Prophet Jeremies mediation commanding he should not resist him that is he should not stand between him and the destruction of his people as if it were in the power of this Prophet by means of his prayer to hold God's Hand and force him to a merciful composition Besides we are much encouraged to relieve the distressed in this supplicating way by the form of prayer which Christ prescribes in that we should conjure him under the title of Father nay more our Father which speaks I have a right to ask not only as I am your Child but likewise to intercede for him who hath the same relation unto you and by that an alliance towards me which naturally exacts my help if then as a Maker you can destroy as a Father nature will prompt you to save In fine God playes not the stately like the great Princes of this World but gives audience upon the place whether in behalf of your self or Neighbour Nay he excludes not his greatest Enemies but doth treat with them of peace upon the least overture they make Ah! let us then daily present our supplications before his throne of grace in behalf of all persons capable of eternal Salvation Amen CHAP. XXXVIII Vt edificentur muri Jerusalem And let the Walls of Jerusalem be built BY the Walls of this Sion or Jerusalem for they are usually taken for the same thing is meant the Prelats and Pastours of this happy Congregation within whose circumference or direction we are all piously to walk and to whose care and protection all Mankind is committed Our Penitent beholds the Messias as the foundation and prop of this eternal structure for the Office of a Priest consists in the power of administring sacred things and to offer prayers gifts and Sacrifices unto God for the remission of sins and this in the name of the universal Church Now Iesus Christ was constituted by God over all Souls with a plenary authority to reconcile them to him and for this end he offered up a true and real Sacrifice
reduced to nothing that his immense greatness might appear by his opposite subjection Now having done this once by the bloody Sacrifice of the Cross he would perpetuate the same in the Sacrifice of the Altar that whilest the fabrick of this new Jerusalem should stand he might alwayes render acts of thanksgiving for the graces conferred on his humanity and on the members of his Church By this Sacrifice we are enabled to pay our debt of thanks to God for the rich present of his only Son which we return unto him as a due and equal acknowledgment and if it be proportioned to what we owe for a gift so pretious much more will it serve to discharge our duties of gratitude for other benefits as when he is pleased to make us victorious over temptations and all the Enemies of our Salvation Lastly his Sacrifice on the Cross was to allay God's anger against the sins of Mankind and this same design is carried on in the Sacrifice of the Altar and aims chiefly to render God propitious to our transgressions In the works of St. Iames St. Basil and St. Chrysostom speaking of this Sacrifice is found this expression Lord accept of this Sacrifice as a propitiation for the sins and ignorance of the people by which you may see this Sacrifice doth not only appease God's anger discharge our large score of gratitude but also is effectual to purchase a supply for all our wants So that our Petitioner in the prospect of this bloody and unbloody victime might confidently usurp this pleasing air Then he will with a satisfyed Eye behold a Sacrifice oblation of Justice and a whole burnt-offering The Application Our Holy Penitent in another Psalm expresses the resentment of the Children of Israel when in captivity they sat weeping upon the Banks of the River of Babylon at the remembrance of Sion and of those Religious acts they were wont to perform in that holy place I am confident our zealous Petitioner felt no less the bitter throwes of affliction and langutshments after the Evangelical Temple wherein would be offered up a Sacrifice so full as the Justice of God could exact nothing more with what satisfaction did he reflect on this then to wit that time we now possess wherein we can daily adore Jesus Christ in his sacred throne of the Eucharist as Children paying the duty we owe to so indulgent a Father as Subjects to a lawful Prince as Criminals to a most equitable Judge as slaves to a Redeemer and as Creatures to a Sovereign Creatour Let us beg that since he hath daigned to expose himself a daily victime upon the Altar for all Mankind that there may be no Soul who shall deny him the just tribute of love praise and Adoration Amen CHAP. XL. Tunc imponent super altare tuum vitulos Then they will lay Calves upon thy Altar OUr holy Penitent having decipherd this bloody and unbloody Sacrifice as Jerusalem's greatest Glory and the Ornament of Sion that is the Church of Christ he carries on in his prophetick view his thoughts to other inferiour offerings as the off-spring and result of this supreamly great one Such are the oblation of persons who raised above the charms of flesh and blood embrace the Councels and Rules of highest perfection given by our Saviour and quitting all Earthly interests consecrate themselves totally to God These our Petitioner shadowes under the name of Calves according to Enthymius because having never tasted the Yoak but let loose to their full swinge and liberty do yet of their own accord make themselves a daily Sacrifice unto God For he that embraces such a state of perfection forsakes all first he forsakes himself renouncing in some sort all right over himself and to become a slave to God in the person of another who in the name of God and in his stead accepts the donation and surrender of himself and it is upon these terms that he may be conducted to perfection so that the Final motive of this Sacrifice is the exact and universal practise of all kind of vertues Riches honour and pleasure are the three main Enemies to perfection all which are clearly subdued in the essential obligations of this perfect State Poverty choaks the desire after temporal goods Chastity allays the concupiscence of pleasure and obedience stifles all appetite to Worldly greatness But besides all this we are to give to God our actions our time and employments and this gift consists in the punctual observance of certain Rules which allot to every one how to spend the Year the Moneth the Week the Day nay every Hour So that persons who devote themselves to such a state need not be solicitous for directions leading to perfection the Commandements of God and zealous performance of such prescripts as are given by spiritual masters afford abundant matter for this noble design What a comfort must it be to those who are setled in this state to think that there is nothing more excellent in a Creature than to belong in a particular manner to God their Creatour who hath power to glorify and enrich them with all good What can be more desirable than to grow every Day and hour in perfection and this in spirituality which is beyond all others a treasure of highest value We see all Beings strive to their utmost in this ambition Plants spring up and bear the fairest Flowers that possibly they can Trees afford liberally their best fruit Bodies issue forth all their strength and vigour to become more powerful in which their vertue consists And what invention is not hammered out by Women to add the least stroak to their natural beauty shall the Soul then be alone insensible in this propriety of nature No no our new Law-giver hath planted in Man a holy ambition after perfection and this seed hath been so fruitful and so efficacious that one might judge the abstracted lives which so many have led in all ages since his visible appearance upon Earth were the effects of a severe command rather than a Paternal Councel and that such a Sacrifice of Calves that is a religious simplicity and total abnegation of Earthy interest could not spring from a frank choice of the will but from an absolute necessity Wherefore our Holy Penitent all ravished with admiration points out that time wherein these wonders shall be wrought Then will they put Calves upon thy Altar The great Wheels which give motion to all our actions in this life are what is beneficial pleasant and glorious As to the first those who addict themselves to a state of perfection find good rules good example spiritual documents knowing directours several exciting graces and all things that lead to the accomplishment of vertue and encrease of merit Besides he is secured from innumerable miseries of the World which is nothing else but a Chaos of trouble and confusion a Theatour of envy ambition luxury tyrannical oppressions a place of errour and darkness overspread with nets
of temptations and cluttered with impediments of Salvation heaped one upon another So that to be warranted against so many dangers and at the same time put into possession of a real good by the constant practice of vertues is an advantage to a humane Creature designed for Eternity beyond all other in the World As to the other motive which agitates us here to wit things delightful none are to be compared to those ravishments enclosed within the precincts of a holy retirement For they are satisfactions of the Mind which being more pure and solid than those of the Body do consequently much outstrip them in worth and excellency the first ground of this contentment is a perfect tranquility of Mind which knows no gnawing nor remorse of conscience The Soul sayes Solomon that rests in this assurance is a continual banquet after this quiet succeeds a great love to God which yields a sweet relish to the most embittered accidents of this life Then a vigorous subduing of immortifyed passions which like an Executioner tortures the greatest part of Worldlings and makes them spin out this miserable life in an infinity of anxieties and affliction In a word it is the property of vertue to affect with delight that person which puts himself upon the performance of any Heroick action Wherefore a state of perfection which teaches the practice of all vertues in the most generous and disinteressed way must needs be attended with a great joy and consolation what pleasure then must it be to be setled in a condition of life which is a holy resemblance of Heaven surrounded with the precious ornaments of all vertues wherewith it is decked and set forth no less than is the Firmament embellished with Stars O what pleasure to be received into the Houshold and Family of God to be cherished with an amiable aspect from that grand Master and own'd by him as a Domestick where a multitude of graces and divine favours are showred down where at every turn are offered occasions of doing well and arriving at an admirable pitch of Sanctity and lastly where particular aids of grace are communicated to carry us to our final end and eteâ—…al felicity As to the third Engin which gives life to our actions that is honor what greater can there be than for a Soul to be God's spouse his favourite and friend Now this state of perfection ennobles a person with all these titles of greatness for vertue is the source of honor and by how much that excells in any one so much is his honor really advanced this state then being a nursery of vertues wherein the most excellent are practised and in the most excellent manner as squared out to the Evangelical Councels it followes that such are truly noble who are enlisted under the sublime Standard of so perfect and Christian a warfare First they practise the method of getting honor that is by flying it for honor resembles a shadow that flyes the pursuer and pursues the fugitive Next they profess humility and the Son of God hath protested that those who humble themselves shall be exalted Thirdly they incessantly praise and glorifie God both by their deeds and words now Christ sayes those that glorify him shall be glorifyed by him Wherefore this state cannot be but truly glorious and honorable in which are comprised in its perfection all that is either to our profit pleasure or honor Some who would diminish the worth of this Sacrifice object that many languish under the Yoak of their vocation and lead a life more embittered than others in a worldly conversation To which I answer that those defects spring not from the State but from the immortifyedness pride indevotion and other evil qualities in particular persons who were they such as their state requires would trip with joy in their tribulation acknowledge themselves singularly countenanced by Heaven that when they were in the midst of a depraved and corrupted world he drew them off clear from all its hazzards and miseries to plant them in a Land flowing with Milk and Hony That having rescued them from a party that would have betrayed and given them up to death he admitted them inhabitants of God's City upon Earth who will be to them a loving and indulgent Mother and transmit them rich laden with merit into the Land of the living in case they acquit themselves faithfully of their duty This I say would be their Harmony were they not ungrateful and by their Chagrin and Male-contented humour distastful to God and themselves and so unworthy of the dignity of their state But whilst I thus exalt this Sacrifice which is the purchase of that eternal victime offered up on the Cross yet I am not so transported with its excellency as not to know it hath its proper Crosses nor do I blush to confess it since every difficulty finds there likewise its Consolation First the indigent life there led is many times but a simple dispropriation where we find more necessaries for a subsistence than an infinity of persons in the World enjoy who by constraint is feign to continue poor Besides this poverty will be recompenced with a hundred-fold in eternal treasures and to this performance the Son of God hath engaged himself Chastity there observed is a life Angelical and an imitation of that eternal wherein no marriage will be admitted it frees them from a million of cares sufferings and perplexities which married persons experiment at a dear rate and thence frankly confess their state to be much less happy Obedience is a life without curiosity a secure navigation and an excuse of weight with God It is a journey performed sleeping for whilst you obey you repose quietly in the conduct of another and by that avoid a thousand dangers and difficulties incident to those who live at the Helm of their own will and liberty If they are startled at the necessity of cohabiting with some who may be of a strange peevish and cross humour and with these they must continue even to death this I confess may happen sometimes yet not alwayes but as to this likewise there is often a mistake the froward humour being rather in themselves than in their companion so that possessing a spirit like that of the Jaundice all they behold appears yellow to them But admit they are really so that is thwarting and contradictory perhaps God hath given them to you that they may be converted and saved by your mildness and patience at least to be unto you occasion of merit Christ our Lord disdained not to cohabit with Judas and if they discharge not their duty to you at least do yours to them and so you will hammer out a Crown at their cost and by means of their unpleasing stroaks In a word if you have a love for God and a serious thought of Eternity be it of Heaven or Hell if you consider the torments and death of Jesus Christ nothing will seem harsh or tedious to you
in this life If you consider the immense obligations you owe to your Redeemer you will lament in that you have but one life to Sacrifice for him that hath lost his own so worthy upon the Altar of the Cross for your sake You will repine that nature allowes you but a term of sixty years or thereabouts in this world to spin out in his service since he hath surrendered up his life for you of which one moment is more to be valued than all the duration and existence of Men and Angels This is the Sacrifice of Calves which our Penitent had in his prophetick view and it leaves a sweet relish in his Mind with which he concludes his petition It was doubtless matter of great joy to our Penitent to consider the powerful operation of Christ's Spirit that would draw Men from sensual pleasures and baits of this World induce them to contemn riches honors and Earthly glory and exchange these for hair-cloths fasting disciplines and other mortifications of the flesh and this to be acted by persons great in dignity swimming in a full plenty of wealth and endued with intellectual parts even to admiration Millions of these have shrowded themselves within the Walls of a poor habitation where cloathed with a course habit they have led a life wholly Angelical and made themselves a daily Sacrifice unto God beautifyed with a religious simplicity which surpasses all the wisdom of the World and so fulfilled the prophecy of our happy Penitent Then that is in the Church to be established and founded by the Messias they will lay Calves on thy Altar The Application Our Holy Penitent here entertains himself with the grateful returns which Christians were to make in consideration of Christ's eternal Sacrifice and certainly there is no state speaks so much a generous love to God as that of a contemplative life where we behold Men devested of all self love to become perfect slaves to the divine will freed from all adhesion to created things that in charity they might be united to God avoiding the World's conversation the better to enjoy God's presence that since they cannot live without him at least they might live with him as much as the condition of this mortal life will bear To contemplate so many thousand Families where Creatures anticipate their felicity by praising God incessantly and who seem not to subsist but by the dew of a Holy Love like the Seraphims in Heaven Ah let us then conclude with our Holy Penitent and bless the divine Providence who hath in the revolution of so many ages received the perfume of prayers and thanksgivings from an infinity of pure innocent Souls consecrated in a peculiar manner to his glory and service Amen FINIS A TABLE Of the principal matter of this BOOK A. Affliction WHy God conducts Souls by way of affliction Pag. 8 Adversity foundation to eternal happiness p. 143 Why God lengthens out our afflictions p. 380 381 Affliction of David p. 282 Anger Means hovv to avert God's anger p. 178 Adultery All Lavves violated by adultery p. 56 57 Punished by death and great torments by all Nations p. 58 It subverts the rules set dovvn for our education p. 303 It is a vvrong not to be repaired Ib. A passage of St. Paul terrible concerning adultery p. 304 The civil lavv permits parties interessed to be Judges Ibid. It is a kind of Sacriledge p. 305 306 B. Body It is fit the Body should share in the punishment of sin p. 36 Saints Bodies alvvayes had in veneration both in the old and nevv Lavv. p. 170 Divers examples of this subject ib. Why God favours Saints Bodies with the working of miracles p. 168 What David means by humbled bones p. 167 Beatitude To anticipate our Beatitude is here to think alwayes of it p. 248 249 Why we cannot be happy here p. 249 How sweet the thoughts of Beatitude p. 290 Good works the means to Beatitude ibid. C. Carnal Sins Carnal sins destroy both Body and Soul p. 52 53 Punishments of Heaven for carnal sins p. 53 54 Why carnal sins are most dangerous and most abominated by God ibid. Church A pillar of truth c. p. 127 Upon what terms God founded his Church p. 138 seq God punishes such as violate Temples or Churches p. 409 410 The sublime institution of the Church p. 422 seq Christ Christs presence how amiable p. 234 Christ loves to be with men p. 235 Christ dyed for all p. 280 seq Christ's Revelation to St. Bridget p. 283 Christ the source of all merit p. 316 Christ supream pastour of Souls p. 415 Christ Sovereign Bishop of the Church p. 416 Christ a true Holocaust p. 433 434 Christ a true oblation of Justice p. 431 Charity Order of charity p. 403 404 Conversion Of an Indian in Japonia p. 328 Sometimes wrought by outward preaching ibid. Sometimes by the inward operation of his spirit p. 329 D. Mystick Divinity It s definition and several operations from p. 259. unto 263 David Why David begged to be freed from temporal punishment p. 48 49 David the most accomplished Prophet p. 131 The world's creation revealed to David p. 131 132 The Incarnation Nativity and Passion revealed to David p. 133 134 135 The state of his conscience in order to God was revealed to him p. 135 David desired to be a Martyr p. 150 What means he by the joy of his Salvation p. 251 He was very meek and humble p. 3â—7 Death Death concludes all our merit p. 38 39 40 Desire Why our desires are never satiated in this life p. 43 44 Despair Why we should never despair p. 293 E. Men of all conditions are bound to give good example 86 87 seq F. Fear Difference of fear in the good and bad p. 43 Friend Loss of a friend not to be lamented p. 143 144 Faith Springs from God p. 126 and 216 Moral vertues c the way to faith p. 127 Faith teaches what we owe to God and our Neighbour p. 205 Faith of all things ought to be the most unquestionable ibid. God proceeds like a Soveraign in matter of faith ibid. This his proceeding a stroke of his goodness ibid. Christ our Master in matters of faith p. 207 208 The mysteries of faith our greatest comfort p. 208 209 What habitual faith is and its effects p. 210 211 G. God If God deprives us of one good it is but to give us a better p. 49 50 God never rejects a truly repenting heart p. 90 91 seq God will be justifyed in his proceedings with man p. 97 God a primary and essential truth p. 128 God is not the efficient cause of obdurateness p. 218 219 What sign of God's leaving us p. 226 Two derelictions of God p. 227 How God is lost by sin p. 232 God still gives more than we ask p. 231 235 How to escape God's anger p. 236 237 How comfortable the belief of God p. 288 Grace Definition of grace and
its effects p. 158 159 Grace raises our hope to the expectation of a sovereign good p. 160 How sin is expulsed by grace p. 184 185 186 seq Grace compared to the essence of the Soul p. 192 How grace cleanses the Soul from all iniquity p. 193 194 Why grace doth not quiet all motions of sensuality p. 195 Grace purifyes all the powers of the Soul p. 196 God imparts his graces by degrees p. 224 The power of sanctifying grace p. 309 God God is the final end of all his works p. 337 God hath an essential glory and what it is ibid. He hath likewise an external accidental glory ibid. God is more glorified by a good than bad Soul p. 338 348 Every being glorifyes God p. 339 Why man above all in this world ought most to glorify God 340 341 Why God is delighted with our sufferings p. 385 Good works How do they merit a recompence p. 309 310 H Heart The heart the source of all evil and good p. 196 How St. Katharine of Sienna lost her heart p. 199 Character of a heart defiled with sin p. 201 God exacts only our hearts p. 202 The misery of a humane heart ibid. Honour Sacrificed by Christ on the Cross p. 429 Hope The comforts which hope brings to a Soul p. 160 161 The first sign of God's favour is to give us hope p. 332 The definition of hope p. 333 The motives of hope ibid. Holy Ghost His operations in a Soul p. 229 230 seq Humility Praise of this vertue p. 395 Not to be humble is to be disobedient ibid. Two kinds of humility p. 397 The effects of humility ibid. How pleasing to God p. 402 Homicide Terrours of mind which attend homicide p. 294 An injury not to be repaired p. 295 It destroyes God's image ibid. To prevent this he forbad in the old law the eating of blood p. 299 It is never left unrevenged ibid. Why a murthered body bleeds at the presence of the murtherer p. 299 300 I. Incarnation The wonders of this mystery set forth p. 16 No creature could satisfye for sin so that it was a mystery of love p. 17 Ingratitude The ingratitude of David p 232 Injury All injuries done are against God p. 89 307 Job Job excused from sin in cursing the day of his birth p. 116 117 Why God would not permit Satan to touch upon Job's life p. 384 Impiety Definition of it p. 285 seq Justice God's justice is distributive punitive and remunerative p. 318 319 seq To be just implyes an aggregation of all vertues p. 322 Justification The first step is not made without the concurrence of our wills p. 157 A justifyed Soul is filled with joy p. 156 seq Intention We shall be rewarded and punished according to our intention p. 204 Inspiration It highly imports not to reject the least good inspiration p. 224 Infirmity An infirm constitution and sickness not to be repined at p. 144 145 Instruction To teach others the way of salvation the highest employment p. 277 278 279 It is an employment envyed by the Angels ibid. Why Masters have not pensions assigned them by commonwealths p. 279 Ioy. Joy the effects of grace p. 56 seq Many blessings accompany a spiritual joy p. 162 163 Two kinds of joy p. 240 241 What ought to be the motive of our joy p. 243 The means to arrive at this joy p. 246 247 K. Knowledge Why it is good to know our iniquity p. 62 63 64 65 66 seq King In what sense Kings offend against God alone p. 81 The greater the person is that offends the greater is his offence 82 Why Kings are obliged to give good example p. 83 84 85 L. Love The properties of God's love p. 29 St. Peters love to Christ p. 233 Love assaults the Divinity in his throne p. 277 Why we should love our Neighbour p. 307 God's love in playing the merchant vvith poor man p 345 To overcome self-love the shortest way to perfection p. 382 Christ's love to man on the Cross p. 429 430 Christ's love to man in the institution of the Eucharist p. 436 seq Law What is law eternal p. 269 What is the lavv of reason p. 270 Positive divine lawes p. 272 The Mosaick lavv p. 274 275 The end of the Mosaick lavv perfection of the Evangelical lavv p. 419 420 421 Man Man is a vessel of mercy not merit p. 2 Man cannot persevere in grace without a special aid p. 3. Man is diverted from many sins as misbelieving his nature p. 290 How little man can do if left to himself p. 326 327 seq Man is created to praise God p. 349 Mercy It is God's mercy not the value of our actions by which we are saved p 9 His mercy is immense and exceeds all our demeries p. 12 His mercy is a Bulwark against despair p. 14 By Gods great mercy is meant the mystery of the incarnation p. 18 A series of Gods mercies p. 21 No Creature is destitute of Gods mercy p. 23 Why we have more Presidents of his mercy than justice p. 24. His mercy appears in reward of the elect p. 25 He distributes his mercies more in the measure of his love than wisdom p. 27 28 Martyrdom A description of what is requisite to be a martyr p. 150 151 152 Masters We owe more to our Masters than Parents p. 267 Why there is a dependency of one another in the conveyance of intellectual notions p. 267 268 Misery Miseries of this life set forth p. 114 115 No misery like to that of sin p. 174 Merit Definition of merit p. 310 We merit by vertue of grace but the effect of it comes from Gods promise p. 310 311 O Occasions of sin to be avoided p. 44 45 Omnipotency The belief of it raises our hope p. 290 P. Prophet Conditions requisite to a true Prophet p. 130 Several degrees of prophetick lights p. 130 131 Praise General heads of praise that man is to give to God p. 342 343 Pride and fear forbidden in those that would praise God p. 346 Prison Restraint occasion of much good p. 146 Providence How comfortable the belief of it p. 289 Persecution How beneficial p. 155 Passion How dangerous it is p. 301 302 Several benefits of Christs passion p. 431 Predestination No security of our state in this life p. 188 189. How we are predestinated p. 244 245 The effects of our eternal election Ibid. Perfection Praise of a state of perfection p. 440 What it is p. 252 440 The effects of perfection and its praise ibid. Perfect Souls if they fall do soon rise again p. 256 257 Three degrees of perfection p. 265 Pleasure Difference 'twixt corporal and spiritual pleasures p. 161 248 Pennance To pennance succeeds many glad tidings p. 162 164 seq Necessity of pennance p. 394 Prayer How we are to dispose our selves to prayer and what we are to ask p. 335 336 The power of prayer p. 405 Prayer works no change in Gods decrees p. 406 Prayer the first gift of God p. 408 How we ought to value it p. 413 seq R. Remorse Remorse of conscience alwaies attends sin p. 71 seq Resurrection Belief of the resurrection very comfortable p. 166 S. Sin The agitations of a soul defiled with sin p. 182. There is a period set to every man's sins which is called the measure of their iniquityes p. 220 221 The marks of this period p. 221 222 No less equal to what we lose by sin p. 233 Whilest in sin we are capable of no right to heaven p. 32 Why some are drawn from sin others not p. 33 Sin the greatest of evils p. 38 Greater sins require a greater mercy p. 45 46 47 The terrours of sin p. 76 seq p. 174 175 Man's imbecility caused by original sin p. 99 seq What remedy in the old Law for original sin in women p. 110 The penalty and consequencies of original sin p. 110. seq The benefit of confessing our sins 126 125 It becomes God to punish sin p. 176 Sacrifice Why God required not of David a sacrifice p. 351 Who the minister of a sacrifice p. 352 357. seq In the law of nature the first born male were Priests Ibid. That some sensible thing be offered is required in a sacrifice p. 353 Definition of a sacrifice p. 355 Other conditions of a sacrifice p. 354 Holocausts the most perfect sacrifice p. 363 Why sacrifices commanded p. 368 369 Divers sorts of sacrifices p. 370 The jews zeal in mater of sacrifice Ibid. Sacrifice of the new law most perfect p. 424 428. Sorrow There is a twofold sorrow p. 370 How pleasing a pious sorrow is to God Ib. What is a troubled spirit p. 377 Whether the soul or body most conducing to a sacrifice of a troubled spirit p. 377 Motives of a true sorow p. 390. seq Security No security from sin in this life Ibid. Speech How Croesus son came to his speech Ibid. How one is morally dumb and how cured Ibid. Seneca His opinion concerning such as lost their lives upon the score of friendship or a publick interest p. 148 249 T. Truth Three kinds of truth p. 121 Knowledge of truth most delightful p. 123 124 Trangressions Internal trangressions only punished by God p. 197 198 A certain period is set to every man's transgression p. 220 221 Signs of this helpless desolation p. 221 222 223 Tribulation Tribulation the securest way to heaven p. 147 Senecas opinion of tribulation manfully sustained p. 348 Temptation The difficulty to resist temptation p. 202 V. Vertue Moral vertues contribute a facility in doing well and wherein they consist p. 213 Vertue it self a reward to the actours p. 241 Delight of vertuous actions p. 242 243 Vncertainty All things uncertain as to the issue in this life p. 239 W. Will. The will is more prejudiced by original sin than the understanding p. 6. God doth never violence our will to our prejudice p. 35 The greatness of the soul by free will p. 313 Whether it had not been better to have done well by necessity 314 315 FINIS
usage it is weakned and the Soul gets the Mastery to do what she pleases as with an Enemy overcome disarmed and at our Feet This Opinion hath given birth to so many austerities in several orders to so many Crucifying inventions that the Soul might become more powerful by extenuating the Body and so render it less rebellions to the decrees of reason This way hath the approbation of St. Paul who in his Fift Chapter to the Galathians sayes that those who are servants to Christ have crucifyed their flesh with their vices and concupiscencies Others again say it is not enough to quel and reform your spirit by the Body but that your Body is likewise to be reduced to order by the Mind because in the commission of sin the Body is not alwayes the offendour and deserves not to be harassed with rude strokes like an Asse wherefore they judge it more expedient that the superior portion of Man to wit his reason should interpose and taking into consideration what is prejudicious or conducing to Salvation frame resolutions accordingly both to avoid such actions as are pernicious and embrace such as are to her interest And if this be put in Execution with a vertue Heroick it will infallibly oblige the sensitive part to quit her pursuits and follow the dictamens of the Soul For example suppose I am transported with a passion of Anger for some disgrace thrown upon me my part is to reproach my self with the Vanity of being concerned in the trifling affairs of the World to that degree as to forfeit my quiet which is more pretious and if I generously pardon my Neighbour this injury will at last conclude in my honour by this means all will succeed in peace and tranquility I shall be fortified against all Events and so rationally govern my passions especially if guided with a moderate severity to my Body Our Holy Penitent having undertaken to instruct the wicked and setled in the possession of a principal spirit that is a spirit of perfection was not blind in the conduct of himself wherefore we may believe he squared out this Sacrifice according to the rules of a good and prudent Artist he expresses in the first of his penitential Psalms that his Soul was troubled and in another place it was like wax melted before the Fire and that his Enemies neer him to wit his passions assaulted him with strange violence insomuch as he confesses his sole refuge as if reason were then useless to him was to play the deaf and dumb and by that passive comportment avoiding contests he Sacrificed his troubled spirit to his Creatour A Sacrifice to God c. St. Gregory Nyssen descants upon God's proceeding with the Israelites in commanding them to set up a brazen Serpent at the sight of which those that should be bit with those venemous Beasts might immediately find their cure and why sayes he did not God take a shorter cut by destroying all those Serpents which had given an end to that Plague he had sent amongst them at last he satisfies himself with this reason that whilst the Hebrews beheld that Soveraign Medicament in casting up their Eyes to Heaven they might have occasion to consider from whence they received their deliverance which otherwise that gross ungrateful people would soon have forgot So that to draw them to pay what they owe to his goodness he was faign to lengthen out their afflictions Job likewise whilst he was scraping his Soares upon the Dunghill said Lord when I was in prosperity I heard thee but now in my affliction I see thee Which shews nothing gives a more intimate knowledge of God than to be surrounded with tribulation the Soul in prosperity growes proud deaf and careless so that she must smart in the sense to be made sensible With how many charming Courtships doth the espouse in the Canticles woe his Darling to open the door but all in vain she is not to be wrought upon but inter angustias when afflicted and in misery Jonas in the Whales Belly the Prodigal in the Pig-sty the Sick in his Feaver thinks and calls upon God but when in sports and pastimes sailing in a Sea of plenty and delights all our senses are shut up and no passage open to his merciful call But to be pinched in the last of any temporal misfortune as it awakens a Soul to stretch out for succour so doth it no less bow God's powerful Arm towards us This he declares to Moses out of a bush which he made the Throne of his Glory to shew that the affliction of his people made him run after that Prophet and retrive him in the Thickest part of the desart and from thence commission him in order to their deliverance St. Gregory sayes that God appeared to Job in a Whirl-wind because having hurried him into a boisterous storm of afflictions he would himself enjoy no calmer Weather but let him know he was there to secure him Of Joseph it is said he went down with him into the Pit nor left him in his Bonds and Esay 12. speaking in the person of God sayes my people is gone down into Egypt Assur hath afflicted them without cause and now what do I here My people captive and I at liberty VVhat do I here My people trod under Foot and I enjoy the smoak of Incense and Sacrifice what do I here No no there is no Sacrifice acceptable to God like to a troubled spirit and this our Holy Penitent had wrought out even to perfection For he declares how all his Bones were in disorder his Loyns filled with illusions and spectres at the ghastly memory of his Sins his groans were like the roarings of a Lyon and the burthen of his Folly so weighty as it bowed him even to the ground if his Flesh appeared before the Face of God's anger it dissolved into corruption and had not one sound part if before the frightful aspect of his transgression it gave a trembling and disquiet to all his Bones the night he spent in bathing his Couch with Tears and in the day he confessed that the hand of God was heavy upon him so that if ever the Sacrifice of a troubled spirit that is of a person discomposed by the resentment of his ingratitude was offered up to God it was certainly in our Holy Penitent who amidst all his afflictions had this comfort A Sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit Spiritual directors lay down as the ground work of a life of Sanctity an interiour abnegation of our selves by which we give a repulse to our selves For when once we come to devest our selves of love then the terrours of mortifications torments and adversity will find no effect then generous and Heroick Acts will be the productions of such a Soul for solid vertue like a Rose amidst Thornes seldome springs forth but in the soyl of crosses austerities and repentance Those that are seised with this holy aversion against themselves mind not the hardships