Possessions And I can think little more reverently of the frequentation of Visions and Revelations celebrated in the Lives of those three famous Women published together viz. Hildegardis Elizabeth Micthildis which afford us such instances by bushells as it were I will not instance in Jacobus de Voragine his Golden Legend nor Caesarius Heiberstachius as I could to the great disadvantage of that Cause which was intended to be advanced thereby as such at which the modester and graver of the Roman Communion need not any other to put them upon blushing at they doe it of themselves But when I read in the Visions of Katharine of Sienna sainted a perpetuall storie of God himselfe appearing to her and preaching in person to her almost through the whole book though I like the Sermon very well and must needs acknowledge the Documents deliver'd to be many of them very Divine and usefull I cannot assent unto the Scene there given us If these Revelations as we say of Phanaticall and pretended Inspirations and gifts of Prayer in Publick were so Divine as reputed and affirmed why doe they not become Canonicall Why are they not equallized to the Holy Scriptures But things are not come to that height thankes be to God unlesse with them who glorying immodestly of a Light within them and the Word and Will and Wisdome of God given into them contemne the written Word themselves for this very reason becoming suspected convicted and detestable 10. But those Visions which are so practicall and grosse as that they end as in their consummation in the gratifying of our senses outward and them the grossest overthrow in my opinion the spiritualnesse and even the honesty of Revelations and notably shake the reputation of that Religion which countenances them If it were recorded only in an unapproved Author what I finde in the Sermon of an eminent Preacher Granatensis Vol. 5. pag. 387. concerning the same Katharine of Sienna Granatens Vol. 5. Conc. 3. in Cathar pag. 387. it might have been lesse scandalous to read of the great and frequent familiarity between Christ and her so that termes of wooing passed between them for a long time till at length she was sensibly espoused to him but what were the consequences of that Wedding I know not This to my apprehension is a true consequence of such Revelations that it must be the Devill rather than Christ that so appeared and led away a silly Woman laden with sinne in the midst of her profession of Sanctity or that these Talemongers have shamefully belied that reputed Saint And on the other side the like instances might be given of such who were so vehemently devoted to the Virgin Mary as to win her love so far as to condescend to suffer her breasts to be handled by her Saints A little more cleanly and credible is that story in the Remains of Gregorie Thaumaturgus Bishop of Neocaesarea of an Exposition of the Faith which he received from Saint John the Evangelist by the meanes of Mary the Mother of God. But the Romanists themselves are so modest we thank them as not to hold it to be the same we now have under that name And we are so bold to tell them that their Visions Miracles and Revelations so much sometimes with the ignorant sort boasted of have done them more discredit with the wiser than good or honour 11. And to these another note of true and false Illuminations and Alluminations which I may call all outward Discoveries made to the senses may be that made by the observation of the Masters of such Learning That in the true and near approach of God and his Holy Spirit to the sense outward or minde inward first great trouble surprisement consternation and deep humiliation are wrought upon the spirit of him the Lord vouchsafes so to honour with his presence as it appears by Ezechiell the Prophet Daniell and before them by Manoah who were struck with dread and confusion at the Revelations made unto them as likewise was the Blessed Virgin at the aspect and Annunciation of the Angell Gabriell but in the winding up and conclusion they were all refreshed and comforted aboundantly On the contrary the specious Pageantry and Insinuations of Evill Angells are begun with great delight of the deluded minde and in the conclusion bring shame sorrow and confusion answerable indeed to the method of the tempter in all other Cases in which the good Wine is brought forth first of which when men have well drunk followes the bad but Christ first sets before his faithfull servants the bad and keepeth the best to the last of all that he might humble thee and that he might prove thee to doe thee Good at the latter end as it is said Deuteron 8. ver 16. Brisk Pert and vaunting are the gifted by Evill Spirits reflecting upon such their perfections above others but modest humble and grave are they who are indeed taught of God. 12. And thus having briefly prepared the true Christian with a prospect given him of the nature use and necessitie of true Spirituall Illuminations translating him out of the Kingdome of darknesse into the marvellous light of saving Knowledge and Faith before due progresse can be made to the life and power of Faith in holy Conversation and likewise shewed the hazards of miscarrying through mistaken Light I proceed to the Second Part of Christian walking with God by walking according to that Light consisting principally in Spirituall Purgation or Sanctification A Prayer for Spirituall Illumination O Allmighty God and Heavenly Father the Light and life of the world lying in darknesse Who by thy Son Jesus Christ coming into the world enlightenest every one that cometh into the world and whome to know is eternall Life But who can know thee the Father but the Son and he to whome he shall reveale him and yet none can come unto the Son unlesse the Father draw him and none doth the Father draw unto him but by his holy Spirit teaching all things Send down I beseech thee that Spirit of light life and truth into my minde and heart that they may preserve me prevent and informe me and rule me that by that key of knowledge the door of my heart may be opened and the eyes of my understanding to perceive the things of God which are only spiritually discerned and that I may not love darknesse rather than light because my deeds are evill But grant that in thy light I may see Light and know how to choose the good and refuse the Evill not calling darknesse light nor light darknesse nor bitter sweet nor sweet bitter nor good evill nor evill good Various are the Mazes and Labyrinths of this World and many are lost in them Difficult is the road and strait is the way that leadeth unto trueth and life and few there be that find them Dangerous it is to lean to mine own understanding or wisdome who am but of yesterday and know nothing as I ought
without true wisdome the Apostle St. Paul so flattly contradicting and confuting mens opinion vainly conceived of themselves thus writing 1 Corin 8. 2. If any man thinke that he knoweth any thing he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know Which is most true when he would needs know as Adam and Eve did without God or what God would have hidden and concealed from him And when a man would needs know all things but can be content not to know himselfe For as Charity of which the Apostle there allso speakes according to the common and generally true saying begins at home so doth or ought to doe knowledge For the Alpha of true knowledge and the Omega too is to know God but a man cannot know God as becometh him when he stands in his own light And in his own light may he be said to stand when he understands not himselfe his measures his capacitie and meanes to true knowledge He that layeth hold of more than he can well span or embraceth more than his Armes can contain commonly letteth all goe and loseth it And so it is in curiosity of knowledge he knoweth nothing that would pretend to all things Like to the Church of Laodicea Revel 3. 17. which because she gloried in her riches was poor and wretched and blinde and naked and knew it not What blindenesse what ignorance so grosse lamentable and dangerous as this And yet loth are men to have their eyes opened to perceive it as if in the mist of their minde they discerned and feared that which he who was cured of a phrenzie bewailed in himselfe that in his distemper he was much more happie than in his cure For in that he imagined and pleased himselfe with nothing lesse than a fair Principalitye under him subjects obsequious Pallaces stately with Crown and Scepter but reduced to his true reason found the contrary to all these to his great losse and trouble And to such excesses doth our presumptuous knowledge betray us For as St. Paul before saith Knowledge puffeth up swells and apostemateth the Soule with corruption which often breakes out into rottennesse scandalous Hence it is that if a man erres wilfully and notoriously to all he is not ashamed as Seneca observeth as when in Grammar he speakes false Latine or English or gives a false pronunciation to a word but if he doth it ignorantly and be told of it then he either blushes or boldly defends his errour against his own tacit perswasion least he should seem not to have known as much as another And Cardane himselfe a Physican tells us he knew one of the same facultie who having through ignorance destroyed his Patient rather than he would be thought ignorant professed he killed him on purpose though there was no such matter to such a monstrousnesse of absurdities and iniquitie doth this unbridled and untamed humour of seeming wise and appearing so transport a man. 2. This evill Appetite wars against nothing so much as Religion and is inconsistent with nothing more and therefore should Religion war against that turning the forces of the Spirit against this Tower of the Flesh built up to this dangerous height by the evill spirit of Pride and affectation of vain-glorie And this I look on as a prime and materiall part of our selfe-deniall when we shall be able and willing to submitte our private busie and clambering Reason to the simplicitie of the Faith and know our infirmities and failings as well as we know others yea and better too having attained to that perfection which the wise Man only owned in himselfe Prov. 30. 2. Surely I am more brutish than any man I have not the understanding of a man with this limitation notwithstanding that if God or good Autoritie under him shall have chosen any such humble Person to preside teach and lead others no modestie nor humility in him ought to with-hold him from discharging his office No more than any knowing himselfe more wise or learned out of his abundance is to withdraw himselfe from the guidance of such an one as he excells under suspicion of calling Gods Providence and Right in question to rule and teach by whome he pleases and especially the difficult lesson of humility and selfe deniall Don't I know Can you teach me is the language of a proud Spirit very often and of one who wilfully how ignorantly soever must and will have his saying A man out of common charitie might blush for such as doe not blush to hear them oftentimes indeed wise and more than vulgarly knowing when they fall into Paradoxes when they stumble in plain ground when their mistake happens by surprise or other incogitancie how loth are they to be taken in the snares of truth it selfe how they by all tricks pretences fetches and innumerable devices and defenses would justifie what once they happen to say though conscious to themselves of errour they would not have said or done such things yet they once passing from them they will maintain them to the last though the more they struggle the more they are ensnared and fall into a far worse absurdity in defending than committing an errour And all this that they might not suffer in their beloved and selfe-admired witt And because they cannot denie them neither for Gods sake nor for trueths sake but hold it the most honourable course to themselves to bend both to their saying than to yield to be measured by such Rules And if their wits fail them in framing evasions and shuffles which may justifie in some degree their slips Passion and loud clamour shall support their cause and drown the noise of weake trueth as the Idolatrous Jewes were wont in sacrificing their Children to Molech in the Valley of Hinnon to use Fife Trumpet and Drum that the voice of the massacred might not be heard or pittie shewn to them nor justice O foolish Galatians saith St. Paul in another case Galat. 3. Who hath bewitched you that ye should not obey the trueth Answer may be made selfe love selfe-preservation which are such that a man can better endure a blow on the Pate than on his Opinion But St. James saith Chap. 3. 14. My brethren Lye not against the trueth a reason whereof may be because he that opposes an acknowledged trueth though not very important sinneth in some degree against the Holy Ghost the Spirit of trueth and the testimonie of his own Conscience and to have his will in arguing or doing grieveth the Spirit of trueth trueth in all things being Sacred and Divine which when it possesseth the minde of a man seasonable and true is that advice of the Prophet Habakkuk Chap. 2. 29. The Lord is in his holy Temple let all the earth keep keep silence before him 3. And this Advice reacheth unto the other Branch of a Christians Selfe-deniall which consists principally and more immediately in the subjecting the will of man to the Will of God as that did in the subjection of the
famous Emilius the Platonist by common understanding discerned a Great Mysterie of the Deitie to be intended thereby but that unnaturall Christian Socinus could not or would not apprehend so much the reason whereof may be that given by Christ himselfe John 9. 39. For judgement am I come into the world that they which see not might see and they which see might be made blinde They who have nothing to helpe themselves but mere naturall light may sooner come to the light of Religion industriously and modestly using that one Talent deliver'd to them but they who stand upon termes with God and refuse all other information besides naturall reason shall fall by the folly of their presumptuous knowledge This is the ordinary fate of such persons puffed up with their fleshly minde 3. So on the other extreme divers Christians having heard and read of extraordinarie Revelatious imparted by God and looking upon the Light without the Scriptures as a dark and dead letter in comparison of extraordinarie and Inward Light ambitiously aspire to that and credulously flatter themselves not without ostentations outwardly that they are priviledged thereby to their ruine answerably to the excessive curiosity of the Greatest of the Heathen Philosophers who having passed the bounds of vulgar capacities were pricked forward with immoderate studie of such secrets of Nature which they found they could not attain to but by commerce with Spirits and therefore with many vain and vile rites were tempted to combine with them in such pursuits of knowledge So that it is observed by Learned men very few there were of them who had not his familiar to assist him And I have often and much wonder'd with my selfe whence it should proceed that evill and naturall men should so easily and readily obtain the conversation and assistance of evill Spirits and good and spirituall men so rarely obtain without delusions the co-operations of Good Spirits or Angells for their more perfect Illumination and directions Yet at length I satisfied my selfe with such an account as this not knowing how it may satisfie others 4. The ground of all Divine Presence I take to be Puritie of heart and affection which is so rarely and hardly attained unto as to make the soule susceptible of such an Harbinger and therefore no wonder that Gods Spirit should estrange it selfe from such as are not purged according to the rate at least of humane frailty from their uncleannesse of flesh and spirit But wicked spirits stand not so much upon such preparations and predispositions as those though to conceale from men what their reason would teach them to lothe them for there constantly were used certain Ceremonies purgative as they supposed disposing to pretended purity as Poets have taught us And even in the Apothegmes of the Fathers in Olympius a devout Hermite we read of a certain Heathen Priest who entring into the Cell of a Christian Monk who lived in great austerity and Devotion demanded of him whether God did not in extraordinary manner reveal Mysteries to him who answered No. 'T is strange replyed he that so it should not be with you taking such pains whereas we seeking our God so finde answers and see mysteries therefore sure it must needs be said he that your hearts are not clean before him which the Christians wondering to hear from him confessed it to be so indeed But did that Heathen Priest perswade himselfe that their hearts were cleaner than the Christians It may be so but the truer reason was that their god so free of his Oracles and Revelations was not so clean himselfe as the Holy Spirit by whom Revelations are given unto men and therefore might be more forward to afford an impure heart his impure companie Their cleannesse consisted in carnall abstinences such as they write that great Magician Apollonius Tyaneus to have excelled in and to have had communication of Spirits But purity of minde and unroyled and undisturbed Passions are that wherein such Christian purity doth consist which disposeth to or at least goeth before Inspirations truly Divine and spirituall Illuminations 5. Another reason why evill Spirits are so officious to attend their Confederates and the Holy Spirit not so signally present with Holy Men may be the purity of intention required to the Spirit of God more than to deluding Spirits For no more or greater impediment needs there be to the entrance of the miraculous Spirit of God than a passionate thirst after Revelations and Visions which imply a mislead understanding not rightly judging wherein consists true Divinenesse but supposing that Gifts proceeding from unmortified curiositie and tending to vain glorie and elevation of a mans minde above others render a man spirituall which God who scattereth the proud in the imagination of his heart and exalteth them of low degree Luke 2. 51 52. most of all detesteth and will not be accessarie to but rather delivers him over to Spirits answerable to his appetite and humour which shall deceive and abuse him A famous instance whereof we have in this Nation in the last age of a man very Mathematically learned and not wanting in other Sciences very retired in his Life and exemplarie in his conversation with Devotion extraordinarie towards God but being ardently set on Revelations and seeking Oracles from Spirits obtained his end so far as to have Spectres presented to him through Glasses and certain answers humouring exactly his superstition and curiositie so that he could not consider that it is without precedent Divine and of God that female Spirits should appear as sent from him and that such theatricall gestures and speeches could not consist with the Majestie of God or the solemnitie of his Angells sent by him so that the large Volume of such like Impostures remain to this day as a monument of his infatuations and a Rock to such as shall sail by such Compasses It is above an hundred years since this Delusion disturbed England and other parts of Europe too especially Germanie But not many yeers are passed since a more prodigious one of this kinde was afforded us in Scotland by a phanaticall Major allmost Sainted by the vulgar Innovatours in Religion for his well-managed hypocrisie and stupendious gifts of Prayer extemporie so that no lesse than Simon Magus he of a long time had bewitched that unhappie people to an obduration in an inveterate Schisme and admiration of his Illuminations untill his iniquitie was found to be hatefull as it is Psalm 36. and such a discovery of his bestialities and damnable practices as are not to be uttered by chast mouths or heard by chast ears 6. These and such like specious pretences to spirituall Illuminations ending in such scandalous events have put wise and grave Heads upon the Doctrine of distinguishing of Spirits as they informe or possesse men having so just warrant as such sad experiments minister'd and the precept of Saint John 1 Epist 4. ver 1. Beloved believe not every Spirit but try the spirits whether
others In doing evill men are generally to feare evill but men are to feare Pride most of all when they doe well When men preach eloquently and powerfully when others pray fluently and giftedly as they suppose to the admiration and applause of others the vain spirit of man licketh up as it were and draweth greedily to it selfe the fumes of praises offered so to him as the Gentile Philosophers taught the paltrie Spirits of the air for they made severall orders of Spirits too attended the Altars at the time of Sacrificing to them and with great pleasure drew to themselves the fat vapour that ascended from thence and were nourished by the same as they tell us And if men be so wanting that they of themselves refuse to offer a sacrifice of praise answerable to the appetites of the vain expecter prettie sly artifices are invented to ensnare as it were men to ascribe something to them of which that is none of the least or rarest To cast out some light disparagement of themselves that the Friend or flatterer may catch that occasion to confute what was said and amplifie his deserts on the contrarie and extoll him as it is often seen in young Children who discerning their Parents fondnesse towards them will sometimes cast themselves down upon the ground that they may be taken up into their armes dandled and kissed 6. But so much as to point at the severall sorts of this Vice might require a greater latitude of Discourse than is proper for this place Ambition or affectation of great Power or Honours or Place is that which can hardly consist with a sincere minde or spirit truely apprehensive of the vanitie of the world or the unsociablenesse I doe not say of the things themselves for such orders and subordinations God would have in the world but of the Affectation and appetite of them so far as least of all to desire that Good work the Apostle mentions in Dignities but wholly or chiefly to desire grandeur profits and perhaps ease from inferiour labours and lesse advantageous becoming so much the lesse sollicitous and industrious as the reward requires and deserves greater Here must necessarily be either Vain-glorie or Covetousnesse or both too prevalent 7. But Saint Chrysostome gives us an Instance of vaingloriousnesse and pride of minde even after men are dead and turned to corruption an exorbitancie Great men are subject to in this sin more then in any other For other sins commonly end their dayes with the Sinner but Pride divers times manifesteth it selfe after death and Drunkennesse and Uncleannesse and Gluttony and Covetousnesse fall away with the guilty person but he that is ambitious and vainglorious provides for the continuation of his blindnesse and errour by appointing lasting and magnificent Monuments to that purpose stately devices and Edifices must declare to Posteritie that such an one was once great and renowned whether he were so or not ay and as now the wicked world goes men shall be Sainted by an Inscription who have been prophane to a great degree in their lifes-time and by stately Tombes proudly after their death cease not to prophane the Church or Chancell by usurping that part of Gods Soile dedicated to Holinesse to the celebration of rotten flesh and drie bones and it may be to the bringing down the judgement of God upon that Church which tolerates such abuses when it is in its power to hinder it which often it is not through the power and Lordlinesse of Great Persons too resolute to be diverted and too strong to be resisted in their unrighteous actions especially when it so happens that men of such advantages over poor Ministers of Christ and their Superiours too shall take a kinde of Antichristian pride in shewing how they can exalt themselves above all that is called God or reputed holy and especially in following the Fashion and that when they are dead 8. Wherefore the mischief of this Deadly evill being duly considered and observed it will concerne every true Christian truely and impartially to make enquirie into the depths of his own heart and so judge his Spirit as to deliver himselfe from the same Many for kinde are the sorts thereof and some very monstrous for nature all delusive of the affected therewith procuring him Hatred instead of Love contempt instead of esteem and honour and restlessenesse of minde ever more thirsting for that with which he can never be satisfied Let us therefore take the Apostles advice Galat. 4. and not be desirous of vainglory provoking one another envying one another And if such mutuall Emulation were all it were more to be endured but by such vainglorious provocations of God and Man we stirr them both up to the ruine and dejecting of our selves exalting our selves some Philosophers being so wise as well as some Christian contemplatours of the wayes and workes of God to see and say that God sitteth above in the highest Heaven observing who by humility is capable of Exaltation and who by exalting himselfe deserves to be crushed and confounded 9. And this is it which the wise Man Ecclesiasticus Chap. 10. v. 9. teaches us when he seem'd to be alltogether ignorant of the ground of Pride in Man. Why saith he is earth and ashes proud For asking why it is certain he knew not Why. Yea rather asking Why he knew why not Which appeareth from what he had said formerly ver 7. Pride is hatefull before God. And so ver 13. Pride is the beginning of sin and the parting from God is the beginning of it Pride and Apostacie from God are mutuall causes one of another by a kind of monstrous incest begetting one another but having for their common Father the Devill himselfe that Apostate Spirit Lucifer who first committing that sin and suffering condigne punishment for the same has made it his Office to draw men into the same offence and condemnation and losse too by aspiring as Holy and humble Job informes us Chap. 41. 34. thus speaking of him He beholdeth i. e. according to the language of the Scripture he loves and admireth all high things he is the King of all the Children of pride that is his own children made so by pride 10. And who is not ignorant of the reason why Flesh and blood should be proud which Ecclesiasticus resolves into Earth and Ashes And why so but because Ashes are barren of good and Earth is base ordained to be trampled on not lifted up but in such cases as great calamities seize on a man and then it was wont to be heap'd on the head to augment his vilenesse and misery that brought it upon him by his folly and vanity Man having by pride advanced himselfe above his originall Earth by as unnaturall a course as if the stream should rise higher than the Fountain-head reason good that Earth should recover its dignity and place by becoming higher than the calamitous proud man. 11. Let not therefore saith God by the Prophet Jeremie Chap.
to us SECT III. Of the excesse of Vnitive Love of God in Extasies and Raptures with their abuses and uses noted 1. ALthough the principall designe in this Unitive Tractate be not to fill the Brain with gallant Speculations and gay Notions of Union with God yet because it seemeth necessary to a competent understanding of the Love wherewith God doth love us and of that whereby we love God to take in the Extent of it it will not be amisse to consider the doctrine and use of Extasies and Raptures too much famed by some and no lesse defamed by others For as supream Illuminations by Faith and Contemplation ordinarie do receive their Crown and summitie by extraordinarie Revelations and Visions God may and doth sometimes impart to his Servants so may it be that the top of spirituall Affections and Love seraphicall may touch the bottome of extraordinary Extasies and Raptures which are certain transportations of the Soule above the pitch of common Love though sincere sound faithfull and saving For in trueth I scarce read of any Religion except we make some factions Religions in which instances of wonderfull nature to this purpose are not found excepting the Mother faction of late For others issuing from them have gloried much of such elevations and transportations And Histories and Relations very credible assure us that of old amongst the Heathen and at this day amongst the Mahometans certain devout Persons in their way receive after some Ceremonies used to that end supernaturall impressions and Inspirations extaticall And why not Since it is very probable that all Religions tending either remotely or immediately to the worship of a Deity whereby some honour at large and blindly is given unto the only true God above what Atheists ascribe to the same and that according to the most probable Philosophie about Spirits there are divers kinds of them some purer others impurer some most malitious and mischievous others lesse noxious that God the most Wise just and infinite dispenser of all things and disposer may give way to Spirits to enter into and cooperate with zealous Persons in their simple yet intense devotion to a Deity and manage them according to the merits and manner of their Profession So that in very trueth faithfull and unerring judgement of a sound Religion cannot be made from such possessions and transportations but on the contrary rather that not the reality but purity and divinenesse of such Extasies are to be estimated from the reasonablenesse trueth and holinesse of the Religion professed by such Enthusiasts Onely this may be well granted that such Persons by such Enthusiasmes are competently characterized for select Persons in their Professions whether Idolatrous Hereticall or Orthodox 2. Or may we not say as there is one Fire necessary for the Cook to make his Vessels boyl over for Extasies are certain ebullitions of the spirit of a Man and another Fire requisite to the Smith to temper and fashion his Mettall and another to the Founder for his service so severall loves giving severall heats those severall heats have severall effects upon divers Subjects which they work on Certainly though true and modest Believers should not live or carrie themselves so towards God as if they would oblige him to extraordinarie Inspirations or Motions to be granted them so should the modestest of all demean themselves in their Religion as thereby they should be more susceptible of supererogated Gifts or measure running over as the Gospell speakes from God. Of which impartments I doe verily believe the professours of that Faction who are Enemies to all prescribed disciplining shall never be partakers pretending their Divinity is too spirituall to trouble themselves with such Exercises and they must goe the nearest way to Christ destructive of all bodily reverence decencie and due veneration which consists in select outward formes and fashions distinguishing to the sense divine from naturall morall or civill services as is most requisite 3. But as to Extasies of which we now speak as they are such which God vouchsafes to cause to the eminently constant and servent in his service and worship so may we not argue a certainty of Gods valuing those Vessels he so fills as more honourable or holy than some others from which he with-holds such gifts though where he so conferrs them and they are not delusions of idle and Evill Spirits imitating divine no doubt but there is some good degree of holinesse preceding not common to all true Believers For still we must look on them as gifts to profit withall and not as Graces whereby men actually have profited And the profit which succeeds thereupon is rather of others than themselves For such they are described to be that in them sometime the reason is taken away from them who suffer them and sometime their senses I scarce know what to judge of that saying of Antonie the Great undoubtedly eminently devout whatever Moderne Censurers may judge which Cassian in Collat relates That no man arrives at the perfection of Prayer who in Prayer understands what he sayes which possibly might give occasion to moderner Authours to invent such a kinde of Prayer which they call Supramentall that is such which is above Intelligence but this I may presume to say that if any whose Office it is to be the Voice of the People to God in Publique who then especially should together with him offer a reasonable Sacrifice to God should affect or willfully fall into such extaticall formes of speaking that neither he should understand himselfe nor should be understood by others he must be owing to some other Spirit for such his gifts than that of God. 4. And for privation of Senses in Extasies some Instances may be given very credible during such translations of minde which I dare neither rashly applaud nor condemn But whether this was the case of that holy man Elpidius of whome the Auncients write I know not that he was wont to stand whole Nights in Prayer and praising God in Psalmes not in recitation of Creeds and Ave Maries with such stedfastnesse that being once stung with a Scorpion he changed not his posture Which might be ascribed to an holy pertinacie against sense not without sense But if evill Spirits entring into and possessing Vessells of dishonour and impious drown the senses for that time there is no incrediblenesse that the good Spirit of Grace and Peace may overcome all sensations externall Was it not so with Saint Paul when as we read 2 Corinth 12. he was wrapt up into the third Heaven whether in the body or out of the body he knew not And 't is most apparent that some Epilepticall distempers bereave men both of sense and Reason And it is related to us by Bodin Theatr. Naturoe lib. 4. that in Germanie divers men are wont to cast themselves by Witchcraft into Extasies in such manner that for the time they feel no pain by blowes pinchings or burnings but returning to their common senses
that he might doe them good at the latter end not feasting them so by the way that they should not desire to enter into any other rest For as we see it is with the Day-labourer that his Meals are very short in comparison of his toyl so is it allso with the faithfullest Servants of God in this life their spirituall refreshments are not comparable to their labour in working out their salvation with fear and trembling so that as Bernard observeth the Dayes are rare and the stayes are short of Consolations 6. And a fourth reason hereof may be Gods great designe to keep the Soule in Humility which might be endanger'd by such exaltations and upon which inferiour and harder services might be slighted and neglected as more proper for Persons not so highly priviledged Or it may be vainly presumed that such priviledges are granted to the Soule for its extraordinary diligence in Gods service which must not be allowed but looked upon as an overplus of his favour 7. Fifthly The withholding or withdrawing of such delectations in Gods service may be to instruct us in the absolute Will of God to keep times and seasons in his own Power which it is not for us to know as Christ tells his Disciples Acts 1. And that the Kingdome of God cometh not by observation or according to our expectations 8. But because it is very acceptable to God that we should in all our services give a cheerfull Sacrifice to him which cheerfullnesse is much advanced by the sense of Gods good will towards us such a lightnesse of spirit is not to be wholly slighted as it is not too importunately to be sought after The meanes therefore to obtain the same may be First The due observation of the foregoing Rules now mentioned Secondly A free submission of our selves and services to the disposition of the will of God and contentednesse to persist unalterably in our station under such Aridities of which we know not our selves to be direct occasions a great motive to incline God to manifest his favour unto us more fully Which calls to my minde what I have been told to have happened in the Court of Charles the First For why may we not illustrate things as well by Moderne as Auncient Examples and Domestick as well as Forein in which rare and noble divertisements being prepared for the delight of such as he favoured an inferiour person demanded entrance into the place of such Splendour but being repulsed by a Noble Person to whome the power of admission was given He said Well if I must not be admitted I know what I will doe Doe said the Noble Man Why What will you doe I will goe home said the other and goe to Bed. Nay then if you be so indifferent and well content without it come in replied that Lord. So doth it usually happen unto such who cannot but desire to be admitted into the Presence of God in this way of sensible delectations and yet with patience and submission absolute to Gods Will readily and quietly rest in their ordinarie Dutie ordained of God to walk in here in fullfilling his Will so on Earth as it is in Heaven according to humane abilitie where alone is the consummation of that Union we have but in part here never to be dissolved or interrupted Last of all Retirement for some time into our private Chambers and then into our own selves by stillnesse and composednesse of spirit and minde from not onely worldly cogitations but forcible as I may so speak devotions towards God becomeing as it were Blanks before him that so he may write his own will and in his own way upon the Soule and having so done not to intermitt the wonted Worship of God whether private or publique fullfilling what is said Lamentations 3. 28. He sitteth alone and keepeth silence because he hath born it upon him He putteth his mouth in the dust if so be there may be hope For it often happens that a great mistake is committed through the speciousnesse of the condition of serving God and having him in our Eye as if we intended nothing more than a more cheerfull and acceptable service when love of our selves bears the greatest share in the pursuit of such serenities of minde and consolations For the Soule finding an heavinesse and wearinesse upon it naturally desires ease and relief which Religion it selfe does not denie or disallow provided it be pure from Selfe-love often concerned herein And an humble apprehension of our vilenesse unworthinesse and unfitnesse to entertain Christ in such singular manner moving one to cry out in the words and Spirit of Saint Peter Luke 5. 8. Depart from me for I am a sinfull man O Lord may be as great an argument of the profitable and saving Presence of Christ as the possession of him in Consolations and a more readie way to attain what is really good for us though not directly craved in this kinde A Prayer for true Union with God. MOST High and Holy Lord God whome the Heaven of heavens cannot contain who dwellest on high and yet humblest thy selfe to behold the things done in heaven and earth yea to dwell with them that are of an humble spirit and broken heart and takest the simple out of the dust and liftest the poor out of the mire to set him with Princes even with the Princes of his People even with thine holy Angells and the Spirits of just men made perfect And to this end vouchsafest to begin that glorious state here by that state of Grace whereby thou enterest into the Soules of thy Servants and dwellest with them and art united to them O most Gracious Father in thy Son Jesus Christ and through thy Holy Spirit be pleased to descend into my heart and make thy abode with me as by thy Son thou hast promised Vnite my heart to fear thy Name Open the eyes of my understanding that I may see the wondrous things of thy Law and with cleer and pure Contemplation of thee and things spirituall and Heavenly may be so far inflamed with the love of thee and thy Worship that all earthly and sensuall contents and pleasures may be strange and unsavourie to me and that such a spirituall gust may so affect my Soule that I may refuse all delights and glories not placed in thee and derived from thee and tending to thee which may more firmely oblige and endear me to thee so that Nuptiall Bond whereby thou hast espoused me to thee and thy Son Jesus Christ may never be dissolved but amidst the many cares troubles and temptations which may befall me in this life I may constantly and faithfully persevere to serve thee without distraction and much more alienation from thee Thou knowest O Lord that this corruptible bodie presseth down the Soule musing on heavenly things thou knowest that though our spirit be willing our flesh is weak and yet hast taught us that thy Grace is sufficient for us and thy strength is made known in our weaknesse as thy mercy is in our wickednesse wherefore Righteous Father take possession of this thine House which thou hast chosen to dwell in vindicate me from the usurpations of sin the flesh the Devill and all worldly vanities apt to deceive me or draw me from thee that so like thy servant Stephen by a strong eye of Faith evermore stedfastly beholding thee and the glorie with thee I may joy in thee here and everlastingly enjoy thee hereafter through Jesus Christ our Lord Amen FINIS
proper Cause of Christian Illumination being taken for the things revealed whereof some principall Heads are here given 1. IT is a common and usefull distinction of Faith by the Learned not difficult to be understood by the unlearned into the matter or articles of our Faith propounded to our assent by God himselfe in his Word and the Gift and Grace of Faith enabling us to believe things so revealed and necessary to our Salvation It will be therefore very expedient for the better informing every plain and sincere capacity to make some recitall of those things our Faith Christian is founded upon and which we are to believe and that principally by Revelation and not wholly to be silent herein any more than St. Luke was in writing his Gospell Luke 1. 1. For as much as many have taken in hand to set forth in order those things which are most surely believed amongst us because severall formes and phrases may help towards the same sense and end of believing and illumination 2. And here first of all is to be considered and believed the great Prerogative of Christian Religion above all other discoveries made to Man when our Saviour Christ in St. Matthew saith Ch. 11. v. 25. I thank thee O Father Lord of heaven and earth because thou hast hid these things from the wise and revealed them to babes Not that Christ maligned the knowledge of these things to others but that he admired the priviledges conferred by God upon his mean flock And what these things are and how and to whom revealed St. Paul certifies us 1 Corinth 2. 6 7 8 saying Howbeit we speak wisdome among them that are perfect yet not the wisdome of this world which cometh to naught but we speak the wisdome of God in a mysterie even the hidden wisdome which God ordained before the world to our glory For God hath revealed them by his Spirit For the Spirit searcheth all things even the deep things of God. Meaning hereby to teach us that whatever knowledge man may attain to in the search of the mysteries of Nature Revelation is absolutely necessarie to the knowledge of the deep things of Gods counsell and pleasure concerning his own Nature and Being and our service of him and salvation by him discovery should be made unto us some other way than by our natural reason darkened by our own apostasie and infatuations So that the whole Bible may be called one entire book of divine Revelations the Jew having received many things from God which were denied unto the Gentiles and the Christian having received from God more clear dispensations and sublime than were granted unto the Jew for he beheld things as in a glasse darkly but the other face to face that is the very things themselves and not the darker shadowes which were to flee away at the rising of the Sun of righteousnesse which is by the Apostle called the Mysterie of Christ which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men as it is now revealed unto his holy Apostles and Prophets by the Spirit Whereupon St. Peter 1 Ep. 1. 5. tells us of Gods Elect that they are kept by the power of God through faith unto Salvation readie to be revealed in the last times which last times were the same of which the Apostle to the Hebrews speaks that in the last dayes God hath spoken unto us by his Son and those last dayes were the dayes of the Gospell revealing the mysteries of Godlinesse unto us and not these last dayes phansied by some 3. Now notwithstanding innumerable are the divine documents and notices extraordinarily deliver'd through the New Testament and more especially there be a fair Catalogue given us Heb. 11. of the singular vertues and uses of Faith in revealing divine things yet because we now speak chiefly to babes in Christ or St. Johns Little children it may not be amisse to assist the weaker without offence of the stronger in giving some speciall instances whereby the knowledge of a green Christian is either actually improved or improveable to a greater degree than can readily be found in aliens from Christ 4. There have been in former years some leading men in the Reformation and learned who have collected ten severall and considerable grounds in which all Religions concurre and this was the ingenious contrivance of Bibliander since which divers with tolerable designe but I fear with no good event at all but rather the contrary have in these very late years written about Naturall Religion and the Reasonablenesse of Christian Faith manifested by naturall Light hoping it may be to begett a better opinion in many rank Rationalists of Christian Religion but perhaps they considered not what evill consequence followes from hence viz. that the very first principle of our Christian faith is hereby weakened and more slighted as judged from hence not to be so necessary as commonly is received For Revelations divine and that these writings we call Scriptures are divinely revealed is the most fundamentall part of our Religion which to make credible by sundrie Topicks of reason have been alwaies the practice of the Ancients as it is still of the moderne not illaudable but to offer demonstrations and those such upon which they would constrain belief of that first principle is to cause the whole fabrick of Christian faith to rest on that tottering and unstable foundation and of divine to dilute our faith into humane perswasion all superiour articles of our faith having no stronger stay than such a bottome will allow them 5. And I must confesse for my part I am so far from being pleased with the pretended Golden sayings of Pythagoras or the divine sentences of Plato Seneca and especially that moderner vapourer or rather vapour it selfe Hierocles and such as Eunapius presents unto us that they rather turne my stomach at their aemulation of Christian perfection thereby to lessen the value of Christian Religion it selfe than draw me to affecting or admiring them For St. Paul 2 Corinth 1. 14. tells us 't is By faith we stand and again that our faith it selfe should not stand in the wisdome of men but in the power of God. And it will be found by experience that humane reason thus coming officiously to the aid of divine Faith unable to satisfie the doubting minde about the doctrine proper to Faith will in the end prove so sawcie and domineering as to give law to faith and like Ivie which clings to the tree for a subsistence will weaken it and suck out the heart of it in time Herein therefore consisteth the very soule or as scholasticall men speak the very formall reason of Christian faith illuminating otherwise than the humane Lights of this world that we believe what we have not seen by sence nor learned by experience viz. That the Scriptures we now are possessed of are the Revelations which God hath given us for our instruction and direction in the knowledge of him and holy conversation
obstinacie and obduratenesse in their naturall state according to Christs own judgement of the world John 5. v. 40. Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life So that as it is written by Sulpitius Severus in the life of St. Martine that being endued with a marvellous gift or faculty of curing sick and impotent persons The blinde and lame and decrepit who got their living by begging were affraid of him and would not come near him lest being cured of such their defects and impotencies they should lose their livelihood In like manner many getting a miserable and beggarly livelihood by serving and complying with the world and so being blinde and crippled in an heavenly sense refuse that light and life and renovation which Christ bringeth with him An instance whereof we have in the ministrie of St. Paul preaching to the Athenians prepossessed and captivated with worldly wisdome and thereupon saying Thou bringest strange things to our eares In their judgements more strange than true And though it be Mannah it selfe and that dropt down from heaven for their edification and comfort men out of their scepticalnesse and curiositie will question it and perhaps in time loath it as the Israelites that bread from heaven there being generally too little agreement between the notions of half-sighted naturall reason and delectations of our senses naturall and the divine Revelations and more spirituall prescriptions given us by Religion though naturall reason not counterfeited nor corrupted by baser allayes of vitious men may passe also as Gods true coyne But that pure Gold it is not which the Holy Ghost counselleth us to buy Revel 3 18. that we may be rich and wherewith we may get white raiment that we may be clothed that the shame of our nakednesse doe not appear and get that eye-salve that we may see which is the word of God. For the knowledge or illumination which we have from thence and that which we have from the Holy Spirit differ no otherwise than that money a man carries about him or that which the Tradesman hath present in his Bank and that which he hath in his Books which must put him sometimes to trouble to fetch in The manner of which fetching in is by the Holy Spirit also opening the heart that we may as the Disciples going to Emaus after Christs Resurrection understand the Scriptures untill which time that will be found too true which the Prophet Hosea Cap. 8. 12. complains of in Gods behalf I have written to him the great things of my Law but they were counted as a strange thing 4. But if we should enquire faithfully into the grounds of such incredulitie and prejudice against Religion we may finde them too often in the corrupt manners of men influencing the understanding with mistakes and grosse errours which yet some to cover with shew of greatest candour in judging and ingenuity have wished they could believe the things Christianity requires of them But if reality and common integritie be not also laid aside here how easie a thing is it to reconcile them to the truth For does not their own prime reason and of all civilized People tell them that nothing truely humane is more naturall to Man than to be of some Religion And yet if they be men but of indifferent reading and observation they shall finde that there is no Religion nor ever like to be all whose Principles are obvious to all competent understandings And so consequently that men to avoid the barbaritie of Atheisme must believe more than nature can compell them unto by her philosophicall demonstrations or fall into an absurditie little inferiour to Atheisme That every man should frame his own Religion and be so far religious as he thinks fit and no farther and which must necessarily follow call his freak and humour his reason and judgement So that it is scarce so true that a man cannot believe the mysteries of Religion as that he will not and he will not because he dares not for fear of the worst Or let it be that he cannot when St. Paul if he be but so far believed saith of some 2 Corinth 4. 4. The God of this world who that is I suppose is well known hath blinded the mindes of them that believe not lest the light of the glorious Gospell of Christ who is the image of God should shine unto them vain and vitious men having by their presumed wit and evill lives tempted evill Spirits themselves and drawn them to be accessaries to their infatuations For as every good and perfect gift cometh from above from the Father of lights as St. James tells us Chap. 1. 17. So doth everie notorious errour and wickednesse proceed from the Prince of darknesse who ruleth in the Childeren of Disobedience they being called children of Disobedience in Scripture who obey not the Gospell nor believe it reasonably propounded 5. But it may seem strange and worth our wondering How the same effect of blindnesse of minde should be ascribed to God and also to the Devill in Scripture as John 12. 4. speaking of God out of the Prophet Isaias He hath blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts that they should not see with their eyes nor understand with their hearts c. This is in truth a Scholasticall difficultie which belongs to another place to which I may referre it but here I would have it observed that as Judges or Princes are said to put Malefactours to death when they doe it not themselves but deliver them over to the Executioner whose office it is so God upon just provocation delivering great Sinners to the Devill may be said to be a cause of their hardnesse and blindnesse when it is caused directly by Satan only and themselves But the true light of Faith and life of Grace doth most properly appertain to God as it is said 2 Corinth 4. 7. By grace ye are saved through faith it is the gift of God. The reason whereof is That the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us And this key of knowledge which is also of the Kingdome of God did Christ deliver to his Apostles by vertue of which God assisting Lydia's heart was opened as we read Acts 16. 14. And so necessary is the assistance of God in this case that he seems to keep this key by his own side and not at all times to lend it to his Ministers no not the Apostles Nor did Christ himselfe who as God had the command of mens mindes allwayes succeed in his teaching and exhortation but by I know not what deep providence suffered his labours to be frustrated by the incredulity of men But this we may say falls out by divine dispensation that God may be all in all in the beginning continuing and consummation of every good work and to repell that spirit of presumption whereby too prosperous Labourers in Gods Harvest or Vineyard might be prone to attribute much more to themselves than
comes to their share 6. For this reason God sends such tempestuous and dark weather at Sea to the skilfull Navigatour that he shall not be able readily to know or say where he is till the restored calme Light better informes him And sends Shipwracks sometimes to the subtill Merchant that he may understand better who it is that gives skill and strength to get Riches And diappointeth the hopes of the understanding and painfull Husbandman And as the Prophet Isaiah Chap. 44. maketh diviners mad and turneth wise men backward and maketh their knowledge foolish teaching them all and us too and that in all senses more perfectly that necessary lesson of humility Deuteronomy 8. 18. Thou shalt remember the Lord thy God. For it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth c. And as it is with the riches of this world it is with the riches of the world to come or being rich towards God as the Scripture speaks Luke 12. 21. For undoubtedly God may and doth apparently denie the ordinary meanes of Salvation sound knowledge and holy faith in him and of divine mysteries to some To others he grants to be initiated and to have some knowledge of the saving trueth who there stop and proceed no farther as tender plants rising out of the earth wither and perish for want of the blessings of heaven falling on them without which they can proceed no farther towards perfection and some proceed farther and promise fair and for the same reason attain not to the intended end 7. But nothing of this nature can reasonably be taken into an Apologie or defence of the unprofitable servant whom God hath delivered such talents and meanes unto that in themselves tend unto such progressions and consummations as are saving and beatificall But admit thou art becalmed and canst make no way through want of divine aspirations and influence How canst thou how darest thou impute this cessation and oscitancie of thine in not doing the known Will of God unto an unknown cause or rather a not cause of doing which whether it is so as thou imaginest or givest out at least that thou imaginest when thy heart contradicteth thy tongue thou knowest not For who can say that God denies him the inward power and meanes of Salvation that is of effectuall Grace to whom he giveth the outward meanes of Illumination Faith and Salvation Whatsoever may be wanting in the abstruse counsell and dispensations internall of God and known to him cannot be so known to a man without divine Revelations It is an uncharitable and rash act in any man directly to charge his Neighbour with denying him his due or taking away his goods from him when he can prove nothing against him and much more injust it is and impious for a man to say directly that God denies him grace or doth harden his heart so that Rules and exhortations and sufficient reasons of becoming faithfull righteous and holy before God and man are of no effect upon him 8. It is not so much pardonable as commendable in all Good Christians to be sensible of their naturall insufficiencie and infirmity to doe any good act St. Paul having taught us 2 Corinth 3. v. 5. That we are not able to think any thing as of our selves but our sufficiencie is of God. But doe not the very next words as well as the latter part of that argument plainly tell us that God hath a sufficiencie for us and God doth make us able Ministers of his Will And doth not St. James tell us that every good and perfect gift cometh down from the Father of lights James 1. 17. And doth not our Saviour Christ direct us how we should fill our selves from that Fountain when he saith Matth. 7. 11. If ye being evill know how to give good gifts unto your Children how much more should your Father which is in heaven give you good things that ask him And this good thing is the best and fullest of all good things being interpreted in St. Lukes Gospell Chap. 11. 13. to be the Holy Spirit it selfe the fountain of all Grace which he giveth to them that ask him The Querie then must needs be made to our selves whether upon sense of our infirmities and defects we ever did and that as we ought invoke Almighty God implore the gift of his Spirit and its concurrence and whether we ever submitted to its Dictates and directions to that power God hath given us For to doe this as well as believe that we have an excellent president from the wise Man Wisdome 8. v. 21. Neverthelesse I perceived I could no otherwise obtain her i. e. True Wisedome comprehending all intellectuall graces except God gave her me and that was a point of Wisedome also to know whose gift she was I prayed unto the Lord and besought him and with my whole heart I said O God of my Fathers and Lord of mercie c. Which prayer for that illuminating gift and Grace so necessarie might not very unfitly be transcribed hither and used by all true lovers of light rather than darknesse at least untill the Day-star shall arise in their hearts according to which true Believers may shape their course more steadily towards Heaven but I shun prolixnesse SECT VI. Of the Gift and guidance of Gods Spirit towards true Illumination The abuse and true use of the same and necessity of Believing 1. BUT the use or act of the grace of Faith resteth not here but is wonderfully assistant to the naturall understanding in discerning the minde of God revealed unto us in his Word For as the discreet and diligent Master doth not only set his Schollar whom he teacheth to write an exact and fair Copie to imitate and follow but also guides his hand in the making the Letters and joyning them together according to their true shape and order in like manner doth he whose Chair is in heaven teaching the hearts as his Instruments and Officers doe the eares and eyes of men below to understand receive believe and act according to the Rule and scope prescribed For man naturally is apt to believe those things only which his Reason assures him of but his reason how acute soever cannot demonstrate the Scriptures to be the Word of God which we believe and must believe to be so if we would be accounted good Christians And having the Scriptures in that esteem we cannot out of our promptitude and acutenesse of wit discerne clearly and readily many usefull things therein contained without the direction of that great Authour the Blessed Spirit principall in the composing them For 't is truly said The Scriptures must be understood by the Spirit that indited them According therefore to the gifts and grace given unto Mee doe they understand the mysteries of Faith Rom. 12. 6. And to every man is given grace according to the measure of Christ Ephes 4. 7. whereby that light revealed shineth unto the true Believer as out of a dark place So that
men we will not understand untill a Light from heaven as it happened to St. Paul though not in that outward and miraculous manner but by a certain tacite splendour and illumination all the recesses and dark corners of the soule are discovered and the foulnesse of them manifested in particular 5. For as it happens to the poor Cottager or simple carelesse Tenant while the Houswife is alone with her own plain companie only she sees little or nothing amisse in her House it is clean enough as it seems to her selfe and all things are set in order and place convenient enough to her liking but it chancing that she is surprised by some Great and delicate Person coming into her habitation or that her rich and fine Landlord comes into her House then presently she lookes about her every way then she sees nothing is clean enough handsome enough or in place and order good enough but complains how she is taken like a Slut So falls it out in Divine matters and with the carelesse and secure soule while she looks only on her selfe and compares her selfe with her selfe as St. Paul speaks or perhaps with other of the same rank with her selfe she discerns very little amisse within her selfe but Christ our Lord and the Holy Spirit the light of the minde and searcher of the heart coming into it then she begins to apprehend her own uncleanlinesse and defects then is she sensible of her disorders foulnesse and even Sluts corners and begins to lament her state and confesse her errours and beg pardon for her unfitnesse and unsutablenesse to the Divine presence A lively instance whereof holy Job may be in the Old Testament and Peter in the New both eminent Saints Job had discoursed freely and confidently of God and his wayes and justified himselfe to a high degree before him He asserted his own innocencie and cleannesse before him and men Yea God himselfe vindicated him from the calumnies of Satan saying Job 1. 8. Hast thou considered my servant Job that there is none like him in the earth a perfect and an upright man and one that feareth God and escheweth evill But notwithstanding all this God drawing yet nearer to him in a discoverie of himselfe and Job to himselfe we finde Jobs note changed to this saying Job 42. 5. I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear but now mine eye sees thee therefore I abhorre my selfe and repent in dust and ashes And in like manner St. Peter Christ manifesting himselfe at the miraculous draught of Fish cryed out suddenly at the apprehension of his own vilenesse and imperfections Luke 5. 8. Depart from me O Lord for I am a sinfull man not sustaining the presence of so holy a Master under the sense of his own unholinesse then chiefly appearing to him 5. And thus particularly informed and affected the soule not only judges sin in others to be sin but in it selfe exceeding sinfull not only believes that Anger and Malice and censuring and slandering others that unclean acts that light wanton and carnall thoughts are evill in others but in it selfe that immodest words and gestures unkinde sowr froward behaviour and looks doe ill become others professing the Gospell which sweetens sowr blood and carriage naturally so far as may consist with sobriety and gravitie but in its selfe too and disposes to a change of temper knowing what St. Paul saith Galat. 5. 22. That the fruit of the Spirit is love joy peace long-sufferance gentlenesse faith meeknesse temperance And that the Rule of Justice given by Christ Matth. 7. 12. Whatsoever ye would that men should doe unto you doe yee even so unto them extendeth to the regulating of outward looks and behaviour which should be no other towards others distance of Relations being observed as becometh than we expect from others towards us And so in all other vices flesh and blood is subject to even lesse observable the good man first condemns himselfe being more quick-sighted in perceiving and severe in censuring himselfe than others 6. And upon and together with the sight and sense of a mans imperfections and pravities doth the Day-star arising in the heart direct to the exercise of the contrary Vertues both Morall and Evangelicall and such a transformation by the renewing of the minde whereby as the Apostle speaks we may prove what is the will of God and that the will of God is our Sanctification as it is said 1 Thessal 4. 3. And that Sanctification consisteth in a conformity to the Image of his Son wherein the illuminated minde may perceive all the lines or Lineaments of the new man and the forme of true Godlinesse So that as he that copieth out an exquisite Picture or he that draweth to the life must have a clear eye and that eye must be constantly fixed on the Patern before it which is to be followed in like manner in the spirituall Fashioning of the Soul to the Grand Example Christ a perpetuall and strict eye must be had and fixed on him whereby it will appear what of the naturall stone is to be knocked or pared off by mortification what is to be done towards conformablenesse to the Image of Christ 7. And to this also conduceth much what is mentioned farther concerning our future state of happinesse or misery hereafter and the vanity and fallacies of present enjoyments and possessions which latter seem to an unenlightened eye great and corpulent being in truth but shadowes as the former to the eye of the understanding opened solid and weighty and to be considered above all things For we dye but once naturally and are not like the hearb or flower or plant which flourisheth in its season and in his season fades and dies with an aptnesse to return again to its former perfection even to many such vicissitudes the tall Cedar or fine Flower in his own estimation Man necessarily and naturally tending to decay and ruine Dies once and where is he saith Job Chap. 14. and by no sent of waters buddeth again or riseth from his cold bed of earth till the heavens be no more and ariseth by an Allmighty power but no more to return to his place and condition to amend what he before had done amisse or so much as to repent fruitfully of what he formerly offended in How then doth it concern every true Believer to be serious with himselfe and standing assured there is no Sabbath of pleasure here suddenly all our vaine imaginations of sensible delights here are surprised by the shadowes of our approaching death overtaking and extinguishing them and that being come there is no redemption of our mispent dayes no recovery of our voluntarie losses of the treasures of temperance sobrietie chastity modesty meeknesse charity good works and devotion towards God. Can any that hath his senses I say not that wit which such inconsiderate worldlings too often but vainly vaunt of run such a notorious hazard as this in pursuit as Children of Butter flies of
lost their understanding but like to that Great Example set by Christ for imitation here and salvation hereafter SECT III. That in purifying our selves principall care is to be taken of the puritie of our Faith and of the affections of the Inward Man not neglecting outward severities 1. FAith is not only by the Reformed very often but sometimes by the Unreformed also of great note compared to and call'd an Hand But if this hand of Faith be all on the taking side and little on the giving both which are properties equally of the spirituall hand then is it verie defective For the Philosopher termed the hand of the Bodie the Organ of Organs or Instrument of all other Instruments usefull to us and such is Faith to our spirituall life and actions given us to work the work of God with If therefore it be only extended to receive Christ and justification by him to the quietation of the sollicitous and troubled Conscience and not to prepare the way by diligent and dutifull actions our faith being first unfaithfull to God will in the end also prove treacherous to our own Souls And that Instrument which is blunt or ill framed in it selfe is very apt to marr the work intended Without a good Pen a man how expert soever cannot make a good letter and much lesse write a fair hand And not only an hereticall Faith subverting the true Faith but an Orthodox and sound yet barren credulous presumptuous unactive impatient of both good and evill fond contumacious turbulent or unnecessary querulous and quarrelsome being entertained and rested on drawes neerer to perdition than salvation how flattering soever it may appear to the owner of it 2. And on the other side blinde zeal and violence rather than zeal going about to reforme the Soule with an unreformed or unsanctified Faith doe oftentimes expose the Bodie and Soule to unprofitable and dangerous injuries perhaps upon a mistake of perfection commended to us in the Holy Gospell For instance If a man should put out his own Eyes lest they should or because they had misled him or to the end he might become a better Philosopher as they write of some Philosophers and it is said of Didymus the Alexandrian otherwise an holy Christian given to contemplation or if a man should mutilate himselfe because he would not be chosen a Bishop of which Antiquitie gives us instances or to prevent or to revenge acts of unlawfull Lusts should destroy what Nature hath ordained or in fine should having fallen into any great and shamefull sin think to make propitiation for the same by laying violent hands upon himselfe all this must be imputed rather to want than abundance of Faith and to impenitence accumulating sin unto sin till the Soule sinks under the weight which by true Faith might have been removed or lightened 2. The inordinate passions therefore of the minde are to be the task of every good Christian and the purging or chastizing of the irregular appetites and casting out of doors and so purging the Temple of God as Nehemiah did the profane Stuffe of Tobiah the Samaritan out of the Chambers of the House of the Lord polluted thereby Severall Inmates there are which either creep in for entertainment or perhaps plead prescription which must be dislodged or there will in a short time be found no room for the Master of the House himselfe to reside in or rule over the Soule To wash the outside of the Bouls Platters and Cups is not amisse for it is required of every man not only to be religious but to appear so lest he comes under the condemnation of those who are ashamed of Christ his Doctrine and holie Discipline but to content our selves with that pittance of performance is to rank our selves with the Pharisees and Hypocrites condemned by Christ Oh that there were such an heart in them was the wish of God himselfe to his peculiar people the Israelites Deuteron 5. 19. when they promised fair and spake well concerning obedience which God requires But not the obedience of the tongue which without the heart ends only in aery Complements absurdly used towards men and ridiculously towards God when the heart is far from him And far is that heart and must needs be so from God which is unclean and unclean it must needs be which entertains such a Rabble of lusts which like drunken Companions in Taverns or Alehouses quarrel notoriously one with another but agree to foul the Room with their Pipes Pots Glasses Liquor and perhaps with their own vomit and other evacuations The sober man seeing this disorder and hearing such noise and havock sayes I would not be bound to dwell there if I might have never so much And can we think that Gods pure and piercing Eye beholding such distempers of the Spirit and disorders which the lusts of the flesh make in the Soule and the uncleannesse contracted thereby can or will condescend to take up his habitation there Into a malicious Soule wisdome shall not enter nor dwell in the bodie which is subject to sin Wisdome 1. 4. For all sin consisteth of two things contrary to Wisdome and to God the Fountaine of Wisdome Folly and Foulnesse which cannot consist with the Spirit of Holinesse and the true Wisdome which cometh from above and is first pure and then peaceable c. 3. If it were therefore only because God so frequently so earnestly so pressingly requires inward Puritie Puritie of intention and understanding which qualifie exceedingly actions otherwise irregular and faulty Puritie of affections freed from smuttie delectations and cleer and sincere and fixed and fervent towards the best Objects and that upon the best Grounds and Motives Gods service and honour who well advised would not apply himselfe to so noble and necessary a task as the searching and trying his heart and casting out thence whatever may corâ—upt the rest of his exteriour services and offend the eyes of his heavenly Father though not scandalous to man. 4. And this may be another Motive to interiour holinesse the powerfull influence the inward temper and disposition of the minde hath upon all exteriour actions whether good or evill For according to the Regencie of the minde is the obedience of the outward man as our most wife and holie Master Christ informes us saying Mark 7. 21. From within out of the heart of men proceed evill thoughts adulteries fornications murders thefts covetousnesse wickednesse deceit lasciviousnesse an evill eye blasphemie pride foolishnesse All these evill things come from within and defile the man. All sin defiles but principally and in the first place the inward man and thence as from a bitter or corrupt Fountain-head unsound and impure actions doe flow Or as we see in Clocks and Watches the Hand outward pointing to the hour goes true or false according to the Spring and inward frame of them so our externall practices are right just and holy or on the contrarie false and depraved according to the
corrupt or sound principles of Reason and Faith and the sober affections of the heart purified by Faith. For untill the Spirit of Sanctification and mortification and renovation hath wrought our corrupt nature to a blessed and thorow change little may be expected from us outwardly either acceptable to God who looks more upon the manner and forme of the Deed than the Deed it selfe or profitable to our selves For to continue a little farther our similitude as we see men having bad Watches will with their Finger or Thumb place the Hand aright to give some credit to them which presently according to their ill frame returne to their wonted errour So Hypocrites to appear fair and good to men push themselves on sometimes to regular and laudable acts and sometimes restrain and set back their rank course of sin for some imperfect if not evill end but soon relapse to their accustomed excesses for want of the principle of holinesse and a constitution heavenly inclined the only true Spring of good and laudable actions 5. Again The inward man may well be compared to the Market-place of a strong Citie The Enemie may surprise or by some suddain violence may possesse himselfe of the out-workes and yet be repelled again and the Citie stand firme and safe and faithfull to its Soveraign but if the Enemie once possesses himselfe of the Market-place there is no hopes of standing true to the Owner or withstanding the Adversarie So is it with them who have suffered the Legions of foul Spirits to enter into their hearts and there to nestle and triumph All attempts are but feeble and insufficient to exhibit just and reasonable service to God. For no sooner doe some good inclinations arise no sooner doe we offer at good but a partie of vain thoughts dishonest motions are sent forth to suppresse all good but weak purposes of returning to our allegiance to God and the doing of his Will. Great circumspection therefore must be used strong resolutions must be taken and many difficulties of hunger thirst and hot service must first be passed through before our Redemption draweth nigh and we be restored to the Masterie of our selves and the ministrie we owe to God. 6. But adde hereunto fourthly a more intrinsick argument to the stirring us up to the cleansing our hearts the great benefit redounding to a mans selfe who shall so acquitt himselfe For however this conflict with the powers of flesh and blood and this Conquest is very difficult and tedious and therefore is called in Scripture Mortification and crucifying the Old man with the affections and lusts yet the work once done and the victory obtained brings wonderfull ease quiet satisfaction and cheerfulnesse unto the Spirit rendering it much more expedite and lightsome than it was before strugling against a contrarie Principle which evermore clogged it obstructed and either wholly impeded or grievously retarded the performance of Divine Services For men being scarce able to extinguish the cleer notice of a Deity in them and little lesse able to deny wholly such a service as is due to God doe with an unwilling will divers times submit to Religious acts but wearisome and tedious are they to them through the prevalencie of unsubdued lusts which by this necessary Discipline being master'd and expelled a great change is made in the Soule and then with lightnesse and readinesse is that done which before was irksome and grievous As David himselfe found it in himselfe when he said Psal 119. 32. I will run the way of thy Commandements when thou hast set my heart at liberty And then are our hearts at liberty when the Bond-servant Hagar with her off-spring which would domineer are cast out Then are we free indeed when the Son shall make us free then doth the Son make us free when he delivers us fo far as St. Peter speaks 2 Epist 1. 4. as by a Divine nature given unto us we escape the corruption that is in the world through lust Then shall we not fear the Law of the Land constraining us to Gods service more than God then shall we not shrinke and murmure at Fasting-dayes nor repine when on dayes of publique Thanksgiving to him that is glorious in all his Saints it is expected we should suspend and intermitt our lawfull labours and wholly cut off and denie our unlawfull pleasures We shall not need then as Beasts under the Leviticall Law one or more to drive us to the House of God nor drag us with violence to the Altar of God to offer an holy living and acceptable sacrifice to him which is our reasonable service But with Davids Spirit we shall say I was glad when they said unto me Let us goe up unto the House of the Lord. And how much better is it we should doe a thing with Alacritie and great content than with constraint But this we may doe if we can but free our selves from that load of corruption we are apt to lye under And what effect in this kinde and progresse a man hath made in himselfe may be competently discerned from the sense a man hath in himselfe of the fear of God and love to his service and worship which though the most pure and perfect in this life is not without some tepiditie of spirit sometimes yet the seed of God sown in the heart will generally spring up with gladnesse 7. This therefore should be our great and chiefe endeavour which is the Counsell of Solomon Prov. 4. 23. Keep thy heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life And if as Solomon saith Prov. Chap. 18. 21. Death and life are in the power of the tongue much more true is it that both of them are in the power of the Heart as it stands affected or disaffected to God seeing the Poison or Balsome which distilleth from the Tongue is originally owing to the Heart as the Heart doth comprehensively signifie the entire bodie of affections which must be dedicated to God. But given to God it cannot be without a mock or derision but as it is whole and sound clear and clean according to the ballance of the Sanctuarie of the Gospell which consists much of Christian Equitie We never heard of any that liv'd a life of nature with halfe an heart only neither of any that was sick on one side of his heart and well on the other no more is it possible to please God with one part of our heart and to please the world with the other or at the same time to live the life of this sinfull world and of Christ My son saith God give me thy heart and not a piece of it for that must needs be dead flesh odious to man and much more to God. SECT IV. Of the proper Means and Methode of cleansing the Soule and first of Baptisme 1. SUCH is the contagion of sin naturally infecting the very Soule as inheriting our Forefathers corruption that being in love with it as all men love
Christ hath set us 6. Secondly The speciall care that God taketh of him who careth least for his own will but committeth the management of it into the hands of his most Wise and Gracious Father 'T is true To have ones own will and to doe as we are impelled by it is the preciousest Pearle in the world to the naturall man nothing so deare to him as that and that when it is really evill in it selfe and hurtfull though pleasing to himselfe But man having so little skill how to use such a dangerous instrument were it not much better to resigne it into the hands of him that careth for us more than we doe for our selves and is wiser for us than we for our selves As we see it in Children When a thing of great value is bestowed upon them by some Friend the Parents have the keeping of it least it should be lost spoiled imbezel'd or hurt the young owner till he comes to yeers of discretion So our Godfather properly so called God himselfe bestoweth upon us that great Jewell of Freewill and Choice which he denies to inferiour Creatures but with this tacit condition that we should committe it to his custodie and by his wisdome and direction only use and exercise the same till we come to yeers of true discretion which is only in Heaven and not in this life Then shall we have the full and absolute use of it because then there is no feare that we should use it amisse as here we doe And this is that which holy David adviseth Psalm 55. 22. saying Cast thy burden upon the Lord and he shall sustain thee he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved This is it which St. Peter allso exhorteth unto 1 Ep. 5. 6 7. Humble your selves therefore under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time Casting all your care upon him for he careth for you And more expressely and particularly Christ himselfe counselleth thus his Disciples Matth. 6. Take no thought for your life c. For Which of you by taking care can adde on cubit to his stature The trueth is no man exalts himselfe so highly as he who secluding or not considering God followes the will of himselfe and the greatest of all humiliation is by the subjecting of our wills to Gods and the next and readiest way to true preferrement or exaltation And take no thought saith Christ not commending supinenesse sloth or lazinesse in any but none without God none not directed and regulated by his Will and Prescripts none without consulting him and submitting the event with all confidence aed calmenesse to his all-disposing most wise most just most gracious Providence and in suffering as well as doing his Will For it is a Maxime or Rule berter becoming a Heathens mouth than a Christians Every man is master or maker of his own fortune not but that every man hath a hand in and contributes towards Good or evill events befalling him but that the Architectonicall or Over-ruling Power of all is in God whoe doth not allwayes give the Battle to the strong nor the Race to the swist nor bread to the wise to teach us that he is Lord paramount of all according to the Divine acknowledgement of the Prophet Isaiah Chap. 26. 12. Lord thou wilt ordain peace for us for thou allso hast wrought all our works in us And therefore it seems to me a thing as very memorable so more worthy the mouth and practice of a Christian what is written of Muhamed Olbarsalanus the Great Prince of Bagdet or Babylon a Saracen who being wounded to death in a Battle which he fought as he died said I never before this once fought but first I desired Gods blessing I would all Christians would doe so and have so much confidence in God in all matters especially of importance that they would first implore Gods aid and then depend on him for the successe which if it be favourable he must be humbly thankfull if improsperous in like manner patient as the effect of Gods Divine and wise Providence requires 7. Thirdly The Scripture both by Example and Precepts directs us to this reasonable as well as religious resignation of our wills unto Gods Will when it sets before our eyes the practice of earthly Parents and Children as Hebr. 12. 9. We have had Fathers of our Flesh which corrected us and we gave them reverence shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of Spirits and live For they verily for a few dayes chastened us after their own pleasure but he for our profit that we might be patakers of his holinesse Fathers of our flesh may take a cruell pleasure rather than intend any reall profit or benefit unto Children in chastising them but 't is not to be imagined that God can transgresse the mean or erre in the end of any Dispensation severe or unpleasant to us therefore much rather should we be in subjection to the Father of Spirits and live a more easie safe and comfortable life here than otherwise can be expected and a most happie life hereafter where all things be perfectly subject to the Father as Saint Paul speaks 1 Corinth 15. that he may be here allso as well as hereafter All in All. 6. Fourthly This Selfe-deniall is the true Holocaust or absolute Sacrifice we can give to God and most acceptable imposed upon us as true Believers according to Saint Paul Rom. 12. 1. saying I beseech you brethren by the mercies of God that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice holy acceptable to God which is your reasonable service And be not conformed to this world but be ye transformed by the renewing of the spirit of your minde that ye may prove what is that good and perfect Will of God. Sacrifices came alive to Gods House and Altar but were not accepted till they were slain so it is with the spirituall or reasonable Sacrifice of our selves especially our naturall wills so long as they live cannot please God but they must be crucified as Christ was crucified for us And as the same Apostle advises Rom. 6. we must reckon our selves dead indeed unto sin but alive unto God through Jesus Christ. He that is dead ceaseth from willing and so from sinning He that denieth himselfe and his will is dead indeed unto sin and liveth by the life of the Son of Man and is acted by the Will of God. And surely if it be our Dutie our Wisdome our Righteousnesse to committ our very Soules and life into Gods hands and disposall shall we stick to render that one faculty of our Soule our Wills into his hands That doth Saint Peter exhort us unto 1 Epist 4. 19. Wherefore let them who suffer according to the will of God committ the keeping of their soules to him in well doing as unto a faithfull Creatour Let God then have the keeping of our Wills as he hath of our Lives as he had of Christs
and intemperance of speaking as Theophrastus calls Garulitie be accounted a flux of the Mouth and not eloquence folly and not prudence ignorance and not knowledge according to the acute replye of Demaratus in Plutarch Apotheg Lacon unto one demanding of him being silent when others talked Doe you say nothing out of doubting or ignorance This latter cannot be said he for a Fool cannot hold his Tongue Here therefore let us end this Discourse SECT IX Of outward Moderation to be used in Abstinences and Apparell 1. THAT the Perfection we are capable of here in this World consisteth principally in inward Mortifications and Selfe-denialls That God requireth the heart that God will be worshipped in Spirit and in trueth is most certain and excelleâ—t Doctrine which the crafty Sophister the Devill perceiving to be much applauded and himselfe not able openly to gainsay or destroy he with wonted subtilty betook himselfe to drive it on farther than God himselfe ever intended and to overthrow it by excessive celebration and praises given of it and by confining Religion to its Chamber at first at length to smother it in his Bed. For as the Spirits and naturall faculties of man are the cause of motion and actions so are they maintained and cherished by outward acts and exercises But if a man shall pretend as is before intimated that it suffices that a mans life is entire his Understanding sound and good his Will free and brisk his Affections vigorous and powerfull and these things standing so it is superfluous to take any pains about the outward parts it were to rob God of his due and in time himselfe of that presumed Perfection of his heart and minde For undoubtedly there is a naturall communication and correspondence held between the outward and inward man the Spirit and the Flesh the outward actions and inward affections and that they mutually assist or weaken one another is apparent to reason and experience A man therefore may possibly couzen himselfe with a perswasion of a good heart and pure minde and iâ—…ention spirituall while he takes all the liberty to himselfe which Lawes will allow him of indulging to himselfe in eating drinking clothing adorning his outward person sporting and pastime sleeping and slothfulnesse and argue strictly from the nature of the things or from St. Paul's words I know that there is nothing unclean of it selfe but to him that esteemeth a thing unclean to him it is unclean or from Christ's words Matth. 15. Not that which goeth into the man defileth the man but that which cometh out that defileth the man or from the nature of Cloathing Attires Gesture Postures that nothing is unlawfull of it selfe and therefore it is unlawfull to forbid it and perhaps looks on it by bleer or envious Eyes as a part of the libertie Christ hath purchased for us to doe what we please and to prove the same and to act contrary to the prescriptions of our lawfull Governours endeavouring and designing to regulate the outward man answerable to the habit which best becometh the inward in simplicity in abstinence in gravitie in humility and conformity to anholy profession and possession taken of the Soule by Religion 2. For it is undoubtedly a very false notion of common prudence or vertue and much more of Religion to imagine a man cannot offend both God and his Brother by the scandalousnesse of morose or affected singularity provided his heart be upright towards him which yet can scarce be supposed For unlesse some perverse opinion or disposition first seizes such Spirits it is hard to believe they should affect a disconformity to the Rules and Practice established and designed for the promoting of decencie and Pietye 3. But next to the detestable humour of opposing things because they are commanded is the unreasonable opposition they make to prescribed severities and testimonies of holding unity with the Churches of all Ages and places by undervaluing that little that remains amongst us of auncienter and stricter observations They for instance will tell you that Fasting is abstinence from all Meats and Drinks for the time designed and not to admitt of or tolerate a distinction of Meats and because some exceptions must according to the charity of the Church as well as wisdome and goodnesse of States be made from all Rules and prescriptions of men and sometimes the generall order given by God as appears by the argument of Christ taken from Davids practice Matth. 22. 3. in eating the Shew-bread against the hypocriticall and precise Pharisees they inferre from such Dispensations the absurditie of the Rule with greater absurditie and scoffe and laugh as if they were mighty and much more perfect Chastisers of their Bodies or deniers of their Senses than the low rate prohibitions are set at by the Church The Church to be sure meanes and designes much greater things than it indispensably requires and that while relaxations are but too easily obtained And such glorious asserters of such great things should doe very well to exceed vulgar practices but while they speak contemptibly of the Day of small things themselves in the mean time sometimes alledging the grievousnesse and sometimes the lightnesse of the burden laid on them will doe just nothing in that kinde they and their laughter too become ridiculous 4. But what shall we say of such late Divine Disputants as the Christian world never heard of or if heard of lothed and disowned who stick not to make the uncircumscribed freedome of eating and drinking as Nature moves them a part of that Christian libertie which Christ purchased with his blood and whereby he made us free and in which we must stand fast as they mistake the Apostle As if Christ at the same time that he freed us from the Jewish restraints by Moses had also freed us from all Christian Lawes and proclaimed an everlasting yeer of Jubilee and liberty for the Naturall Law of mens Appetites to take place without distinction of times seasons or reasons left undoubtedly in the power of Superiours to moderate What is this but to make the Coming and Gospell of Christ to advance the brutish part of man to its perfection upon which must necessarily follow the great imperfection of the Spirituall What is this but to interpret the Oracles of God by the Oracles of the Belly suggesting such Scholies Doe I speak this that I can glorie in any gift in this kinde above others No surely but rather blush at my defects herein Only this I may say that I retain such a veneration for the use and ends of abstinences and the universall practice of the Catholick Church that I abhorre the petulancie of such and their presumption who teach otherwise not doubting but they fall under that menace of our Saviour Christ Matth. 5. 19. Whosoever shall break one of these least Commandments and shall teach men so to doe he shall be called the least in the Kingdome of heaven And surely denying our Senses was allwayes reputed a
9. 23. the wise man glorie in his wisdome neither let the mighty man glorie in his might let not the rich man glorie in his riches which is an Inference following upon what is said ver 22. Even the Carcasses of men shall fall as dung upon the open field Is there any so wise that he can deliver his Soule from the hand of the grave The Psalmist saith no. Psalm 49. He seeth that wise men die as well as the ignorant and foolish Or can the Rich mans wealth defend him from the violence of death Of such in the same Psalm it is said None of them can redeem his brother by any means nor give to God a ransome for him And what is beautie more than strength Nay it is much lesse For generally it fades first and while it staies what is it but an apt contemperation of blood and choler and phlegme and that more earthy humour Melancholy which to be proud of is much the same as to be proud of fine Clothes and Fashions which suddenly alter into absurdities and every night as duely as they were put on are put off and laid aside Wherefore rather as the Prophet saith He that glorieth let him glory in the Lord that is account it his greatest honour and happinesse that he knowes God and is educated in the Doctrine of Salvation which principally instructeth all true Believers in the practice of humilitie 12. And Humilitie alone made glorious by the example of Christ and made easie by the Yoke of Christ perswading to it and wearing of it and lightening it to us is instead of a thousand directions to induce an ingenuous Christian to the studie of it and imitation and will wholly leavell the towering minde of man to due compliance with the simplicitie of the Gospell and purge out the sowre and ungratefull leaven of Pride Therefore Christ exhorteth Matth. 11. Learne of me for I am meek and lowly and ye shall finde rest for your Soules Stupendious was the humilitie of Christ in his severall condescensions but whether not equally stupendious it be that after an humble God as Austin speaks there should be found a proud man I think may be doubted It is written of Heraclius Emperour of Greece that having obtained a glorious Victorie over Cosdroes or Cosroes King of Persia he was so puffed up with that successe that he made all possible preparations to enter into the Gates of Hierusalem with greatest triumph and splendour having Christs Crosse carried before him but that an Angell of God opposed him and shut the Gates against him not suffering him to enter but rebuking him said The King of heaven entred in here in mean and low estate which so far affected him that laying away his Imperiall Robes and Trophies and blushing at his own errour he lighted off his Horse or Chariot and walked into the City barefoot Which made good what St. James speakes and St. Peter allso God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble And from hence doth St. Peter exhort us to be clothed with humility which is the true Robe of Christ militant and ought to be of every one that will follow his example and obtain his Promises 13. Lastly Because I know the difficulty of Selfe-deniall in this case is no small impediment to the performance of this Dutie let the generous minde conceive from thence a resolutenesse to encounter such an Adversarie as is worthy of his Christian warfare here on earth and as that Conquest which must needs be great and in the conclusion of all glorious in the best sense because difficult but this difficultie well master'd wonderfully facilitates the Victorie we are to gain of the subordinate Vices introduced and acted principally by this leading only SECT XII Of Anger and its Concomitants the Second Deadly Sin and some Remedies thereof 1. IT is requisite for the better detecting and pursuing of this deadly Enemie that some description be premised thereof but more Divine than Philosophicall properer for other Treatises Anger therefore wrath displeasure revenge and violence in Spirit Word or Deed is a Passion properly belonging to evill Spirits and a resemblance of them furiously bent against God and all that are unlike themselves Beasts indeed have their rage and furie especially provoked but without transgressing any Rule of Reason prescribed them as angry Spirits and men doe Woe be to the earth saith the Angell in the Revelations Chap. 12. 12. For the Devill is come down unto you having great wrath because he knoweth his time is short Not for any just cause given him but because his perverted nature impells him to indignation and furie and by the just Sentence of God upon him he rages by his Office thus described by the Son of Sirach Ecclesiasticus 39. 28. There are Spirits that are created for vengeance which in their furie lay on sore strokes in time of destruction they poure out their force and appease the wrath of him that made them By which it seems there should be some colour and cause for the execution of the wrath of Evill Spirits but I know no ground for the immoderate wrath of men but their lust of tormenting others contrarie to Gods institution 2. And this Vesuvian flame worketh principally three severall wayes sometimes like that fierie Mountain it frets within and consumes its own bowells with madnesse wanting power and meanes to burst out upon others Sometimes it spits fire outwardly in horrible language casts the same in the face of such as it is incensed against calling them all to naught and that if they be not so they may be such by such violence offered And sometimes violent actions assault with what comes next to hand sparing neither limb nor life of such as stand in its way And men having done what Passion urged them to they make this cold defence of their woefull effects They were in a Passion making one sin to justifie another and voluntarie Drunkennesse of minde and phrenzie to apolologize for the worst of actions 3. It is true some men are by their naturall temper more cholerick than others and furious and much more to be excused than they whose nature is more governable and not unhappie but made so by affected and acquired Habits of this nature But God having blessed every man with Princely Reason and fortified the reason of every Christian with the wise and grave Precepts and Documents of Religion and the assistance of the Holy Spirit promised to all that ask it at Gods hands Luke 11. 13. No man can reasonably excuse himselfe from the guilt of such intemperances or say they are not voluntarie in him when as he is obliged so it is in his power to bring his Passions to a conformity to Reason and Gods Will rather than to his own turbulent humour But when frequented excesses in this kinde acted outwardly shall have added strength and improvement to naturall inclinations then is the Passion wholly owing to the will of
suffereth long and is kinde Charitie envieth not Chartie vaunteth not it selfe is not puffed up Doth not behave it selfe unseemly Rejoyceth not in iniquitie but rejoyceth in the trueth Beareth all things endureth all things Which whosoever so doeth cannot envie nor seek nor desire the evill of another nor rejoice at any evill befalling any other as if thereby some good had befallen him which is the guise of Envie Wherefore O Lord who knowest that all our doings without Charitie are nothing worth pour into my heart that most excellent gift of Charitie the proper Antidote against this Poison of Envie hatred and malice and the very soule of all Christian Graces and the Earnest of and key to Glorie and that fire of unquenchable blessednesse contrarie to that unquenchable fire of Hell where the Devill and his Angells are tormented that fo for his fake and through his Spirit who loved us and gave himselfe for us I may with faithfull servent and never failing Charitie love thee who hast first loved me and in thee and for thee all as they belong to Thee through Jesus Christ Amen SECT XIV Of the Capitall Sin Covetousnesse 1. I Have sometimes doubted and wondered how the excessive Declamations found in humane Authours and the sharpest Censures found in Holy Writ can be true of severall Vices as if more than one were worst of all For sometimes Pride is the originall of all Evill and sometimes Covetousnesse is said to be the Root of all Evill as 1 Tim. 6. 10. And than which nothing can be said more severely against any Sin the Apostle adviseth concerning Covetousnesse Ephes 5. 3. Let it not be once named amongst you as becometh Saints For what indeed can worse become Saints whose conversation is in Heaven than to fall flat upon the earth and like Moles to work in it And There is not a more wicked thing than a covetous man saith Ecclesiasticus 10. 2. But comparing the Diseases of the Soule with the distempers of the Body some satisfaction may be given of such exaggerating formes of Speech For as the Maladies of naturall Bodies cannot so well be estimated from their kindes as from the degree of affecting and the danger from the part so affected so is it with the evills of the Soule For a Pin thrust into one part may be more mortall than a Sword run through another And oft-times the pain of the Tooth is lesse tolerable than the Gout in Feet or Joints and a lighter distemper at the Heart more dangerous than a Cancer in the outward parts And thus may Pride be the chief and worst of sinnes of a spirituall nature and Covetousnesse may be the root of all Evill tending to bodily and brutish pleasure though it taketh the least sensible pleasure of any but only treasures up materialls for all other Vices and impells to monstrous desires and actions For gaping and hungry as the unsatiable Grave and dilating its stomach as Hell it fetches from thence allso hellish appetites contriveth plotts to catch its unjust prey or most unjustly hoardeth up and detaineth what perhaps not unjustly was acquired Or if at any time it letteth goe abroad part of its Magazine it is as Garrisons send out Parties to bring in more spoil by pilling and robbing the Country that is by Usurie and extortion or Money lent most disadvantageously to the borrower 3. Certain old Stories doe commonly passe of some Caves Hills or holes of the Earth wherein are great Treasures of Gold and Silver and precious Stones but so that they are kept by Dragons or evill Spirits from being carried out and become usefull to men Very true is this of Wealth in the possession of Covetous Persons There it is to be found but thence it may not be taken by any meanes For 't is kept by Evill Spirits so close that the pretended owner himselfe scarce durst touch it For as Solomon saith What good is there to the owner of them saving the beholding of them with the eyes Ecclesiast 5. v. 11. And yet this is not all but ver 13. There is a sore evill which I have seen under the Sun Riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt A double damage generally happening to the Amassers of Wealth One to the wicked treasurer of it while the more he hath the more he wants and the more he possesseth the lesse he enjoyeth And therefore very aptly in our English Tongue we call a Covetous Person a Miserable Person as most unhappie of all men And it proveth a sore evill to him for whome it is so gathered the Posterity of the Covetous Person scattering with like though contrary pleasure as the Father gathered and by prodigious Prodigality hasting to the Grave and so to Hell for spending as his Predecessour for sparing And the Evill Spirit that stopt the course of due spending now on a suddain drawes up the Sluce and drowns the Country with Vice and Vanity managed for a short season by Money But to begin the torment of the Covetous in this life he is told by trueth it selfe Prov. 28. 8. He that by Vsury and unjust gain encreaseth his substance he shall gather for him that will pitty the poor a thing which he dreadeth most of all who so hoardeth 4. But another Reason may be given why St. Paul calleth Covetousnesse the root of all Evill taking here Evill for Punishment and future Torments For I am of opinion that Covetousnesse sends more grist to the Devills Mill and finds more Fewell for to maintain Hell-fire than any other Sin infidelity perhaps excepted For very many great Sinners in the dayes of their youth and Vanity drawing towards the end of their lives have seriously and savingly repented changed their mindes and manners finding thereupon the effect of Gods bountifull Promises and Goodnesse But Covetousnesse like an inveterate Cancer in the Flesh the older it is the more it proceeds and consumes the Bodie and Soule Seldome doe men repent of their parsimonie and basenesse in their youth but often of their profusenesse and licentiousnesse And not so seldome as it were to be wished so rashly retreat from their former Errours that they run into the contrary Vice of Covetousnesse from which very few returne But the old Sinner thinks he makes God some recompence for his former Vices and doubts not but he repents notably if he declaims against young mens and his own expences in foolish Fashions in riotous Companie in costly Dames of the worst rank and such like miscarriages of youth and sees not that another Sin is to be repented of and his base sparing shall but adde to his punishment for base spending Here comes in a Mock-gravity Sobrietie Temperance Continence zeal against all sins but that he is lately wedded to and embraces as fondly as any he did formerly to the apparent hazard of his Soule mistaking change of sins for Repentance and Reformation of Life Whereas the Rule and Power of true Repentance for
never been free from temptation nor rested satisfied in the servilitie of the Sin. But for any man to connive at lesser failings in him in this kinde as but wandring thoughts affected admiration of Beauties evill intentions and inward concupiscences without execution and much more actions impure is to be overcome and loose all unlesse renewed by Repentance again 7. Neither ought a man to intermitt acts of austerities as Cold Hunger and severe treatments outward of the flesh because sometimes evill events quite contrarie to his expectation have happened to him the reason whereof may be better omitted than enquired into yet most certain it is that constant subjugation as St. Paul speakes 1 Corinth 9. 27. or bringing the bodie into subjection is usefull to that end by the judgement and experience of the most famous Saints in the Church contrary to the vain and absurd Doctrines of modern Directers who doe exhort to the principall work without the proper meanes and so magnifie the Grace of God as necessarie and sufficient alone to effect this as if it could not consist with it or might not better be hoped for by such diligence and circumspection used And when they can no longer deny this fall to reviling them as if they were inseparable from Superstition and opinion of Meriting with the like folly For what a miserable shuffling and evasion is that and plain injustice to lay the blame and defects of Persons upon the dutie performed by them No doubt therefore the universall Churches judgement and practice is much to be preferred before the opinion of moderne and private Apologists for illimited use of sensuall gratifications and opposers of Bodily exercises and disciplining of the Appetites even to the denying of things not in themselves unlawfull as conducing to Chastitie Though the subjecting of the inward affections and lusts is more noble more necessarie more desireable as that to which the other should tend and in which end It was the course Saint Hierom writeth he took with himselfe when he found his flesh to rebell against his spirit in the desert of Bethleem upon an apprehension of a beautifull Ladie he had seen at Rome and began to desire He cast himselfe into the Briars as Gideon used the men of Penuel and Succoth Judges 8. 7. 16. who withstood him and taught his flesh better obedience The like to which writeth Gregory of Saint Benedict Dialog Lib. 2. that he threw himselfe amongst Thornes to turne his light cogitations another way 8. And agreeable to this is that universall Instrument of all Gifts and Graces descending to us from above Prayer and the firme perswasion that from thence and by that not neglecting other meanes Chastitie may be obtained according to the Rule and experience of the wise Man Ecclesiasticus 8. 21. thus writing Neverthelesse when I perceived I could not otherwise obtain her Wisdome or as some render it Undefilednesse mentioned before except God gave her me and that was a point of Wisdome allso to know whose gift she was I pray'd unto the Lord and besought him with my whole heart 9. Thirdly It is very requisite to avoid vain and vile communication which Saint Paul ratifying the opinion of the Gentile Poet assures us begets evill manners And therefore advises farther Ephes 4. 29. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth And by the same Rule should a man let no corrupt communication enter into his eares and suffer no light obscene Books or Sonnets or objects of any Creatures tending that way to draw his eye to them For all these like the Estriches Egges covered perhaps for a time in the Sand untill the warm Sun shall ripen and enliven them will quicken in the minde of man in the heat of temptation or perhaps will of themselves break forth into a temptation and receive consummation according to the Doctrine of Saint James Chap. 1. A man is drawn away thus and enticed Then when lust hath conceived it bringeth forth sin and sin when it is finished bringeth forth death And in avoiding evill Books and directly obscene let more especiall care be had of such Good Books of Moderne Casuists who under pretence of perfecter information of Confessour and Penitent abound with curious enquiries into all the secrets of Nature and sinfull concupiscences exposing them to the view and imaginations of the Reader and exciting of unclean Passions For all these sensible insinuations of unlawfull Lusts yea acts Lawfull to them that use them in a regular way become Images in the minde which the natural man turnes to upon occasion and falls down before worshipping them and idolizing them to his shame and fall 10. Fourthly Let it be consider'd what honour God doth to the chast Soule and Body in that he esteems them as his own Temple Christ and looks upon them as his own Members in especiall manner And on the contrary how ill he taketh transgressings in this kinde Know ye not that ye are the Temple of the Holy Ghost and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you If any man defiles the Temple of God him shall God destroy for the Temple of God is holy which Temple ye are 1 Corinth 3. 16 17. And in another place with what indignation doth the same Saint Paul 1 Cor. 6. 15. argue against such affronts offered to Christ himselfe by such practices as these Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them the members of an harlot What Monster of confounded Kinds did ever match this Prodigious mixture whereby Christ and an Harlot Christ and a Fornicatour are made one No wonder then that the Scripture assures us Ephes 5. 5. that No Whoremonger or unclean person hath any inheritance in the Kingdome of God and of Christ And sufficeth not this to quench the flames of lust in us and to repent throughly for it 11. Last of all Consider we what a concatenation of other Vices is found too often in this one and the reason will be apparent why it is accounted a Mother-sin For though Harlots are seldome fruitfull the sin of Whoredome is We hear much spoken of simple Fornication as minutely peccant in the opinion of divers But doth not that beget basenesse of Spirit and as Saint Austin saith lownesse of understanding nothing casting down the wit of man more from its top and Tower than such inordinate love of Women Nothing makeing a man more contemptible and ridiculous than that known Vice. But that is not all For from hence comes wasting of Estates as the History of the Prodigall cleerly proveth Hence allso proceeds Quarrelling and Duelling as it is amongst Dogs when they follow a Bitch that runs proud And Murders follow them and too often to avoid the shame of the world is destroyed with murdering Potions or Pills the fruit of the wombe before it ripens and which is worse are not sensible of that more heinous sin in covering sin
is requisite that we should not rest in the opinion we have of our selves which is commonly biassed by selfe-conceit selfe-love selfe-interest all quite contrary to that great Dutie of Selfe-deniall but that we should be so true and just to our own Soules as like righteous Judges to keep one Ear for what others judge of us and impartially to give a sentence upon our selves accordingly and not slie to that base and bold subterfuge of nonplus'd and shamelesse persons I care not I care not For though Malice and ill-will may instigate some one or two and upon speciall occasion to false accusations and slanders yet if the opinion be of more and those not so prejudiced and constant and lasting in vain doe men proclaim their integrity and innocencie for such judgement of others is much more to be trusted than our own 7. Sixthly Appearance of Evill and Hypocrisie reverst as I may so speak when men seem by outward carriage to be worse than in trueth they are is allso carefully to be avoided not onely because of the sin of scandalizing our Brethren and causing an erroneous judgement and uncharitable to be entertained but because it very often happens that men fall really into that sin which they at first onely seemed to committ Therefore it is St. Pauls Rule Philip. 2. 4. Look not every man on his own things but every man allso on the things of others not by curiositie and censoriousnesse but Charitie and conscienti ous walking without offence to others and if possible to prevent sin in others as well as our selves 8. Lastly Every man should have Charitie towards his Brother but no man is to demean himselfe so as to stand in need of the charitable judgement of others For he that doth so is certainly uncharitable in the first place and being really guiltie within himselfe is most wickedly unjust in demanding that another should be so charitable as not to think so of him though there be use of Charitie even where Crimes are past defence or excuses but for men to live conscious to themselves of unrighteousness towards God and justice towards men and then because there may want notorious convictions to demand of Censurers to judge charitably is in effect to require that others should be religious and they may be wicked under the protection of others Pietie and Charitie A Prayer for Puritie of Spirit O Lord God who is like unto thee amongst the Gods Who is like unto thee glorious in holinesse fearfull in praises doing wonders And what greater wonder is there than of sons of Men we should be called the Sons of God and of Children of wrath heirs of the Kingdome of God of lost sheep be brought back to the great Shepheard of our Soules of prodigall and fugitive Sons be brought home and embraced by thee our heavenly Father making us as well as requiring us to be holy as thou art holy raising us from the death of sin to the life of Righteousnesse given us by the Spirit of Grace which worketh in us by the meanes of Grace ordained by thee to that great end Let that Spirit be never wanting in me let that Grace never be received by me in vain whereby I may be sensible of my unworthinesse and insufficiencie to any thing that is good and at least to have an hunger and thirst after righteousnesse that I may in thy due time be satisfied and in the mean time grow and increase in this desire and this desire proceed to action and this action to such perfection as to overcome and mortifie all worldly lusts and Carnall affections purifying my selfe as he is pure and taking greater content and pleasure in casting off than ever I did in taking on me the burden of sin and in purging away all my old sin than ever I did in contracting those spots and blemishes which have too much and too long defiled that pure Spirit thou once gavest me and defaced that beautifull Image thou once stampedst on me And let the pleasure of Repenting be greater to me than that of offending ever was to me though alas it was too great Lord nothing is impossible to thee who canst bring light out of darknesse and strength out of weaknesse and out of stones raise up Children unto Abraham and to thy selfe and out of the ruines of Religion in me raise up a Temple fit for thy holy Spirit to dwell in Descend into possesse and dwell in my heart by faith and love of thee which may purge out the old leaven and make me a new lump and quench all fleshly Concupiscences which have or may raign over me or rage in me For this corruptible bodie presseth down my minde musing on high and heavenly things and the weight of sin so easily besetteth me that I cannot run the Race which is set before me and the stain of sin pollutes my best actions Wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from this bodie of death from this bondage of corruption Thy grace I know O Lord is sufficient for me and thy Son mighty to save and that his Office is to save his people from their sins from their sins I say as well as from the punishment of sin Let that Day-star at length arise in my heart and enlighten and warm my minde with love of thee and let that breath of new life be inspired into me enliven my dead bodie and re unite and animate my drie bones and excite me with new vigour to the perfourming thy holy will that so the life I now live may be by the faith of the Son of God and being poor in spirit as he was I may be pure in spirit as he allso was for theirs is the Kingdome of God even the Kingdome of Grace here and the Kingdome of Glory hereafter whither O mercifull God and Father in thy due time bring me for thy blessed Sons sake Jesus Christ my Saviour Amen The Third Part. Treating of the UNITIVE WAY OF THE Devout Soule with God. SECT I. Of the Nature of true Vnion with God and Mysticall Theologie and of the Abuses and due Vse thereof 1. SUCH due preparation being made towards Spirituall Life in laying aside every sin so easily besetting us the remainder of our Christian Race towards God and our Union with him are more easily attained which Union is by Saint John called our fellowship with the Father and the Son 1 John 1. 3. And this is it which vulgarly is called allso Perfection Perfection being here used for Justification by faith in Christ and Christ dwelling in us and such a measure of assurance of Gods grace and favour which are competible to our Militant state in this life and incline God to the acceptation of us to a future inheritance of Immortalitie and Glorie And to this it is not absolutely necessarie that no blemish imperfection or infirmity should be incident but that none such should be found which either of it selfe should tend to corruption
cause to burne with the love of God. Why therefore may I not call such as these Seraphims whose hearts are converted into fire shining and burning and withall illuminating the eyes of mens mindes unto heavenly things and pricking them with tears purge away the rust of Vices This in sum may be said to be the more perfect state of the Soule here united unto God of which we are now more particularly to treat SECT II. That this Vnion consisteth chiefly in true knowledge of God and Love experimentall and reciprocall 1. THEY who write Scholastically of this Union of the Soule with God in their Treatises of Mysticall Theologie doe first speak of it in the Speculative way endeavouring to show the difference between it and common Theologie and in what part of the minde this Science is seated and such like which we purposely here omitt And some more phanatically having learned from Saint Paul Ephes 5. That Christ is the Husband of the Church and consequently that there is a Mysticall Wedlock between it and every true particular member of that and Christ pursue the Allegorie so boldly and indiscreetly as to prophane that holy Mysterie by carnall resemblances and Scholies which we shall avoid It sufficing that as Saint Paul there saith Great is the Mysterie and that great Mysteries are not too curiously to be enquired into but believed firmly with endeavours to attain the same which endeavours must be grounded upon the proper meanes conducing thereunto which most of all deserve here to be explained 2. Of these then the present knowledge of God according to humane capacitie must needs be the first step and that not a knowledge of humane Science but rather of Christian faith and experience which St. Paul 2 Corinth 2. 14. most aptly and significantly calleth the savour of the knowledge of God not onely informing but affecting us as it were sensibly or experimentally 3. Upon this good beginning is built the desire of God as of the most excellent glorious and good object of all that being fullfilled which Isaiah hath Chap. 26. 8. Yea in the way of thy judgements O Lord have we waited for thee the desire of our Soule is to thy Name and to the Remembrance of thee For in trueth God is in himselfe the most desireable of all things as he is the chiefest good of all things and of whose fullnesse in that kinde all things that are good doe partake and become good So that as it is impossible any thing should be form'd really good but what is really and more perfectly such in him so can we desire nothing but what is most absolutely and perfectly to be had in and with him So that according to the illumination of the understanding concerning God and things Divine will follow an appetite of the will affected therewith For naturall Philosophie teaches truely than man hath not Free-will in choosing that which is chiefest Good and ultimate of all but without consultation or deliberation ravished with its allsufficiencie and plenitude tendeth naturally and necessarily to it as the last end of all beyond which there is no passing and besides it there is no straying as being immense So that we may suppose Lucifer himselfe excelling naturally in perspicacitie and intuitive knowledge which he had of that absolute Good was so far surprised with its splendour and perfection that contenting not himselfe to be neer contemplate and enjoy it affected to be that it selfe by sacrilegious ambition and so lost what really he had and was So that we may perceive a necessarie conjunction between cleer and firme knowledge and sincere and fervent love as there is a Morall as they call it necessity of conjunction between Love and the thing we so loved 4. Under Love which is the very Unitive Bond of Christ and the Soule we comprehend Desire allso which some make one kinde of Love and Complacencie another But Complacencie being rather a Concomitant of Love possessed of its Object than any actuall appetite may more properly be termed a satiation and rest of the Soule But Love is an act or motion towards somewhat not fully at least enjoyed And though there may be a full fruition the heart of man ceases not to love or desire in some sense as when that actually and at present enjoyed is desired as absent and in the continuation for time to come For as no man according to the Philosophie of Saint Paul hopeth for what he hath so neither doth he desire what he hath but the desire remaining after possession is of the perpetuation and indeficiencie of the same As when Peter and John at the Transfiguration of Christ beholding and admiring the Glorie did desire Tabernacles to be erected in which they might rest further in the blessed state they were then in So much more full then as our knowledge is of God and his Excellencies in Christ so much more ardent will be and so much better settled our love of them and consequently our union more intimate and fixed in them answerable to which the Schoolmen as well as Mysticall Divines have found out four degrees of Love divine Thom. 1. 2. qu. 28. a. 5. Co. Liquefaction Fruition Languor and Fervour which I hold not fit to be here insisted upon as being more admirable than profitable A more moderne Authour and more truely and devoutly reduceth all love of God to these three Heads whereof the first cometh onely through Faith without gracious imaginations or spirituall Knowledge of God which is in the least Soule reformed by Faith and in the lowest degree of Charity which is good as sufficing to salvation The second is that which a Soule feeleth through faith and imagination of Jesus in his Manhood which is better than the former when the Imagination is stirred by Grace For then the spirituall Eye is opened in beholding of his Humanitie The third is Love that a Soule feeleth through spirituall sight of the Godhead in the Humanity as it may be seen here is the best and most worthy and that is perfect love This love a Soule feeleth not till it be reformed in feeling Thus that Authour in the Scale of Perfection 5. But I esteem that more usefull and easie distinction of Love or Union with God alltogether sufficient for all purposes requisite to a good Christian For either we love because by Faith we know and see spiritually things lovely or desireable as God in his Perfections and Christ in his Mediation active and passive and the holy Spirit in its operations Divine Or we love because we finde and feel the power of all these in the inward-man by the sense of the Love of God first in such sort manifested unto us For as Saint Austine Epist 106. hath it answerable to the grounds laid by Saint John 1 Epist 4. 19. Faith which worketh by love would not work at all unlesse the very Love of God be first shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given
they presently feel most grievous torments And this I rehearse verily believing that God by his holy Spirit doth elevate some men so extraordinarily as that they exceed humane order in contemplations and sensations heavenly and that evill Spirits may counterfeit notably the same effects in their Servants And hereupon I leave these few Rules to all sober faithfull and devout Christians tending to the discerning of Spirits good and evill 5. First they who pursue the great meanes ordained of God to arrive at the heighth of the Love of God uniting them to God and causing an acquiescence and rest in him so that in effect their reasons and senses naturall inconsisting with such perfection should be lost in God and in Christ and they live in the world undisturbed by it are laudably and safely extaticall 6. Secondly That they who may have surpassed others in the exercise of Christian Vertues and the Unitive Way with God and no wayes aim at such Perfections or desire them as at the best not making the Soule more good but more great rather and not more dear or acceptable to him which should be every prime Christians studie and endeavour may have exaltations of this nature which importunately coveted may provoke God to deliver them over to delusions of evill Spirits 7. Thirdly Seeing counterfeit Ware comes too often under the countenance and resemblance of what is pure and passing good the soundnesse of the faith professed by such is not proved by such excesses but such excesses must be rather judged by the Law and Testimonie of God as Isaiah speakes Chap. 8. upon which Faith is grounded and by which it is directed For no otherwise true is that description of Extasies given by that auncient Authour called Dionysius the Areopagite That Extasies are a wisdome putting a man besides himselfe than that suspension or absorption of naturall knowledge and understanding is occasioned by the dominion of divine Irradiations truely so called So that this excesse of Light and Love must be it selfe subject to tryall and that twofold principally the one taken from the Antecedent and the other from the Consequent Circumstances For if sobernesse of believing and divinenesse of behaving our selves lead not to these Extasies they are spurious and dangerous Again if such transported mindes thereupon fall into unreasonable unjust or ridiculous actions inconsistent with the gravitie and puritie of the divine Presence there supposed it is but reasonable to suspect the Scene to be managed by idle Spirits For Rapts of a Royall stamp are such as Gerson describes An experimentall knowledge of God obtained by a conjunction of spirituall affection Which Unitive and experimentall knowledge may be had without the disorder of the naturall understanding and may allso dissetle it so as to depend for some time wholly upon Gods supportation and transportation and that especially in the estimation of the world and common judgements For thus was Christ judged to be Mark 3. 21. and that by his own Friends besides himselfe and Saint Paul allso by Festus and by some other Believers as may be gathered from 2 Corinth 5. 13. SECT IV. Of the Vnion of the Soule with God by Divine Contemplation and Meditation with some instances of particular Subjects of this latter 1. WHEN Meditation and Contemplation are distinguished as sometimes they are Contemplation may be said to be directed immediately to God and the fixing of the minde and heart on him and from and through him to cast an eye on the Creatures and the various acts of his Providence in which he is seen allso with an Evening Light and Knowledge as he is with a Morning Light as Saint Austin was wont to speak by that immediate Intuition which yet properly is to be attained onely in Heaven But Meditation is the consideration of created things not so much as they are in themselves which is the employment of naturall Philosophers but as they are effects of a Divine and supernaturall Power and designed to the assistance of duller and weaker Eyes which are not able to behold the Glorie of God but as men doe the beauty of the Sun in Water And yet from hence ascent is made to a faithfull and fruitfull apprehension of God himselfe where the Soule mounted as was Peter James and John at the transfiguration of Christ desireth to abide and have its residence for ever 2. But Grace and Goodnesse here being in their minoritie yea and under Tutours and Governours as the Apostle speakes Galat 4. 2. We are not to take possession of the promised and expected Inheritance in this life But the Methode hereunto is this which we finde exemplified in David speaking thus Psalm 17. I will behold thy face in righteousnesse here when I awake I shall be satisfied with thy likenesse For as Saint Paul allso saith 1 Corinth 13. 12. 2 Corinth 3. 18. We all with open face beholding as in a glasse the glorie of the Lord are changed as into the same Image from glorie to glorie even as by the Spirit of the Lord meaning hereby that the Spirit of God concurring with the Glasse of Gods Creatures and his revealed Word gives us a true but a distant and so dimme representation of God as through Perspectives And these to improve to the best degree and advantage is the great businesse of our present state here as whereby we are dayly wrought to a conformity to the Image of Christ and God defaced in us and returne unto his likenesse and a liking of him which two are both Unitive of us to God and actuall Union with him according to our present capacity For it is true in Religion what Philosophie in her Sphere teaches that the Understanding is made all things answerable to its Object the minde of man wonderfully conforming it selfe to such things as are brought unto it by the Ear or Eye and is in a manner figured by them as we see that Water admitting any Body more solid than it selfe into it selfe gives way to it and receives the shape thereof within it selfe as doth the Air allso though not so visibly to our sense So the minde of man contemplating and conceiving God and Divine matters is formed or conformed to the same morally loosing its naturall shape and posture and propensities which is thus expressed by Saint Paul Rom. 12. 2. And be not conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your minde that ye may prove what is that good that acceptable and perfect will of God. For instance a man hearing and taking pleasure in absurd riotous and obscene Discourses or Books as is in part noted before is conformed thereunto and corrupted therewith the Images of things so imbibed or impressed being with great difficulty to be removed and with great facility and promptitude stirring up or at least yielding to sinfull temptations as occasion shall be offered agreeably And so in mens reading of the Histories of far and unknown Countries and the strange fruits of
capable and many times sensible is the minde so erected to God separated from businesses of the world of the sweetnesse of abstractions of that nature And the Trances of Daniel Peter and most probably of Paul befell them in such retirements without the concurrence of a Congregation or the Mediation though not Ministration of Holy Spirits which we never read in Scripture to be Intercessours in any kinde to God in behalfe of the Saints here labouring but onely Ministers and Delegates of God to perfourme his pleasure to such as so wait for him and call upon him And as for Saints in Heaven we never so much as read in Holy Scripture that they were sent at any time by God to minister unto his Servants here on Earth as Angells have been neither are we directed by the Word of God to have any communication with them visible or sensible It must needs therefore be a third Oeconomie of God as yet unrevealed besides that of Moses or Christ which assignes us new intermediate Objects or Vehicles of our Prayers to God no wayes made known by God but devised by humane ratiocinations intruding into things not seen and founded on presumptions not known nor demonstrable but by such instances and examples of miraculous Apparitions which may more than suffice to turne the stomach from swallowing them 4. But presumption it is not to goe directly in Scripturall Road prescribed us to Allmighty God but to goe out of it neither is it modesty but rather a double impudence to alter the course of our Devotion to God in importuning them to sollicite for us who never gave us the least intimation or encouragement so to doe and in not following the direct Precept given by Christ as our Great Mediatour and by God himselfe as our heavenly Lord and Father Whence doth it appear that God is of more difficult accesse since the coming of Christ than he was before Or when and how became the priviledges of Gods faithfull Children under Christ inferiour to them under Moses Did the souls of the faithfull then make immediate approaches unto God and claspe him and may we not or in trueth ought we not much rather so to doe as well for the glorie of God some of which must needs fall short of God and stick to the hands that should so offer our worship to God and that whether those holy Spirits will or not we failing in the puritie of our intention and modestie and innocencie of our expressions so applying our selves as allso for our comfort and satisfaction which must needs be more full the more immediate and strict our conjunction is with God our fellowship as Saint John tells us being with the Father and the Son and that surely will bear us out in all immediate approaches to God but scarce allow application to others which are onely commendable where the bond of civill Charitie in this life the ground of the exercise of spirituall Offices to one another is not dissolved as it is when we are separated by Death So that we can onely in Christ exclusively come with that boldnesse and accesse with confidence by the faith of him as the Apostle speakes Ephes 3. 12. but with suspicions fears and doubtings untill customarinesse hath blinded the minde so far that it cannot see afar off And then if it fares with us as it happens to poor Suppliants suing to an earthly King surrounded with his Guards and Nobles that they cannot come at his Majestie no wonder unlesse it could appear that it was any ones appointed Office or Office of all to be Masters of request to God on our behalfe SECT VI. Of the defects incident to the Act of Prayer and their Remedies 1. AS there are Guards of Princes whose Office it is to push off with Pikes and Staffs such as would presse into their presence so Evill Spirits are allwayes at hand making it their Office to hinder devout Soules coming to God by their temptations and obstructions and either by wholly putting us off that we approach not at all or by pulling us off engaged so that we cease in spirit when we proceede in words and outward appearance so that we may be said to draw nigh unto him with our Lips while our Hearts are far from him a thing much disallowed by God yet not in all alike For the spirit and minde of Man are naturally fickle light vain various musing on many things and Dinah-like gadding abroad to see the Daughters of the Land and visiting strange Objects while they should keep home and minde their Fathers businesse And of the heart it may be said what was said of Ruben Vnstable as waters thou shalt not excell For what powerfullnesse may be expected in that Prayer which is prepared for God and designed but falls short of him as an Arrow shot from an unbent or halfe broken Bow. And how unreasonable as well as unlikely is it that God should heare us when we scarce heare our selves For as when the outward Eye seemes to be fixed stedfastly on an Object the minde in the mean time carried strongly after another Object doth not see what is before it many times so though in appearance outward a man seems wholly bent to Godward yet his heart being drawn off him to private Objects which it more phansies he speaketh in Prayer not to God but to men or the open Air. And it must needs be no small derogation from the greatnesse of God to be thus mocked by the world catching up that by the way which is passing towards him and the Sacrifice maimed or blemished by the fingring of Evill Spirits which was devoted wholly to God and at the same time that we have warme affections towards the world to set cold Meat before God. So that in this manner supinely and slothfully to request any thing at Gods hands must needs be a provocation to God to denie us rather than to gratifie us It is little better than an Idoll which is set up in the heart which drawes the current of Devotion to it selfe intended for God and such God threatens in Ezechiel to answere by himselfe but not in Mercie but in Justice And it was the opinion of an Auncient and devout Scholar in the School of Christ that if God should judge a man for no other thing but his wandring and vain thoughts in praying to him he were not able to stand before him 2. This in trueth is the Law of Prayer and this is the end of praying that we should have and keep our mindes erected unto God and to attain this should be the endeavour of all good Christians But if not onely God should be so extreme to mark what is thus done amisse but man should be so rigorous to himselfe to judge himselfe according to his demerits he might fear and despair to undertake this sacred Dutie For who can say on this side of Heaven I am clean from this common Contagion So vigilant and active is
the action in hand 9. Lastly A certain revenge upon a man and a conscience towards God for defrauding him of his due service and himselfe of the benefit of Prayer by vain Aberrations may be usefull here which is this That upon a sense of such strayings in his thoughts in time of Prayer he punishes his Carnall part desireing to be at liberty by going over again with that which he once perfourmed so negligently For hereby allso having so resolved to doe he shall be revenged of the Tempter and cause him to be lesse busie in molesting him afterward finding such evill successe in his wiles and so good effect of a bad Cause SECT VII Of the due use of Publique and Private Prayer 1. WHerefore think we did God build the spacious and beautifull Temple of this World this Universe which we behold and admire but to make known the glorie of his Majestie and that it being known by us should affect us with proportionable zeale to celebrate his Prayse all the wayes he hath taught us and all that we can devise not repugnant to his own prescriptions They therefore that would shrink up all Devotions into an House of their own nay peradventure into their own brest and a narrow dark corner of the heart judging that alltogether sufficient doe in a manner implicitely lay a slight upon the Creation of the World by God as superfluous seeing be might have been as great and glorious in himselfe without that But the same Spirit if not Person that said Psalm 119. 11. Thy Word have I hid in mine heart said allso Psalm 40. 10. I have not hid thy righteousnesse within my heart I have declared thy faithfullnesse and thy salvation I have not concealed thy loving kindenesse and thy trueth from the great Congregation intimating unto us that the stock of Grace inwardly must not be kept so as it were under Lock and Key as not to appear publiquely to the use and service of him to whome as Money bearing his Image and superscription it properly belongeth The House of God so called because it is devoted to his service is undoubtedly the most proper place of his Worship that being like the Treasurie-Chamber of Kings and great Princes into which all Duties are to be paid and out of which all undue favours are to be dispensed And therefore surely as greater glory is given to God by publique than by private Worship so greater Blessings may be from thence expected And though common Prayers wherein many agree to glorifie God in private places is to be preferred before single Devotion the same service in Gods House as more publique and exemplarie must needs be more acceptable than that of private Places Christ said indeed to confound Hypocrites seeking praise of men When thou prayest enter into thy Closset and shut thy Door c. never intending to confine men to their Chambers in praying but to cut off ostentation in Prayer which yet may be avoided in publique Prayers The Devill therefore envying the glory of God and the edification of Christians in faith towards God and Charitie to one another and a more powerfull accesse to God and a more prosperous successe of publique Prayers there offered must needs have a Finger in that sacrilegious doctrine of detracting from the honour and efficacie of publique Prayers in matching private with it 2. They say God is in all places that he is They say God dwelleth not in Temples made with hands They say God can hear us in all places at home as well as at Church and in Private as well as in Publique And in saying this and the like they say they know not what For doth God dwell in Clossets or Halls or Parlours or Kitchins and doth he not dwell in Temples made with hands Is it not said expressely of the Temple that it is the place where his Honour dwells Psalm 26. 8. Psalm 29. 9. And are not there expresse Promises fixed there above other places If it be said Those things were Jewish Let them tell me if they were not Gentile allso if among all Nations civiliz'd and professing Religion and among all Christians so soon as they were able and permitted to have Publique places they carried not their Sacrifices to them to be tender'd to God and shall private senses of ignorant persons in the Scriptures presumed upon without knowledge or ground preponderate all these And hereunto not to repeat here what hath elsewhere been more fully discussed we may adde the Mock which is too often put upon God and Religion by this Opinion so that very often God is not worshipped at all in Private by divers who plead for such private Worship which is securely passed over uncensur'd because no man can witnesse to the contrary But I may say safely no men generally make a greater Conscience of worshipping in their proper seasons in Private than they who most frequent the Publique worship For Private worship was onely intended for an Auxiliarie and supplie of what we could not perfourme publiquely which I can scarce think God will accept of when it is grounded upon such a false foundation as making Private equall to Common Prayer joyntly with others or to such publique Prayer which in Gods House is by private and single Persons made to God agreeable to the Primitive practice of Christians so early as they had such places to pray in and never laid down but where an unluckie and precipitant zeal against a scandalous Religion hurried men forward to divers unwarrantable alterations in Religion not in one Church nor one Age received and practised 3. And against this makes nothing what Saint Paul saith 1 Tim. 2. 8. I will that men pray every where lifting up holy hands but teaches how we should pray where-ever and when-ever we pray that is Lifting up holy hands And that we should rather pray any where than no where but not excluding Prerogatives of some places above others They write of Lombard that being reproached by the Devill for praying in an House of Office an unseemly place for so holy an Action as a man may think he answered him Here and any where else I may pray unto my God which is most true in some cases but 't is not true therefore that one place is not better than another to pray in or that all are alike to God in all respects saving that of accommodation for Companie to meet in But necessitie may consecrate any Place and affected choice of privacie when circumstances require publique and open worship may desecrate or unhallow any Room making it unfit to serve God and the worship it selfe unpleasing to God So that to me it is not easie to resolve whether the moderner way so much applauded by some of constancie of Family-meetings in Prayers to the keeping the Church vacant and the Doors shut at all times allmost but when a man scarce dares stay away have not robbed God of more glorie and worship than they have given
him the exception lying onely good where there can be no accesse to the publique Place 4. But I know not what vitious and very blameable modesty hath possessed so many of late dayes as to be affraid to be seen or taken praying and sundry devout Persons are startled and shrink to be seen unawares at their Prayers in Gods House it selfe which is the House of Prayer unlesse when the Bells publish the dutie at hand and an Assembly is made professedly and so likewise at their domestick and separate Devotion as if they were taken in a fault or some Crime whereof a man should be ashamed and affraid some men being more abashed seen to doe well than others are taken in an evill Action This cannot be well thought of by God whose service a man is then engaged in and cannot but be an infirmitie in men praying For though a man is not hypocritically and with no better designe than to be noted and praised by men to expose studiously himselfe to the view of others while he prayes he is no lesse obliged not to forbear what place and time and just occasion require at his hands or otherwise may be expedient because people see him For God sayes Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorifie your Father which is in Heaven and the manifestation of our Adoration and service is likewise a manifestation of his honour and glorie And if at length we could recover and bring into Reputation such lost good Actions as publique Prayer in private Persons Religion would be more renowned and many more than now doe would allso fall down and say God is in you of a trueth and so be excited to the same good work or worship in use 5. But a known time of Gods Worship being assigned a sound entire tryed approved Sacrifice and reasonable service of God being appointed for Confession Humiliation Supplications Petitions Deprecations Intercessions Thanksgivings and Benedictions as Saint Paul directeth 1 Tim. 2. 1. with sobrietie or good Conscience to contemne these either ignorantly or presumptuously and to foist in private Inventions scarce so good as humane all things considered what amounts this to but a despising of Christ himselfe and a provocation of God to cast the officious zeal of such as dung upon their own faces For how can it be supposed that God should be pleased with that Oblation obtruded upon him and others without Autoritie which is often put up without Faith and never with Charitie or Humilitie convenient But if our Prayers themselves offend how should we hope for pardon of our offences by them That therefore they should have favourable accesse to God is necessarie they should be dulie qualified themselves and that such as these Conditions here onely to be named be found in them 1. That we pray in Faith that God is and that he is a rewarder of all that call upon him 2. That we pray in trueth without any hereticall or erroneous Dogmes or corrupt Opinions of God of his Word or holy Worship 3. Praying in puritie of intention seeking even when our Prayers consist of spirituall or temporall benefits to our selvles primarily the glorie and good will of God. 4. In Puritie or holinesse of hands that is innocencie of life as David when he said I will wash my hands in innocencie and so will I goe to thine Altar or at least a dislike of our guilt and contaminations making them part of our humiliation and supplications to God. 5. In Charitie towards others so far as Justice and Pietie will permitt And lastly In zeal to Gods service and to our own Soules in so praying which is that lifting up the Soule we so much speak of here and leaving it with him to preserve to his greater service and glorie and our immortall happinesse SECT VIII Of the severall sorts of Prayer viz. Sensible Mentall Supramentall Extemporarie Formed and fixed as allso Singing of Psalmes 1. NOw because there are usually distinguished severall kinds of Prayer to God as well according to the matter as manner of putting up our requests to him all concurring in this one thing that the minde and heart should be thereby united to God and fixed it will not be amisse to glance at the principall in this second order having touched the former from the Apostles words 1 Tim. 2. 1. All which relate to the matter of Prayer and may be perfourmed in any one of those which great Artists have cast into this threefold Prayer viz. Sensible Mentall and Supramentall Sensible they make that which is common to all Christians praying to God in a vocall sensible manner to themselves and others Mentall they would have that called which is contemplative and whereby the minde is throughly directed to God not without affection For if the Understanding onely be erected and directed to God it can scarce deserve the name of Prayer to God as Philosophizing about him therefore it is necessarie that affectionatenesse and adherence to God by love which are acts of the will allso should be found in all due Prayer yea in all Treaters of the nature and use of Prayer otherwise acute and learned men may prescribe better than teach or affect A manifest Example we have in the two great Chieftains amongst Schoolmen Thomas the Angelicall and Bonaventure the Seraphicall Doctour as they call them Both which have in their Opuscula written Treatises of the Love of God. In which the former keeping closer than in such a Subject is expedient to Scholasticall Methods and termes of writing hath left but a dry Monument and insipide to a spirituall Palate of his gift in that kinde whereas Bonaventure speaking out of the abundance of the heart and affection as the Subject required rather than by the rule of humane disquisitions hath much more divinely commendably and profitably as to practice treated thereof And spirituall Doctrine and devotion towards God seem much to resemble the Notion we generally have of the nature of Spirits in themselves which they say consisteth in not being circumscribed by limits as our Bodies are but indefinite and diffusive very much like to the bodie of the Air in which we are inclosed which is capable of any figure but determined to none In like manner Spirituall Prayer and the gifts God bestoweth upon the Soule are not to be limited by the lineaments and parts of humane Methods which as it were fetters the Spirit from expatiating according to its pleasure which like the Winde bloweth and breatheth and leadeth as it listeth and is in very deed as Phanatiques terme it stinted and obstructed by the Arts of Men modelling their Devotion and not subject rather to it and following rather than going before its dictates and impulses For however I finde many Commentatours ingeniously enough and acutely methodizing holy Scripture and Analyzing it so as if it had been the very intent and designe of the Holy Spirit therein to speak Logically and
methodically yet could never be so really perswaded but that holy Men of old speaking and writing as they were moved by the Spirit contemned all order and Methods but what naturally arose from the bowells of the Subject they treated of and the occasion given them not contradicting or denying liberty to men to forme their matter by outward Methods as may agree best with the learning retaining and digesting what they finde there delivered 2. And answerable to this the more Mentall a mans Contemplations are the lesse methodicall are they wont to be So that if there be such a thing as may be called properly Prayer Supramentall as Authours speak it must be more strange to Order and Methode than either of the two other degrees of Prayer and be of the nature of Rapts and Extasies of which we have spoken For by such puritie of intention and such vehemencie of intension and ardour in directing a mans minde and heart to God and as it were delivering up his spirit into his hands the intellectuall facultie may cease which is that Absorption spoken of allso and such that can be approved onely from the goodnesse and Divinenesse so pored on and with its lustre confounding them carried away with it For it is apparent that Evill Spirits doe in like manner oppresse the mindes of the Persons devoted to them And therefore as I cannot condemne all such excesses mentall or supramentall rather so can I approve them no farther than they are consonant to the Law and the Testimonie and the Spirit of the Living Prophets I mean the Church truely so called and the peace and Charitie of the same So that as I cannot but think favourably of those extravagant passages and rulelesse while the Authours of them keep the peace of the Church and known principles of Christianity innovating nothing in the Faith but onely in their own supramentall Facts as we may terme them so can I no wayes justifie those presumptuous Spirits who not having attained to the true mentall Prayer dare obtrude their vocall and sensible Prayer upon the spirits of an whole Congregation and that without any good Autority so to doe 3. After the extraordinary gift of unprepared Prayer ceased in the Church of God together with unprepared preaching of the Gospell it lay upon the Governours of the Church to supplie that defect in the best manner they could by composing and prescribing formes for Publique Worship lest any scandall or indecencie should disaffect soberer and more prudent Christians And when the Bishop presiding in the Church committed any part of his wide charge to his Presbyter we never finde that he departed in the Publique Worship from what was in use in the Mother-Church either as to matter or forme Nay the principall Pastour of any Diocese never was himselfe so imperious over his Flock as vain men of late dayes to offer a new and unknown Office to Believers every day or to God as more spirituall or acceptable to him but aymed at nothing more than a Common plain well-known well-approved and constant forme of sound words to which all intelligent Christians might safely and cheerfully give their concurrence and sett to their Seal of Amen And to denie liberty to Ministers to offer the Will-worship of their own inventions in Publique was never lookt upon as they say as Lycurgus-like to cut up all the Vines in the Country lest men should be drunk but rather cutting down the wild Vines whose fruit is ungratefull to judicious Palates and pernicious to the community of Christians Wherein the gift of Prayer consisteth we have touched before but sure we are it consisteth not in the volubility of the Tongue readinesse of Invention fluencie of Speech choice of Divine Phrases but in the grace of Prayer which the same men unhappily would distinguish from the Gift which is a certain pure intention and fervent intension of Spirit lifted up to God which may consist with a Prayer used ten thousand times Not but that it is very lawfull usefull and allmost necessary in some cases to utter the fullnesse of the minde by unprepared words in private Addresses but to lay the weight and worth of a Prayer upon the wording of it is a foul absurdity When sudden surprizing and extraordinary occasions are offer'd to blame is that man who will not strive to use proportionable Addresses to God neither staying for a Book nor the licence of his Ordinary But plying his heart while it is hot and full the best manner he can for his ease and comfort 4. And not onely in such extraordinary cases as may even extort an Ejaculation sutable but out of that common Habit of grace a man may have attained unto by Christian diligence it is most reasonable and pious he should lift up his minde frequently unto God in divine Contemplation Admiration of his Power and Wisdome thankfullnesse for deliverances and benefits bestowed imploration of his mercie and pardon for dayly Trespasses he is liable to and exercising that Communion that every Good Christian should have with God and all this not onely in usuall and constant Phrases and Formes though that be commendable but as the Spirit shall give him utterance All which notwithstanding ought to be regulated by the rule of Christian modestie justice and Charitie so as not to indulge to private satisfactions herein to the prejudice of others nor to phansie such an Edification to himselfe which should tend to the dissipation of the Church of God that Rule of Saint Paul binding incessantly such as otherwise would be boundlesse Let no man seek his own but every man anothers wealth 1 Corinth 10. 24. meaning rather spirituall than temporall wellfare And again the same Apostle 1 Corinth 14. 12. adviseth For as much as ye are zealous of spirituall gifts seek that ye may excell to the edification of the Church which whosoever violateth by private affectations in Religion may be said to indulge rather to his own carnall humour how divine soever it may appear to weaker judgements than to the edification of himselfe or others For as he that sings with the Congregation ought to lay aside his private Tunes though possibly far more excellent than that which is set for all to follow so must the singular Devotion of a higher strain than ordinarie complie with the meaner to avoid scandall and confusion as that which may better agree with the whole Bodie than sublimer strains or Tunes And this is the Case of that plain and easie recitative way of using the Psalmes in our Church which requires a cheerfull Spirit without difficulty or tediousnesse of modulating the Voice which for that reason might have been preferred before the more Artificiall and hard of private mens Invention had it not pleased men of designe and unquiet Spirits to bring it into disgrace for no other faults but which are found to be more notorious in that they have introduced in its stead From which frowardnesse of Spirit and