THE
RULE AND EXERCISES
OF
HOLY LIVING:
IN WHICH ARE DESCRIBED THE
MEANS AND INSTRUMENTS OF OBTAINING EVERY VIRTUE
AND THE REMEDIES AGAINST EVERY VICE,
AND CONSIDERATIONS
SERVING TO THE RESISTING ALL TEMPTATIONS
TOGETHER WITH
PRAYERS
CONTAINING
THE WHOLE DUTY OF A CHRISTIAN,
AND THE PARTS OF DEVOTION FITTED TO ALL OCCASIONS, AND
FURNISHED FOR ALL NECESSITIES.
BY JEREMY TAYLOR, D.D.
Chaplain in Ordinary to King Charles the First, and some time
Lord Bishop of Down and Connor.
WITH LIFE OF THE AUTHOR, BY DR. CROLY.
PHILADELPHIA:
J. W. BRADLEY, 48 N. FOURTH STREET.
1860.
A SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND TIMES OF BISHOP TAYLOR.
It is a matter of high importance in all days, and especially in days of popular anxiety like our own, to keep before us the examples of minds distinguished in the former trials of our country. No theory of virtue is equal in value to its practice embodied in a wise, pure, and manly understanding. History, the biography of nations, is too vast, abstract, and simple, for the guidance of the individual. Its events, like the stars in their courses, large and luminous, moving at a height above the reach of man, and influenced by powers and impulses which perplex his science, may excite the wonder or instruct the wisdom of the philosopher, but the school of mankind is man. To discover the source alike of his energies and errors, we must have before our eyes the mechanism of the human frame.
The world is but a perpetual recurrence. The scenes of the great theater shift continually, but the same characters move across the stage. The story of the drama may be more sullen, or more splendid, but while Providence is the guide, and man the agent, the moral will be unchanged. It is thus a subject of more than curiosity, to determine how generous and lofty spirits have acted in the emergencies of other times; with what magnanimity they sustained misfortune, or with what vigour they repelled injustice; with what purity they withstood temptation, or with what piety they submitted their wrongs to the hand of Heave. If, in days like ours, the wider knowledge of human right, itself only the offspring of the wider knowledge of religion, renders persecution less perilous, yet temptation will always exist. The distinctions of the world will always be at the service of the world. There has been in every age a Babylon, and men have had the alternative of worshipping its golden idol, or paying the penalty of their faith in obscurity and exclusion. It is then that the man who is not resolved to degrade himself, should solicit new strength in the communion of those who have fought the good fight and have gained the crown; that the patriot should study the shape and countenance of public virtue, as in a gallery of the illustrious dead, and feel the littleness of all fame that gravitates to faction; that, above all, the Christian, surrounding himself with their recollections, and shutting out, as with the curtains of the sanctuary, the heated passions and petulant caprices of the time, should imbibe new energies of immortality. It is by such uses that the renown of genius, patriotism, and sanctity becomes a splendid realization; that the suffering of the past revives as the lesson of present wisdom; that the living eye catches light from beyond the grave, and the forms catches light from beyond the grave, and the forms of the saint and martyr stand before us, like Moses and Elias in the mount, in their glory, telling at once of the brief suffering and the imperishable reward.
Jeremy, afterwards Bishop of Down, Connor, and Dromore in Ireland, was born in Trinity parish, Cambridge, the third son of Nathaniel and Mary Taylor, and baptized, August 15, 1613. Like many others destined for future eminence, he owed nothing to birth, for his father was a barber. But his genius could dispense with the honors of ancestry; and the man who could at once instruct the wise by his learning, and delight the elegant by his fancy, required but little extrinsic aid for fame. Yet even his father’s trade, connected as it then was with the rude practice of surgery, was less humble than at present; and his family had once possessed a small estate in Gloucestershire, himself being the direct descendant of the memorable Dr. Rowland Taylor, chaplain to Archbishop Cranmer, and martyred in the third year of Mary of bloody memory, on Aldham Common, in his parish of Hadleigh, in the county of Suffolk.
The rector of Hadleigh was a man of acquirements sufficient to have moved the envy of the ignorant, and of principles obnoxious to the bigots of his day; but Gardner, his persecutor, is said to have had the additional motive, of coveting the family estate at Frampton, on which that rapacious minister laid his hands, like another Ahab; like his Jewish prototype, to perish before he could enjoy the possession. The family were thus reduced to sudden poverty, and retained in poverty by adopting, what was not uncommon among the families of the persecuted, a turn for puritanism. This could earn but little favour from the vigorous government of Elizabeth, which had suffered too much from Popish turbulence to look without alarm on religious disputes of any kind; and still less from the loose government of James, in which alternate superstitions seemed to take the lead in the royal mind, everything was patronized but truth, and every art of government was practiced but manliness and honour.
In his thirteenth year, August 18, 1626, the future bishop was sent to Caius College, Cambridge, as a sizer, or “poor scholar;” an order of free students analogous to the “lay-brothers” of the Romish convents. The duties of this class were, literally, to serve the higher rank of students, at least in all the public ministrations of the college. The feelings of our later age revolt from this employment of men running the common race of learning. But it should be remembered, that in the time of Taylor, the division of ranks in general society was at once more distinct and less painful; that this education was the only one attainable by the poor; and that, in the precarious property and narrow funds of the colleges, there was the stronger ground for insisting on the natural maxim, that those who cannot pay in money must pay in kind.
At Cambridge it cannot be discovered that Taylor succeeded in
any of the more public objects of scholarship, increase of rank or increase of income.
The dignities and emoluments of the University were then, as now, devoted to proficiency
in the severer sciences. And we can be as little surprised that the poetic richness
of his mind should have sought other means of distinctions, than we can regret that
his future eloquence and various literature were not involved at their birth in
the robe of the mathematician. Accident first brought his peculiar faculties into
notice. A fellow-student, Risdon, having been appointed lecturer in St. Paul’s Cathedral,
employed Taylor as his substitute during a temporary absence. The youth of the new
preacher, for he was then but twenty years old,
The archbishop of Canterbury must always be a man of eminent influence; his peerage, his patronage, and his revenue, place in his hands the largest share of practical power that belongs to any individual beneath the throne. If the lord chancellor seem to rival him in extent of patronage, he falls altogether short of him in the chief point of possession — its continuance. Royal will or legislative caprice may disrobe the great law functionary in a moment, while nothing but the power which kings and subjects alike must obey, can deprive the great prelate of his income or his authority. Laud in the archiepiscopal chair, was the most powerful man in England. A vigorous mind, amply furnished with learning, a daring temperament, and a personal passion for control, were the qualities with which he undertook the guidance of the distracted state. But “the times were out of joint,” and his lofty, bold, and headstrong spirit was the last that could have set them straight. In other days he might have attained secure eminence. In the early struggles of the reformation, his intrepidity and knowledge might have made him a second Luther. In the generation that followed the civil war, his munificence would have raised the fallen church, as his love of order would have restored her subordination, and his courage asserted her privileges. Hypocrisy has few darker stains than the blood of Laud. His age, his literature, and his fidelity, would have rescued him from all hands but those of men struggling to seize on power by trampling on religion. Faction, which sacrificed his life, exhibited its last malignity in tarnishing his tomb. But time does justice to all; and like the false inscription on the Greek watch-tower, the common operation of years have swept away the libel, and shown the truth graven on the imperishable material within.
Taylor, by the archbishop’s advice, removed to Oxford, where his patron, as chancellor and visitor, had obvious means of rendering him service. He was admitted Master of Arts in University College, and finally, notwithstanding the resistance of Sheldon, warden of All Souls, (afterwards archbishop of Canterbury,) he succeeded to a fellowship, lapsed to the visitor in January 1636. Preferment now followed him. In March 1638, he was presented by Juxon, Bishop of London, to the rectory of Uppingham in Rutlandshire, having been already appointed chaplain to Laud. On the 5th of November, 1638, he preached his first memorable sermon, that on the gunpowder-plot, before the University. On the 27th of May, 1639, being then in his 26th year, he married at Uppingham, Phoebe Langsdale, of whom little more is known, that that her brother was a physician practicing at Gainsborough. By her he had three sons, of whom one died in infancy; the other two grew up to manhood.
Taylor was now to be called into scenes, which, if they deeply tried the constancy of all men, gave larger space for the labours of ability and virtue. In 1642, he joined the king at Oxford, and signalized himself by his treatise of “Episcopacy Asserted,” a publication commended by his majesty’s command. For this he obtained, by the royal mandate, the degree of Doctor of Divinity. But, for this, the Puritans, neither slow to discover, nor careless to punish, their enemies, sequestered his living. Taylor, however, found a protector in Christopher Hatton, afterwards Lord Hatton, of Kirby, who had been his neighbour at Uppingham; an individual in high confidence with the king, by whom he had been appointed comptroller of the household, but who derived still higher honour from his protection of Taylor, and his suggestion of the “Monasticon” to the learned Dugdale. Loyalty was now dangerous, but Taylor remained with the king, frequently preaching before the court at Oxford, and attending the royal marches as chaplain. The affairs of Charles had already become unfortunate, and his chaplain soon felt his share in national calamity. He was taken prisoner in the defeat of the royalists at Cardigan, February 1744. His dedication of the “Liberty of Prophesying” alludes to this event in his characteristic style: —
“In the great storm which dashed the vessel of the church in pieces,
I had been cast on the coast of Wales, and in a little boat thought to have enjoyed
that rest and quietness, which in England, in a far greater, I could not hope for.
Here I cast anchor, and thinking to ride safely, the storm followed me with so impetuous
a violence, that it broke a cable, and I lost my anchor. And here again I was exposed
to the mercy of the sea, and the gentleness of an element which could neither distinguish
things or persons; and but that He, who stilleth the raging of the sea and the noise
of his waves, and the madness of the people, had provided a plank for me, I had
been lost to all the opportunities of content or study. But I know not whether I
have been more preserved by the courtesies of my friends or the gentleness and mercy
of a noble enemy.” Adding in the Greek, the passage from St. Paul’s shipwreck, —
“For the barbarous people showed us no little kindness; for they kindled a fire,
and received us every one, because of the present rain, and because of the cold.”
Yet such was force of his diligence, or the ardour of his devotion, that even imprisonment could not render him idle. In this year of trouble he published at Oxford, an edition of the Psalter, and a “Defence of the Liturgy.” But the effect of the times was visible in his anonymous publication of the former, and his sheltering the “Defence” under the name of his protector, Hatton. There was still one melancholy meeting to take place, which must have deeply tried the spirit of a man loyal on principle. The royal cause was now extinct, the unhappy king was in the hands of his enemies; and, whether as an additional source of bitterness, or in the contemptuous display of mercy to the undone, the usurping government permitted the royal chaplains to visit him in his prison. Charles, foreseeing his fate, gave them parting tokens of his regard, and among the rest gave Taylor his watch, and a few rubies which had studded the ebony case of his Bible.
Taylor was now utterly destitute; if he can be called so, who has learning, contentment, and character. His living was seized, his person liable to daily danger; and the crowd, who instinctively follow change, could feel but little sympathy for the faith that clung to a fallen throne. Yet he contrived to live, and to support his family. Joining with Nicholson, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester, and Wyatt, afterwards Prebendary of Lincoln, he commenced a school at Lanhangel, in Wales, which produced some profit, and even obtained some distinction. But a still stronger evidence of the faculty of abstracting his mind from the sense of surrounding troubles, one of the rarest evidences of vigor, is to be found in the composition of his most distinguished work, “The Liberty of Prophesying,” at this period. The epistle dedicatory to Hatton, touchingly enumerates the disadvantages of his book, as written in adversity and want, without library or leisure. He had no auxiliaries but his memory and his Bible. Yet with a mind like his, could he have wanted much more.
Taylor’s first wife had died in the year 1642. After six years of widowhood he married again, probably in 1648. This wife had her share in the history of the time. She was said to be a daughter of Charles, during that earlier period of his life when the profligate Buckingham acted as his father’s favorite, and his own example. She was a beautiful girl, strongly resembling the king in temper and countenance, was brought up in mysterious privacy in Glamorgan, and was provided for by the estate of Mandiman, in the country of Carmarthen. But the times were fatal to all regular possessions, and whatever solace he might have found in the society of his young and lovely wife, he appears to have derived little increase of income from her fortune.
But Taylor was still further to be tried. When the men of our age, whether in religion or politics, talk of grievances; they should turn to the times when the popular will had cleared away all obstacles, and for the fruit of its blood rebellion had the discovery, that religious independence finds its natural result in the tyranny of a sect, and republican freedom in the tyranny of the sword. In those days merit was distinguished only by a more conspicuous share of the general suffering; and Taylor’s learning, meekness, and purity naturally became offenses, where hypocrisy was virtue. In 1654, he had republished his “Catechism for Children” in a larger shape, and entitled it the “Golden Grove,” in compliment to the Earl of Carbery, whose neighbouring estate bore that name. The preface, though intended simply to conciliate the Protector in favour of the fallen Church, yet contained expressions which were conceived by the quick jealousies of the day, to convey insult to the influential clergy. The hand of power was then as rapid as its eye was keen, and Taylor was thrown into prison. From this he was soon released; but again, in the same year, he was seized, and placed in custody in Chepstow Castle. In neither case does his confinement seem to have been of peculiar severity. In the latter, he writes to a friend, “I now have that liberty, that I can receive my letters, and send any; for the gentlemen in whose custody I am, as they are careful of their charges, so are civil to my person.” It is probable that his wife’s fortune assisted largely in his liberation, if not in the civility of his jailers. It will be acknowledged, to the honour of the national manners, that the civil war of England exhibited but few instances of ferocity. The kindlier feelings of peaceful life were not altogether trampled out by the violence of the conflict, and strong as might be the indignation of outraged loyalty on one side, and heated as might be the fanaticism of the other, the combatants had not altogether forgotten that their antagonists were human beings.
Yet, perhaps, even this terrible crisis was not without its value. The thunderstorm clears the atmosphere. The agony of the parental disease has often taught temperance to the children. The Revolution of 1648 beginning in war and ending in tyranny, may have inspired the wisdom by which the Revolution of 1688 began in peace and ended in the establishment of the throne. Still, if the experience was useful, it must not be forgotten by us and by our children, that the price was tremendous. Man should be content with easier knowledge. We may well shrink from securing the fertility of the harvest by steeping the seed in blood. Of all the instruments of change, civil commotion is the least manageable by the hand of man: once let loose, it is alike beyond resistance and beyond control; we might as well attempt to turn the lightnings into a weapon, or direct the invisible arrows of the pestilence. The gallantry of the English nobles and gentlemen, the solemn intrepidity of their adversaries, the chivalric spirit of Charles, and the soaring ambition of Cromwell, have robed the civil war with the splendours of romance; but the eye that looks beneath that robe sees only the wounds of a dying people. If war, with all the glories of foreign triumph, is but a dreadful necessity; what must be its evil, when it breaks up civilized life at home; when it visits the land, not in the echo of the remote thunders, but in the earthquake that convulses the soil under its feet? What must be the national loss, when every man who falls is a subject lost to the sovereign and a son lost to the country; when every drop of blood shed in the conflict is drawn from the national veins; when the scaffold completes the massacre of the field, and when both are but a more sweeping parricide?
And the results are as delusive as the price is bitter. Until we can gather grapes of thorns and figs of thistles, we shall never find rebellion the parent of liberty. That fair form is not to be born of the fierce, intoxicated, and adulterous union of Democracy with Ambition. If the experiment was ever made with all its advantages, it was in the supremacy of Cromwell. No man of his age possessed nobler qualities for distinction; no man of any age was more fitted for the throne of a great kingdom. Unshaken courage, unequaled sagacity, and inexhaustible resource, threw a light round him, that dazzled the eye of England, and from his throne spread its lusters to his country. The royalist cause melted away before him as he rose. The habitual jealousy of the continent bowed down before his established splendour. For England he extorted from Europe the homage due to unrivaled success in diplomacy and war. For himself, he extorted for usurpation the honours due to right, and compelled the old monarchies to acknowledge the illustrious upstart as one of the family of kings.
Yet, such is the inevitable evil of all rebellion, that this great leader, who, on a legitimate throne might have been as magnanimous as he was brave, was forced to stoop to the arts of the tyrant. A sovereign by nature, he was a despot by necessity. The great rebel was compelled to study the temperament of all the rebels beneath him. Where the power was given by felons, the first man in England could be only the first jailer. No man was taught more keenly that usurpation must never sleep. At the height of his supremacy, he felt himself watched by a faction, whose cunning and virulence he still dreaded, though he had first duped their craftiness, and then broken their power. Cromwell, with one hand defending himself from the dagger of the fanatic, and with the other struggling to retain the scepter from the grasp of the loyalist, was driven into tyranny; and the nation soon discovered, by bitter experience, that it had only exchanged complaints for sufferings, gradual freedom for remorseless authority, and the light and negligent curb of an ancient monarchy, for the heavy and galling harness of an iron despotism.
This cycle has been run in every period, and in every variety of national character — in the brilliant levity of Greece, in the stern ambition of Rome, in the fiery passions of France; and it will be run again, in the first nation which, proclaiming violence as the instrument of right, summons the populace to advance the liberties of the people, and erects the demagogue into the high-priest of the profaned constitution.
That a scholar, a divine, and a man of peace, like Taylor, should have been twice imprisoned under the protectorate, is among the deepest evidences of the general state of coercion.
But in those periods of distress, he seems to have always found especial friends. “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee” is a high promise; often performed to the servants of the truth, under circumstances which must have greatly augmented their confidence, and cheered their trials. Taylor, though now apparently reduced to the most serious difficulties, stripped of his professional means, unable to pursue his school, and not merely under the suspicion, but in the hands, of vigilant and angry power, found a new patron in Vaughan, Earl of Carbery.
Vaughan was a man of talent and distinction; who had held high offices, and held them with a successive increase to his character. Having served with honour in the wars of Ireland, for which he received the knighthood of the Bath, he had subsequently taken up arms for Charles, in the civil war, and borne the chief royalist command in South Wales. His services were too important to be forgotten by even the negligent gratitude of Charles II; and at the Revolution, when so many of the noble cavaliers were left to pine in discontent, Vaughan received the title of Lord Vaughan of Emlyn. Even in the ruin of the royalist cause, either fear of his talent, or respect for his integrity had procured him milder terms than usual from the parliament. He was permitted to compound for his estates; And the relief which was thus given to this loyal and able nobleman furnished him with the means of liberality to Taylor, and probably to many other adherents of the fallen cause. Lord Vaughan’s second wife had a poetic reputation. She was Alice, the eleventh daughter of John Egerton, first Earl of Bridgwater, memorable as the Lady in Comus. Milton’s verses might have embalmed the remembrance of inferior birth and beauty; the Lady in Comus is immortal.
Though the churches were closed against the clergy of the Church, divine service was sustained, wherever it was possible; and under the roof and in the immediate neighbourhood of this great family, Taylor delivered his yearly course of sermons. During the entire period he was the reverse of idle; his zeal never suffered him to adopt the easy excuses of indolence, or to find in distress a ground for the abandonment of duty. He now wrote his “Apology for set Forms of Liturgy against the pretence of the Spirit,” which was shortly followed by one of his most distinguished works, the “Life of Christ.” During the three following years, his labours were chiefly, his Sermon, and his “Holy Living and Dying;” the latter, a volume which originated in the desire, as it was written for the use of the first Lady Carbery, and dedicated by him to her husband after her death.
Another of those friends whose services were of peculiar value during this period, was the well-known and estimable John Evelyn. Evelyn had accidentally heard him preach in the city in 1654, and it is easy to conceive that Taylor’s sincerity and eloquence could not be heard with neglect by a man like Evelyn. How casual admiration was heightened into habitual friendship we have now no means of knowing; but it appears that, shortly after, Evelyn paid him a visit, “to confer with him about spiritual matters.” Evelyn’s nature was liberal, his means were opulent for the time, and Taylor undoubtedly enjoyed the advantages of both, during a period in which his personal resources had utterly failed him. In 1656, he visited London, and dined with Evelyn at his seat, Sayes Court. He there enjoyed, at least, the feast of reason, for the company were Berkeley, Boyle, and Wilking, all three eminent in their day for scientific ardour. Of this meeting, and still more, of the comforts and enjoyments of his accomplished friend, he speaks with natural pleasure in a letter of which the following is a fragment: —
“To John Evelyn, Esq.
“Honored and dear Sir,
“I hope your servant brought my apology with him, and that I am already excused in your thoughts, that I did not return an answer yesterday to your friendly letter. Sir, I did believe myself so very much bound to you, for your so kind, so friendly reception of me in your Tusculanum, that I had some little wonder upon me, when I saw you making excuses that it was no better. Sir, I came to see you and your lady, and am highly pleased that I did so, and found all your circumstances to be a heap and union of blessings.
“I am pleased indeed at the order of all your outward things, and look upon you not only as a person, by way of thankfulness to God for his mercies and goodness to you, specially obliged to a great measure of piety; but also as one who being freed in great degrees from secular cares and impediments, can wholly intend what you so passionately desire, the service of God. But, now I am considering yours, and enumerating my own pleasures, I cannot but add that though I could not choose but be delighted by seeing all about you, yet my delices (delights) were really in seeing you severe and unconcerned in these things, and now in finding your affections wholly a stranger to them.”
Taylor had found another friend in Mr. Thurland, afterwards Sir Edward, and one of the barons of the Exchequer. This eminent lawyer was also the author of a work on Prayer, and either from congenial studies or personal respect, he was induced to offer Taylor an asylum in London. He mentions this offer in a letter to Evelyn.
“Truly, sir, I do continue in my desire to settle about London, and am only hindered by my res an gusta domi, but hope in God’s goodness, that he will create to me such advantages as may make it possible, and when I am there, I shall expect the daily issues of the Divine Providence to make all things else well. Because I am much persuaded that by my abode in your voisinage (neighbourhood) of London, I may receive advantages of society and books, to enable me better to serve God and the interest of souls. I have no other design in it, and I hope God will second it with his blessing. Sir, I desire you to present my thanks and service to Mr. Thurland; his society were argument enough to make me desire a dwelling there abouts, but his other kindnesses will also make it possible.” The letter proceeds to say, that in acknowledgement of Thurland’s liberality he will send him his new work “On the Doctrine of Original Sin;” and concludes with a touch of melancholy and resignation. “Sir, — I am in some little disorder by reason of the death of a little child of mine, a boy that lately made us very glad. But now he rejoices in his little orb while we think, and sigh, and long to be as safe as he is.”
One of the evils of reputation now assailed him. The man who obtains popularity, will have imitators; and he is fortunate, whose imitators neither degrade his style nor disgrace his character. In this year a small volume appeared, entitled a frivolous dissertation on the arts of female beauty; a work unworthy of Taylor’s dignity, alike in its subject and its performance. Yet it was evidently the publisher’s intent to impress the idea that it proceeded from his pen. The frontis-piece, a female figure with the sun on her breast, was taken from one of his known works. The peculiarities of his language, and even his use of italics, were adopted; and though the preface attributed the work “chiefly to a lady,” yet the crowd of classic quotations which filled its pages, strongly contradicted, and were probably intended to contradict, the declaration. The haste of criticism, or perhaps the bitterness of party, charged this trivial work on Taylor; but Bishop Heber, his latest and best biographer, has indignantly defended his memory. The language of the treatise wants all the higher characteristics of a pen to which eloquence was familiar; its sentiments are opposed to his recorded opinions; and thus failing in the lineaments of vigorous expression and moral dignity which belonged to all the offspring of his mind, who can doubt its illegitimacy?
In 1662, the artifice was pushed still further, and an edition appeared with J.T. D.D., his known initials, on its title page. But the dexterity of fabricators in those days was more daring, and even more disingenuous, than in our own. The knavery of pirating names was common, and Taylor only underwent the penalty of having made a reputation which was a passport to popular applause.
Taylor’s tenderness of heart was sadly tried in the loss of children. Distressing us this must be to any man, it must have been doubly so to one who could write thus glowingly on the domestic affections. In his treatise entitled the “Marriage Ring,” he thus speaks, in the quaint yet poetic language of his time.
“Nothing can sweeten felicity but love. No man can tell, but he that loves his children, how many delicious accents make a man’s heart dance in the pretty conversation of those dear pledges. Their childishness, their stammering, their little anger, their innocence, their imperfections, their necessities, are so many emanations of joy and comfort to him that delights in their persons and society. But he who loves not his wife and children feeds a lioness at home, and broods over a nest of sorrows, and blessing itself cannot make him happy. So that all the commandments of God, enjoining a man to love his wife, are nothing but so many necessities and capacities of joy. She that is loved is safe, and he that loves is joyful. Love is an union of all things excellent. It contains in it proportion and satisfaction, and rest and confidence, and I wish that this were so much proceeded in, that the heathens themselves could not go beyond us in this virtue, and its proper and appendant happiness. Tiberius Gracchus chose to die for the safety of his wife, and yet methinks to a Christian to do so should be no hard thing, for many servants will die for their masters, and many gentlemen for their friend, but the examples are not so many of those that are ready to die for their nearest relations. And yet some there have been. — Baptiste Fregosa tells of a Neapolitan, that gave himself as slave to the Moors that he might follow his wife, and this is a greater thing than to die.”
During this period, he kept up his correspondence with Evelyn, and between those two amiable yet grave men, the topics were naturally of a grave and lofty nature. It appears that Evelyn desired to have some difficulties resolved, relative to the state of the soul after death. Taylor answers him with a curious mixture of metaphysics and morality, the worthless learning of the schoolmen, alternately clouding and clearing away before the vigour of an intelligent mind:— “But, sir, that which you check at, is the immortality of the soul; that is, its being, in the interval before the day of judgment, which you conceive is not agreeable to the Apostles Creed, or current of Scriptures, assigning as you suppose the felicity of Christians to the resurrection. Before I speak to the thing, I must note this, that the parts which you oppose to each other may both be true, for the soul may be immortal, and yet not beatified till the resurrection. For to be, and not to be happy or miserable, are not necessary consequences to each other. For the soul may be alive, and yet not feel; as it may be alive, and not understand. So is our soul when we are fast asleep, and so Nebuchadnezzar’s soul when he had his lycanthropy. The Socinians that say the soul sleeps, do not suppose that she is mortal, but that for want of her instrument she cannot do any act of life. The soul returns to God, and that in no sense is death, and I think the death of the soul cannot be defined, and there is no death to spirits but annihilation.”
He then adverts to the felicity of Christians after the day of judgment; and, in illustration of the soul’s existence, quotes the fable of Licetus, “his lamps, whose flame had stood still fifteen hundred years in Tully’s wife’s vault.” He proceeds to say, that “as the element of fire, and the celestial globes of fire, eat nothing, but live on themselves, so can the soul when it is divested of its relative (the body.)” Such was the philosophy of his day, borrowed from the Greeks, and laughed at by the moderns.
But when he relies on his own understanding his remarks become of more value. In answer to the allowable question — why St. Paul, preaching Jesus and the resurrection, said nothing of the intermediate existence of the souls; he answers, that the resurrection of the body included and supposed that. And, secondly, “that if it had not, yet what need had he to preach that to them, which in Athens was believed by almost all their schools; for, besides that the immortality of the soul was believed by the philosophers of Egypt, India, and Chaldea, it was acknowledged by all the leading philosophers of Greece.” To this, however, he adds the remarkably insecure argument, in which, as he expresses it, “St. Paul, speaking of his rapture into heaven, purposely and by design twice says, “whether in body or out of the body I know not;” by which Taylor observes, “he plainly says, that it was no ways unlikely, that his rapture was out of the body, and therefore it is very agreeable to the nature of the soul, to operate in separation from the body.”
It is striking, to find a man of his sagacity, falling into the common error of commentators on this remarkable passage; and not less striking to find him followed in it by Bishop Heber; who remarks, that “from that text alone, the probability is, that the apostle himself took the separate existence of the soul for granted, and believed it extremely possible for a man to be and think, and even to acquire new ideas, without the existence of the body.”
Reluctant as we may be, to reject an argument which supports the great and consoling truth of the “intermediate state,” it must be acknowledged, that this interpretation is altogether unsustained by the text. Nothing can be clearer, that that St. Paul is not speaking of himself, but of another. He distinctly states, that he will glory, not in the visions and revelations made to himself, but in those made to an individual, in whose Divine visitations he might rejoice with safety and propriety. While, as to himself, if he were to glory in anything, it should be in his infirmities; which is obviously equivalent to not glorying at all.
Having thus fully established the distinction he proceeds to speak
of this highly-favoured individual, as one whom he knew fourteen years before, though
whether he were now dead or living, he could not say; or as the text expresses it,
“whether in the body I cannot tell, or whether out of the body I cannot tell; God
knoweth.
Yet in the midst of those important studies, this estimable man was not to escape the prying and persecuting spirit of the time. His printer, Royston, had prefixed to his “Collections of Offices” an engraving of our Lord in prayer. The representations, which printers had been so long in the habit of prefixing to their volumes, were regarded as idolatrous by the new-born conscience of the age. The scruple had even gone to the extent of an act for punishing those formidable transgressions by fine and imprisonment. Taylor was not a man likely to provoke authority, for the mere indulgence of opposition; and it could scarcely be supposed that he felt inclined to pay more homage to Popery than to government. But those were the days for which zealots had cavilled and rebels had fought; and the triumph of both had alike issued in the direct overthrow of their principles. It is enough to say of this period and its law, that Taylor was committed to a prison for a third time.
His place of confinement was the Tower; whether as implying an offence more nearly touching on high-treason, or from the crowded state of the other prisons in this era of successful freedom! How long he might have been destined by the mercy of his accusers to remain there, is not now to be known; for the same friendship which had never failed him, again interposed. Evelyn exerted himself to represent his innocence to the ruling powers. Cromwell, who persecuted only from policy, while others persecuted from zeal, was probably not disinclined to let such a prisoner go free: Evelyn’s entreaty, that his learned and pious friend might be allowed to explain his conduct, was accordingly listed to; and, after an incarceration of two months, he regained his liberty.
But the experiment of clemency under the protectorate was not to be safety hazarded again; and Taylor’s friends now consulted how to withdraw him altogether from the vigilant eyes that watched his career in England. While he remained in London he would have boldly continued to officiate, and administer the sacraments, in the private meetings of his people. But Episcopacy had been extinguished, and the angry strength of government was bent on crushing the remnants of the church. Edward, Earl of Conway, the proprietor of large estates near Lisburn in Ireland, now proposed to Evelyn that his friend should remove there to take a lectureship then at the earl’s disposal.
Taylor was strongly disinclined to leave England, even though his steps there were in the lion’s den. After thanking Evelyn for his unwearied kindness, he told his thoughts freely of this unpalatable change. “I like not,” says his letter, “the condition of being a lecturer under the disposal of another. Sir, the stipend is so inconsiderable, that it will not pay the charge of removing myself and family. It is wholly arbitrary, for the triers may overthrow it, or the vicar may forbid it, or the subscribers may die, or grow weary, or be absent. I beseech you, sir, pay my thanks to your friend who had so much kindness for me as to intend my benefit.” He seems here to have had a correct idea of the “voluntary principle;” but his reluctance was overcome, probably by the remonstrances of his friends, who knew more of his danger, and feared more for him than he feared for himself. He accordingly set out, furnished with letters to the leading persons of Ireland, the lord chancellor, the chief baron, the general in command, and even with a letter from Cromwell himself, under his signet. In Ireland he divided his residence between Lisburn and the neighbourhood of Portmore, a princely mansion built by Inigo Jones, and belonging to the Conway family. Here he found at once seclusion and safety. The surrounding country is romantic: the great lake of Lough Neah washed the park of Portmore; and in its sylvan and lonely islets, he is said to have frequently indulged his love of nature and solitude. Here, too, he proceeded with renewed vigour in the great work, which he had founded as the pillar of his fame, and it was to the shelter of Portmore that the age owed the completion of the “Ductor Dubitantium.” Yet his shelter was not altogether secure, for even there he was denounced by an informer, to the Irish privy council, as a dangerous character; the chief pungency of the crime being, that he had used the sign of the cross in private baptism. For such treasons men were thrown into dungeons in the days of our ancestors! Taylor was ordered up to Dublin, in the depth of winter. The result of his journey was a severe illness, which however probably saved him from the greater severity of persecution.
But his trials were at last to approach their end. To publish his great work, and to renew his intercourse with his friends, he travelled onwards to London. The times were anxious, the great usurper was dead, the army had resumed its old power of disposing of the state, and all eyes were turned on its general. Monk, tardy and cold, yet artificial and dexterous, still kept the nation in suspense. At this critical period, some of the bolder loyalists came forward, and drew up a declaration of confidence in the general. Taylor, who regarded both life and death only as the means of zealously serving the truth, was among the first to sign this momentous paper. The confidence thus given to Monk was the signal for the restoration of the monarchy.
If Charles was yet to disappoint the national hopes, no sovereign was ever welcomed with more sincere rejoicing. All men were weary of the past. The misery of revolution had been fully felt: the unspeakable wretchedness of living at the caprice of a popular assembly, had penetrated into every cottage; even the sullen tyranny of the protectorate had been felt as a relief from the restless vexations of popular rule; and so deep was the disgust earned by republicanism, that the nation, in a moment of confidence, as rash as their disgust was sincere, threw themselves, and their liberties together, at the foot of the young king.
In the general re-establishment of the church, Taylor could not be disregarded without palpable injustice. His piety, learning, and sufferings had been equally conspicuous. He was well known to many powerful men round the throne. Whether his having married the natural sister of the king contributed to his advancement, is not ascertained; though if Charles desired to remove her from his immediate presence, it might have contributed to his location at a distance from court. On the 6th of August, 1660, Taylor was appointed to the bishopric of Down and Conner in Ireland; and soon after elected vice-chancellor of the university of Dublin.
He had at length found a situation worthy of his activity and of his feelings. His first attention was directed to the affairs of the university. His knowledge of mankind told him that education was the great instrument of civil order and religious truth; and his well-won experience had proved that universities alone can dispense education without hazard to the state, and sustain the stream of national religion without sullying its purity. He found the revenues of the university dilapidated, and the lands in many instances given away. So great were the disorders introduced under the Commonwealth, that none of the existing scholars or fellows had legal titles, all having been introduced by irregular election, or forced on the electors by the government. Taylor took upon himself the labour of revising the statutes of Bishop Bedel, and establishing others required by the new circumstances of the university.
In this sense, he may be regarded as a second founder of that noble Institution, which, under Providence, has been the great source and sustainer of Protestantism and freedom in the sister country — not destitute of those displays which make national fame; sending out, from time to time, those magnificent minds, her Burkes and Grattans, which belong not to provinces, but empires, and come periodically to reinforce the intellect of mankind; but, in all periods, by the vigour and exactness of her learning, and the manliness and purity of her principles, transmitting knowledge, loyalty, and religion, into the bosom of the land: — a great luminary, on which, for centuries, has depended all the moral sunshine of Ireland; sending out, from time to time, flashes and emanations, of a lustre that breaks through all her clouds; and even in her gloomiest hours, shooting its influence through the soil, kindling every latent seed that is yet to vegetate into national virtue, and preparing the more perfect day.
The Bishop’s merits were to be still further honoured. During the Commonwealth, Ireland had been almost wholly denuded of its Episcopalian clergy. By the exertions of the Duke of Ormond they now began to be restored. On the 27th of January, 1661, two archbishops and ten bishops were consecrated in the cathedral of St. Patrick, in Dublin, by Bramhall, the primate. And in the next month the Bishop of Down was called to the Irish privy council, and shortly afterwards appointed to the administration of the small adjoining diocese of Dromore. But if sudden authority has often been a dangerous trial to unsettled virtue, it only exhibited more largely the dignity and mercy of his mind. The Irish massacre of 1641, had thrown vast tracts of country into the hands of government. The civil war had next perverted might into rapine, and the Commonwealth had finally consolidated rapine into law. In Ireland all the elements of order had been confounded. It was now the difficult task of the legitimate government to bring society into form once more. The question of the confiscated estates might have offered a snare to an orator ambitious of influence, or to a man of influence eager for possession. But Taylor’s language on this subject was worthy of his principles. With equal force and simplicity, he thus addressed his fellow legislators: —
“You cannot obey God, unless you do justice, for this also is better than sacrifice, said Solomon. For Christ, who is the sun of righteousness, is a sun and shield to them that do righteously.
“You are to give sentence in the causes of half a nation; and he had needs be a wise and good man who divides the inheritance among brethren, that he may not be abused by contrary pretences, nor biassed by the interest of friends, nor transported with the unjust thoughts even of a just revenge, nor allured by the opportunities of spoil, nor blinded by gold, which puts out the eyes of wise men, nor cozened by pretended zeal. For justice ought to be the simplest thing in the world, and to be measured by nothing but truth, and by laws, and by the decrees of princes.”
The passage which follows is worthy of being recorded among the first maxims of national justice in troubled times.
“But whatever you do, let not the pretence of a different religion make you think it lawful to oppress any man in his just rights; for not opinions, but laws, and doing as we would be done to, are the measures of justice. And though justice does alike to all men, Jew and Christian, Lutheran and Calvinist; yet, to do right to them that are of another opinion, is the way to win them. But if you, for conscience sake, do them wrong, they will hate both you and your religion.”
He concludes with a fine enunciation of his noble principle: — “You must be as just as the law, and you must be as merciful as your religion. And you have no way to tie those together, but to follow the pattern in the mount — do as God does, who in judgment remembers mercy.”
This pious and learned man was now approaching his close. It is among the mysterious dispensations of Providence, that some of the purest-minded of men have been the most subjected to personal afflictions. Yet while this world is to be regarded only as a school of the human spirit, and the Deity holds in his hand boundless compensation for all suffering, it is only the work of reason, to be convinced that the deeper affliction has been laid on for purposes essential to the richer reward.
At an early period of life, Taylor had lost all his sons but two. And now, when affluence and rank seemed sent to brighten the remainder of his anxious and ardent days, those two died, both by premature deaths, — His elder son, a captain of horse in the king’s service, in a duel with a brother officer, who also fell; and his second son, of a consumption, in the house of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, to whom he was private secretary. Grief for the former of those losses, hung heavily upon the father’s heart; and though the death of his second son occurred in England, but on the day before the commencement of his own final illness in Ireland, the knowledge of his disease, and of its almost inevitable consummation, may have added bitterness to the blow. On the 3rd of August 1667, the Bishop was seized with a fever, which, acting on an enfeebled frame and a depressed mind, made such progress, that within ten days he breathed his last, in the 55th year of his age, and tenth of his episcopacy; — thenceforth to live among the glorious concourse, whom change can touch no more.
His wife survived him for many years. He left three daughters, the eldest of whom died unmarried, the second married Dr. Marsh, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin, and the third married a Mr. Harrison, a man of fortune, and member of parliament for the borough of Lisburn.
Taylor’s personal appearance is said to have been highly favourable; his figure, above the middle size, strong and well formed, his eye large and dark, his nose aquiline, his countenance open, and we may fairly presume, intelligent; and his hair, in early life, in the fashion of his age, redundant, and flowing in curls. If he had not been a cleric, he would have made a handsome cavalier. But the only original portrait known to be in existence, is that in All-soul’s College, taken when those youthful graces had disappeared; and where his resigned yet melancholy look shows that he had gone through many afflictions.
Of the more important topic, his last hours, too little is known. The manner in which such a man receives the final summons, the clearness of his views when the passions are no more, the strength of his faith when the world sinks from the eye, are inquires which all would make, who desire to have their convictions enforced, or their hopes animated; who would be enlightened by the wisdom of the intelligent, or invigorated by the fortitude of the holy. But, of those hours no detail seems to have been preserved; and we must be content with such conjecture as we can form from his life. Yet, who can doubt that the death of this man of virtue was consistent with his career? that he whose existence was a long display of Christian courage, was calm in the presence of the last enemy? that he who had faced the dungeon, and would have faced the scaffold, without a fear, must have shown, on his pillow, in what peace a Christian can die?
The conditions of the church, during the life of Bishop Taylor, forms one of the most remarkable features of its history. The persecution under Mary had driven many of the clergy to seek refuge in foreign countries. Calvin’s learning, zeal, and eloquence had made him the great surviving leader of the Reformation, in the eyes of a large portion of the continental church. Some of the clergy, on their return, had brought with them his doctrines. Calvin, equally stern and sincere, had evidently thought that he approached the nearer to the truth of the gospel, the further he receded from the principles of Rome. Especially disgusted with the haughtiness of the Romish hierarchy, he had at length conceived that independence of the civil government was essential to the purity of the church. The tempest was now gathering which was to fall upon the Establishment.
Presbyterianism, founded in Geneva in 1541, first appeared in England in 1572. The remembrance of the Papal domination and the terror of its return, made the new doctrines popular. The Protestant exiles, returning from the Continent, reinforced the zeal of their countrymen. A new impulse was to be added from the North. Scotland, on the death of Elizabeth, in 1503, had given a king to England. The disputes between the monarch and the people had already involved the Scottish Episcopacy in odium. Presbyterianism, recruited from the multitude, was too powerful for Episcopacy, deserted by the throne; and after a century of various struggles, it was declared the Established Church of Scotland. The junction of the civil governments brought with it the religious controversy; and the flame, exhausted in the confines of the North, blazed into new violence among the vast, various, and inflammable materials of the public mind of England.
The British constitution, slowly gathered out of the wrecks of Saxon privilege, had been, for a century, gradually forming into freedom. But the structure was still harsh, irregular, and threatening. Modeled by the hands of powerful subjects, more anxious for the increase of personal power, than for the extension of public right; it bore the characters of the baronial architecture — bold, but rude; magnificent, but frowning — the palace combined with the dungeon. Other and nobler times, were at once the fortress into the temple; and, throwing open its gates alike to all, summon the multitude to bow down before altars, where true liberty stood robed in the broadest rays of true religion.
The power of the crown, in the earlier period of that memorable century, had, by habit, assumed something of the power of a Divinity; and its first restraints were regarded by the sovereign less an innovation than sacrilege. But England was marked for a high destiny, incompatible with a return to arbitrary rule. She was to be the head of Protestantism to Europe; and for this purpose she was to be the great example of a free government to mankind. The form of her church was still of clay, but the proportions were noble; and life, from the most illustrious of all sources, was already shooting through its frame. If, like our great ancestor, it was soon to fall upon evil days, and be disinherited of its original birth-right, it was appointed to a triumphant recovery; that recovery itself, we will believe, only an emblem of days of larger dominion, and more unclouded splendour.
The prosperity of England under Elizabeth, the overthrow of the Spanish invasion, the new growth of commerce, and the native manliness of the public heart, all animated by the evidence of the public strength, had prepared her for the future ascent to all the heights of civil freedom. If her elevation was still to be slow, stormy, and exposed to vicissitude, it was still to proceed. The accession of James, well-meaning but harsh, a pedant in statesmanship, and a monk in religion, wasting the royal treasure on foreign policies, and creating controversies at home, at once relaxed the royal influence, and stimulated religious inquiry. The accession of Charles only hastened the catastrophe. His spirit, at once chivalric and gentle - fatal to him in both aspects, by giving him the loftiest conception of his rights, and suggesting the feeblest means of sustaining them — marked him as the victim of a time of change. The death of that unhappy sovereign is still written in the darkest page of national guilt. It should also be written in the most disastrous page of national misfortune. Regicide, as the dissolution of the highest bond of society, seems to be visited in all lands by the especial wrath of heaven. No event in the national annals ever gave so instant a check to the advance of freedom, — The stream that flowed from the scaffold of the king, instantly made its path impassable.
Even from the hour when hostility was first turned from the crown to the wearer of the crown, and it was resolved to baptize the Republic in royal blood, calamity fell broad and heavy upon the land. Liberty, misunderstood by some, and abused by others, and religion, equally misunderstood and equally abused, were forced into a profane alliance against the people. The Establishment, the most ancient and noble rampart of the monarchy, was first to be seized. Too powerful to be stormed, it was undermined; and the result was true to the calculation. With it went down the monarchy. The heads of both perished on the same scaffold Laud only preceeded Charles to the grave.
But the fall of the Church left a chasm in the state which was not to be filled. Civil faction attempted it, and failed. Religious faction attempted it, and failed. The liberty, property, and blood of the people were thrown in, but the gulf was still widening. The Commonwealth was flung in, the Protectorship followed: at length the nation returned to its earlier wisdom; replaced the Establishment on its old foundations; and stopped the progress of public ruin.
The history of this interregnum is only the history of rival factions, various in their features, but filled with the same spirit, taking different means to power but all alike hazardous to public security; and, whether they stole their fires from above or from below, whether enthusiasts or intriguers, each risking alike the conflagration of the roof under which they professed to administer to the good of the people.
The Establishment had perished; but it was only to leave room for the struggle of the sects. Independentism was the new competitor. It had arisen from the schism of the Brownists, who flourished in the preceding century. After existing for a period in Holland, it was brought into England in 1616, by Henry Jacobs, a Puritan. Its principle was, spiritual association with mutual independence of its churches. At the commencement of the great rebellion, some of the Independent ministers returning from the Continent, and taking their seats in the assembly of divines, had begun to form congregations. Against this measure Presbyterianism, then in possession of power, strongly remonstrated. The Independents as strongly complained, that the Presbyterians, standing in the place of the ancient Establishment, had, with its power, adopted more than its persecution, that it denied a middle way between rigid uniformity and utter confusion; and that though, in its own case, declaiming against the use of the civil sword, it had unhesitatingly used force to settle the consciences of others.
Presbyterianism was now to feel the ascendancy of its rival. The contest remains as one proof, among the thousand, of the feebleness of premature power. If the Establishment perishes, rooted as it was in the soil for centuries, endeared to the national memory by the generations which had sat under its shade, and forming a central and venerable object from whatever spot the eye looked upon the constitution; what could be the security of the new church, the tree without a root, planted in the midst of tempests, and in a soil beaten into dust by the trampling of the civil war? It still had the whole force of the state in its hands. It constituted nearly the whole parliament, and it possessed a vast nominal majority among the people. But the Independents more than compensated for their minority in numbers, by the vigour of their zeal, by the impression on the popular feelings, and by that determination to be masters, which, in itself, is equivalent to mastery; and in those signs they conquered.
No period of British history presents at once so strong a display of the madness of man, and of the indefatigable protection of Providence. Republicanism had torn down the monarchy. Schism had dismantled the Church. England stood on the verge of the grave; and the factions which dug it, delayed the blow that would have cast her in, only till the sword or the axe decided which was to have the robbing of the dead.
The true peril of all popular revolutions is, that having no defined object, they have no natural termination. Springing from a desire of universal possession, they an have no limit but universal change. The man who will go farthest, necessarily becomes the leader. Renovation is soon abandoned for rapine, justice for revenge, right for licence; until the land is swept bare. The fancied oppressions of the rich become the pretest for levelling the whole community, and the attempt to retaliate popular wrongs upon the higher classes ends in the anarchy of the land. It is an evidence of the Divine mercy that, hitherto, the process has never been suffered to exhibit itself in that last stage of political ruin. The sharp remedy of the soldier has been introduced, at once to punish the national excesses, and to check the national undoing. In the English and French revolutions the violence of popular passion has thus been restrained by the despotism of the sword. — The lunatic, on whom argument and experience would be alike thrown away; whose additional power would generate only additional evil to himself; and whose frenzy would be inflamed by success, has been coerced by the bitter restorative of the lash and the chain. Democracy in England would have raged, till the country was a waste, if the selfishness and sternness of Cromwell had not been sent forth, to crush the madness of the time. Democracy in France would have filled the country with a moral pestilence, which after destroying its own population, would have spread the contagion resistlessly, perhaps, through every nation of the earth, if the fierce ambition and iron tyranny of Napoleon had not first checked, and then turned the current of the disease into domestic slavery and foreign domination. Both were tyrants, and both criminals of the darkest stain; but both were the true overthrowers of the democratic principle and to both, England and France alike owed the cessation of public ruin, and the final restoration of monarchy. — Like the volcanoes of the great Southern Ocean, even the thunders among which they rose, and the convulsions that made their birth felt along the sullen and stormy expanse of nations, were proofs that there was solid ground rising for the foot of man; that the capricious and disturbed element through which they shot up was to have new barriers set to its career; and that, wild and fiery as they towered before the eye of man, they were to be the commencement of a new era of settlement and security.
Cromwell had found himself suspected, at an early period, by the Presbyterian government. The Independents required a leader, and he required a party. The terms were speedily made; and the great republican, uniting in himself all the qualities essential to the time — appealing to the multitude by the lure of popular power; to the fanatical, by raptures borrowed from their own enthusiasm; to the soldiery, by the display of signal valour in the field; and to the ambitious, by that inexhaustible sagacity and undeviating success which promised his adherents every object that ambition could desire; saw supremacy at his feet. His appointment as lieutenant, under Fairfax, one of the capital oversights of the parliament; threw the parliament itself into his power. The calamitous battle of Naseby extinguished the royal cause. The fatality which entrusted the royal person to the Scottish Commissioners; the perfidy with which they repaid that trust by betraying it to the parliament, all played the game of his sovereignty. Presbyterianism, at the height of power, was next to be taught by him how near success may be to subversion. The Independents were masters of the army; the army seized the unfortunate monarch; a weak legislature tried him; a mockery of popular opinion sanctioned the crime; and the forms of justice, the national character, and the spirit of religion, were alike betrayed by a faction purchasing power with the fall of their king. But all those crimes only levelled the path before the great usurper. Even the blood of Charles only tracked the way for Cromwell to a throne.
In those references to a period of public shame, there can be no wish to involve religious minds in the general charge of treason. The men who dipped their hands in regicide were the actual antagonists of all religion. Conscience, first used as a mask, was speedily abandoned: the atrocities of the rebellion were committed, not by religionists but revolutionists. Among the Independent ministers of London, it is recorded that but two, Goodwin and Peters, consented to the king’s death.
The destruction of the establishment had been the virtual destruction of the monarchy. The legislature, reduced to eighty members, proceeded to fix in principle the misdemeanours which they had already committed in practice. They voted the throne dangerous, and the House of Lords useless to a state. A new oath was imposed, by which was named the Engagement, was levelled by the Independents against the Presbyterians; the latter having now fallen from power, and revenging themselves by calling the government an usurpation.
But Cromwell’s experience had taught him the hazard of suffering religion to be made a political instrument, or of giving the fallen party the strength that is to be found in the outcry against persecution. By an act introduced at his especial suggestion, the whole body of penalties against religious opinions were swept away. A general toleration was declared, with the large exception, however, of Papists and Episcopalians; the one, as irreconcilable with all Protestantism, and the other, as repelling the Protestantism of the day. Cromwell thus paid the fallen church the involuntary compliment of providing that he believed its allegiance to be above his purchase. Its principles had already resisted his power. Yet nothing shows his faculties for government more clearly than the moderation with which he bore the acknowledged disgust of the sectaries. The “Engagement,” had produced much irritation. Baxter, with many of the leading Presbyterian ministers, inveighed against the oath. But the Independents now forming the government, and themselves governed by Cromwell, bore the insult calmly, and turned it to account, by filling up the vacant livings with Independent ministers. The press was not neglected, and the great Milton was employed to write down the recusants. The powers of the law were brought into action, and all who refused “the Engagement,” of the age of eighteen, were prohibited from sueing in the law courts: while all ministers attacking the oath from their pulpits, were deprived of their benefices for the time. But while he was thus rigid to all who exhibited determined resistance, he gave full opportunity of repentance to all the wavering. Presbyterianism was still too powerful to be lightly offended; and the national church was declared to be Presbyterian in doctrine, discipline, and worship. An attempt was even made to raise all livings to a hundred pounds a year. But the liberality of rebellion is seldom justice, and those livings were to be augmented by the confiscation of the lands of the bishops, deans, and chapters, with, however, the addition of the first-fruits and tenths. Though fallen even the church was not to be wholly forgotten. With republican generosity it was to be propitiated out of its own plunder, and small salaries were allotted to the bishops and the chief clergy of the cathedrals. Still, it is the history of all usurpations, that their practice essentially falsifies their professions. The liberty of speaking and writing had been among the most urgent demands of the republicans. The complaint had answered its purpose; and the press had broken down the monarchy. The champion was now itself to be in chains. The royalist and Presbyterian writers were declared to have abused the rights of discussion. The House of Commons took those rights under its charge, and the press was thenceforth the tool of power.
But the crisis of popular usurpation was at hand. The expedition of Charles the Second to recover his crown, once more brought Cromwell’s military talents before the eyes of men. The defeat of the king at Worcester, with his flight into France, left the sovereignty open to the first bold hand; and who could compete with the general who had delivered the partizans of the rebellion from the imminent dread of royal vengeance? His new popularity with the troops first awoke the government to a sense of their peril. To enfeeble the man whom they now felt to be their great antagonist, they proposed to disband a part of his army. The act would have been followed by the seizure of its general. But, when the game lies between the indolence of many and the decision of one, between the possession of authority and the preservation of life, it speedily comes to an issue. The single vigorous competitor carries the day against the slow activity and mingled motives of the crowd. Cromwell’s prompt and contemptuous overthrow of the parliament is among the most remarkable, yet the most natural events of the time.
Still his sagacity as a religious reformer characterized even his triumph. The fear of rousing again the decayed enthusiasm of the sectaries was the perpetual guide of his administration. All England, in all its shapes of opinion, was already powerless before his acknowledged supremacy. The cavaliers were weary of defeat, and disgusted with the flight of Charles. The Presbyterians were rendered submissive at once by the strong hand of government, and by possession. The Independents were the natural adherents of Cromwell. That burlesque of a legislature, the Barebones’ Parliament, had resigned their functions, from the combined sense of inadequacy and public ridicule. Yet with all the elements of resistance thus at his feet, his first work, as sovereign, was to popularize his religious polity. In the council of officers it was again proposed, that all religious penalties should be formally extinguished; that a regular provision should be made for the officiating ministers, and that a general toleration should be the law of the land; with the old exceptions of Popery and Prelacy. Presbyterianism was still treated with the customary respect, and was once more recognized as the established religion.
Yet those were restless, and must have been unhappy times. We are not driven for this conclusion to the constant privations and frequent imprisonments of the most meritorious of the English clergy. It follows, from the necessity of the case, from the mutual irritations of the leading religionists, from the utter uncertainty of a religious code, dependent on the will of a capricious council, and from the boundless jealousies, suspicions, and bitternesses inseparable from a state of perpetual religious struggle. All men’s minds were turned on political power; to some as an object of enjoyment, to others as a means of protection. It is impossible to doubt that religion must thus have rapidly tended to decay. In the hands of the politicians, a mere instrument, it must have soon fallen into scorn among the higher and more reckless ranks of public men. In the hands of the populace, alternately a stimulant and a victim of popular turbulence, it must have been as rapidly degraded by ignorance, as it was deformed by fanaticism. A wise government can give no greater boon than religious rest to a people.
But Cromwell, who never slumbered over the signs of the times, watched Presbyterianism with the keenness of personal fear. To sustain his popularity he adopted the Independent worship, and exhibited the most singular raptures of their most conspicuous leaders. He further established a commission of thirty-eight, “Tryers,” to select candidates for the ministry; and for the purpose of countervailing the influence of the Presbyterians, appointed several Baptists and Independents to the commission. The selection was charged with degrading the ministry by a crowd of pastors, remarkable for nothing but the meanness of their condition and the narrowness of their knowledge. Yet the choice was hostile to Presbyterianism, and the commission thus answered all the purposes for which it was designed.
The inevitable result of all those changes was at last felt in the growing unfitness of the parochial clergy for their office. The habitual remedy was a commission. A board of lay commissioners was appointed to examine into the learning and conduct of the clergy in general.
Yet even in this period of suffering, the policy of the government afforded a comparative shelter to the church.Usher, Brownrigg, Pearson, and Hall, were overlooked in their use of the liturgy; though it had been declared by the lay-commissioners a ground of deprivation. The “Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy” also originated about this period; Hall, afterwards Bishop of Chester, preaching the inauguration sermon at St. Paul’s; and even taking as his subject the budding of Aaron’s rod, in bold allusion to a regular priesthood.
In this republicanism of religion the evils of schism were at length felt so strongly, that an attempt was made, under the influence of Usher and Baxter, to combine the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Independents in a general association, only retaining such principles as were alike acknowledged by the three. But this attempt, generous in its conception, but incompatible with the feelings of the times, was soon abandoned. The Lord Protector adopted the plan, but, powerful as he was, and anxious to extinguish the religious disputes, which were still the objects of his chief alarm, he found that it was easier to subdue armies than controversialists.
Yet all his projects had the stamp of grandeur. If his political triumphs were won more for himself than for his country, he desired to make his religious successes the common property of Europe. Establishing himself as the champion of Protestantism, and England as its supreme seat, he had conceived the plan of a great Protestant commonwealth, consisting of representatives from the Protestantism of every nation of the Continent, capable of guiding all its impulses, securing all its rights, and demanding retribution for all its injuries. But this design, a nobler one than the boasted confederation of Henry the Fourth, was not to be realized by a man harassed by domestic enemies, perplexed by craving partizanship, and now gradually sinking under bodily decay.
The closing days of his daring and brilliant existence are too well known to be more than touched on here. Of all cares, the cares of a throne must be the most exhausting: for what are the anxieties of humbler life, to his who feels the responsibilities of empire? Or, if hope is the great stimulant of life, what hope can be his who has already attained the highest point of human elevation? Or, if the fear of change is the great penalty of possession, what must be the restlessness of the usurper’s pillow? The dread of assassination was the form in which decay seized on the vigorous mind of Cromwell. The man who had habitually defied danger, whose whole life was hazard; prompt in all the difficulties of council; daring, and even desperate, in all the emergencies of the field; was seen sunk into timidity within the walls of his palace, and in the midst of his guards. Worn out with those distractions he died, September 3, 1658, leaving a mighty moral to unlicensed ambition, in an unhappy prosperity and a clouded fame. Even the circumstances of his death exhibited that singular mixture of good and ill, honour and shame, which characterized his life. The day which he had always regarded as the most fortunate of his career, the double anniversary of the victories of Dunbar and Worcester, was his last; but he died in the midst of a tempest so violent as to be long recorded in the popular memory, as a peculiar evidence of Divine judgment on his crimes. He was buried with royal state at Westminster; but was thus buried, only to be disinterred, his body removed to the place of common execution at Tyburn; and there, after being suspended in its coffin till sunset, flung into a hole at the foot of the scaffold. A signal instance of the brevity of national applause, but a mean revenge on the conqueror of two kings of England!
In contemplating the rebellion, as a great political experiment, it presents every aspect of failure. If in the earliest ages of the struggle it obtained some important privileges from the throne, it destroyed their value by the violence of their seizure. The king soon learned to suspect the moderation of men who made concession the ground of demand, and argued conciliation into an evidence of infirmity. Self-defence compels all to resist, when the assault is palpably made not for right but for possession. Charles, it is true, was unfitted for the time: even the qualities that place his name with honour among the records of personal merit, were adverse to his success, as the master of a beleaguered throne. His high spirit was too easily roused by the insults by the insults of meaner men; his known intrepidity was too quick in scorning the low-born subtleties of the fanatics and conspirators who had pledged themselves to his ruin; and his alternate contempt of all advice, and deference to ill advisers, deprived him of that character of decision, which, in times of civil tumult, is the one essential to victory.
But if the king erred through the defects of his nature, the people erred still more by the rashness of their passions. Their triumph terminated in the extinction of all liberty: their crimes against a king were punished by the sternness of a despot; and nothing but that fortune which cut off their usurper in the vigour of life, and left his boldness and intelligence to be succeeded by a feeble and timid offspring, could have saved England from a dynasty of chains.
The Rebellion, regarded as a great experiment for liberty of conscience, was equally unsuccessful. Without liberty of conscience no true faith can exist. But the freedom established by the rebellion was a licence of mutual injury. The privilege which placed every novelty, extravagance, and fantasy of popular religion on a rank with all that was consecrated by experience, sustained by learning, and founded on the exercise of the mature understanding; overthrew at a blow all the natural barriers between wisdom and error. The sudden influx of political aspirants into the sects made even their virtues dangerous to the community, and their thirst of power exposed the state to all the hazards of faction, inflamed by all the fantasies of zeal.
The natural result of a licence inconsistent with the public tranquility, was a licence inconsistent with the soberness of Scripture. Sects started up, whose claim to popularity was their eagerness for all that was new, and their scorn of all that was established. Among the most remarkable of those were the Levellers, a name now limited to political conspirators, but then distinguishing a tribe of enthusiasts, who had arrived at the unaccountable conclusion, that among Christians all property and all power should be in common. — A doctrine, which, in our present social state, by extinguishing all the fruits of individual industry, would obviously extinguish all the stimulants to labour, substitute force for law, and end by pauperizing the community.
Another sect, the Fifth-monarchy men, are more memorable; from their having given a clearer proof of the powers of fanaticism to disturb the public peace. Pronouncing that all earthly authority was on the eve of being abolished by the predicted kingdom of Christ, they formed a plan to destroy Cromwell, and proclaim the returning Messiah as king. Unfurling a banner, with the lion couchant as its emblem, and inscribed with the words “Who shall rouse him up,” a party of those lunatics, headed by one of their preachers, sallied from their place of worship to commence the grand revolution. They were instantly defeated, and the tumult and the sect suppressed together.
But if such sects were the prominent effects of the general dislocation of religious authority, more serious evils arose from its agency on the national mind at the Restoration. As the violence of the politicians had finally disgusted the nation with liberty, the extravagance of the enthusiasts had tended to shake the popular respect for religion. As the one threw the Constitution at the foot of the king, the other hazarded even the decencies of the Establishment. Forms had been perverted, they were now ridiculed; all religion was declared hypocrisy, and all unbelief took the name of candour. The morals of the king, learned in the loosest court of the Continent, became the standard of manners: the stage conveyed the licentiousness of the court of the multitude; and the infidelity of the higher ranks completed the picture of a degenerate age. England was, for fifty years, the center of intellectual evil to Europe: the especial land of the infidel, who, in the insolence and vanity of his heart, assumed to himself the haughty title of the Freethinker.
But she had a signal source of recovery within. Her established Church, long stripped of its branches, and iron-bound, like the tree in Nebuchadnezzar’s vision, had deeply felt the injuries of the rebellion. But it was soon to spread a nobler shade than ever. Its literature again became conspicuous; to break down the infidel was its first work: a succession of forcible treatises on the evidences, the spirit, and the value of Christianity rapidly achieved this great service. The names of Butler, Waterland, Warburton, Sherlock, and a crowd of other churchmen; with Lardner, Leland, and their followers among the dissenters, are still eminent as the defenders of religion. The deluge of revolt and impurity which had overspread the land, at length dried away; and the Church of England, like the patriarchal family descending from the ark, renewed the compact with its supreme Preserver. It saw, and sees still, the soil requiring many a long period of labour, and many a high interposition of Providence, before the traces of the day of evil shall be wholly obliterated. But it saw the bow in the cloud; and it received in its renewed strength the practical pledge, that the succession of the seasons of truth and knowledge should not be interrupted again. It now sees, in the sudden and vigorous activity of its servants a home, and the new and magnificent planting of Episcopacy in the East and West, the approaching realization of the promise of increase and replenishing of the earth; and now, with a faith only refreshed by the lapse of ages, looks beyond the troubles of the time, in sacred confidence, that while it retains its fidelity to the great Covenant of Protestantism, the day of subversion shall return no more.
G.C.
London
March, 1838
HOLY LIVING
CHAPTER I
CONSIDERATION OF THE GENERAL INSTRUMENTS AND MEANS SERVING A HOLY LIFE, BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION.
It is necessary that every man should consider, that since God hath given him an excellent nature, wisdom, and choice, an understanding soul, and an immortal spirit; having made him lord over the beasts, and but a little lower than the angels; he hath also appointed for him a work and a service great enough to employ those abilities, and hath also designed him to a state of life after this, to which he can only arrive by that service and obedience. And therefore, as every man is wholly God’s own portion by the title of creation, so all our labours and care, all our powers and faculties, must be wholly employed in the service of God, and even all the days of our life; that this life being ended, we may live with him for ever.
Neither is it sufficient that we think of the service of God as a work of the least necessity, or of small employment, but that it be done by us as God intended it; that it be done with prevailing ingredient; and the ministers of religion are so scattered, that they cannot unite to stop the inundation, and from chairs or pulpits, from their synods or tribunals, chastise the infidelity of the willingly seduced multitude; and that those few good people who have no other plot in their religion but to serve God and save their souls, do want such assistances of ghostly counsel as may serve their emergent needs, and assist their endeavours in the acquist of virtues, and relieve their dangers when they are tempted to sin and death; — I thought I had reasons enough inviting me to draw into one body those advices which the several necessities of many men must use at some time or other, and many of them daily: that by a collection of holy precepts they might less feel the want of personal and attending guides, and that the rules for conduct of souls might be committed to a book which they might always have; since they could not always have a prophet at their needs, nor be suffered to go up to the house of the Lord to inquire of the appointed oracles.
I know, my Lord, that there are some interested persons who add scorn to the afflictions of the Church of England; and because she is afflicted by men, call her “forsaken of the Lord;” and because her solemn assemblies are scattered, think that the religion is lost, and the church divorced from God, supposing Christ (who was a man of sorrows) to be angry with his spouse when she is like him, (for that is the true state of the error,) and that he who promised his Spirit to assist his servants in their troubles will, because they are in trouble, take away the Comforter from them; who cannot be a comforter, but while he cures our sadnesses, and relieves our sorrows, and turns our persecutions into joys, and crowns, and sceptres. But, concerning the present state of the Church of England, I consider, that because we now want the blessings of external communion in many degrees, and the circumstances of a prosperous and unafflicted people, we are to take estimate of ourselves with single judgments, and every man is to give sentence concerning the state of his own soul by the precepts and rules of our Lawgiver, not by the after-decrees and usages of the church; that is, by the essential parts of religion, rather than by the uncertain significations of any exterior adherences; for, though it be uncertain when a man is the member of a church whether he be a member to Christ or no, because in the church’s net there are fishes good and bad; yet we may be sure that, if we be members of Christ we are of a church to all purposes of spiritual religion and salvation; and, in order to this, give me leave to speak this great truth: —
That man does certainly belong to God, who, 1. I believe, and is baptized into all the articles of the Christian faith, and studies to improve his knowledge in the matters of God, so as may best make him to live a holy life. 2. He that, in obedience to Christ, worships God diligently, frequently, and constantly, with natural religion; that is, of prayer, praises, and thanksgiving. 3. He that takes all opportunities to remember Christ’s death by a frequent sacrament, (as it can be had,) or else by inward acts of understanding, will, and memory (which is the spiritual communion,) supplies the want of the external rite. 4. He that lives chastely; 5. And is merciful; 6. And despises the world, using it as a man, but never suffering it to rifle a duty; 7. And is just in his dealing, and diligent in his calling. 8. He that is humble in his spirit; 9. And obedient to government; 10. And content in his fortune and employment. 11. He that does his duty because he loves God; 12. And especially if, after all this, he be afflicted, and patient, or prepared to suffer affliction for the cause of God: the man that hath these twelve signs of grace and predestination, does as certainly belong to God, and is his son, as surely as he is his creature.
And if my brethren in persecution and in the bonds of the Lord Jesus can truly show these marks, they shall not need be troubled that others can show a prosperous outside, great revenues, public assemblies, uninterrupted successions of bishops, prevailing armies, or any arm of flesh, or less certain circumstance. These are the marks of the Lord Jesus, and the characters of a Christian: this is a good religion; and these things God’s grace hath put into our powers, and God’s laws have made to be our duty, and the nature of men and the needs of commonwealths have made to be necessary. The other accidents and pomps of a church are things without our power, and are not in our choice: they are good to be used when they may be had, and they help to illustrate or advantage it; but if any of them constitute a church in the being of a society and a government, yet they are not of its constitutions, as it is Christian and hopes to be saved.
And now the case is so with us that we are reduced to that religion which no man can forbid, which we can keep in the midst of a persecution; by which the martyrs, in the days of our fathers, went to heaven; that by which we can be servants of God, and receive the Spirit of Christ, and make use of his comforts, and live in his love, and in charity with all men: and they that do so cannot perish.
My Lord, I have now described some general lines and features of that religion which I have more particularly set down in the following pages; in which I have neither served nor disserved the interests of any party of Christians, as they are divided by uncharitable names from the rest of their brethren; and no man will have reason to be angry with me for refusing to mingle in his unnecessary or vicious quarrels; especially while I study to do him good by conducting him in the narrow way to heaven, without intricating him in the labyrinths and wild turnings of questions and uncertain talkings. I have told what men ought to do, and by what means they may be assisted; and in most cases I have also told them why; and yet with as much quickness as I could think necessary to establish a rule, and not to engage in homily or discourse. In the use of which rules, although they are plain, useful, and fitted for the best and worst understandings, and for the needs of all men, yet I shall desire the reader to proceed with the following advices.
1. They that will with profit make use of the proper instruments of virtue, must so live as if they were always under the physician’s hand. For the counsels of religion are not to be applied to the distempers of the soul as men used to take hellobore; but they must dwell together with the spirit of a man, and be twisted about his understanding for ever: they must be used like nourishment, that is, by a daily care and meditation; not like a single medicine, and upon the actual pressure of a present necessity: for counsels and wise discourses, applied to an actual distemper, at the best are but like strong smells to an epileptic person; sometimes they may raise him, but they never cure him. The following rules, if they be made familiar to our natures and the thoughts of every day, may make virtue and religion become easy and habitual; but when the temptation is present, and hath already seized upon some portions of our consent, we are not so apt to be counselled, and we find no gust or relish in the precept: the lessons are the same, but the instrument is unstrung, or out of tune.
2. In using the instruments of virtue we must be curious to distinguish instruments from duties, and prudent advices from necessary injunctions; and if by any other means the duty can be secured, let there be no scruples stirred concerning any other helps, only if they can, in that case, strengthen and secure the duty, or help towards perseverance, let them serve in that station in which they can be placed. For there are some persons in whom the Spirit of God hath breathed so bright a flame of love, that they do all their acts of virtue by perfect choice and without objection, and their zeal is warmer than that it will be allayed by temptation; and to such persons mortification by philosophical instruments, as fasting, sackcloth, and other rudenesses to the body, is wholly useless; it is always a more uncertain means to acquire any virtue, or secure any duty; and if love hath filled all the corners of our soul, it alone is able to do all the work of God.
3. Be not nice in stating the obligations of religion; but where the duty is necessary, and the means very reasonable in itself, dispute not too busily whether, in all circumstances, it can fit thy particular; but “super totam materiam,” upon the whole make use of it. For it is a good sign of a great religion, and no imprudence, when we have sufficiently considered the substance of affairs then to be easy, humble, obedient, apt, and credulous in the circumstances, which are appointed to us in particular by our spiritual guides, or, in general, by all wise men in cases not unlike. He that gives alms does best not always to consider the minutes and strict measures of his ability, but to give freely, incuriously, and abundantly. A man must not weigh grains in the accounts of his repentance; but for a great sin have a great sorrow, and a great severity; and in this take the ordinary advices, though, it may be, a less rigour might not be insufficient; arithmetical measures, especially of our own proportioning, are but arguments of want of love, and of forwardness in religion; or else are instruments of scruple, and then become dangerous. Use the rule heartily and enough, and there will be no harm in thy error if any should happen.
4. If thou intendest heartily to serve God, and avoid sin in any one instance, refuse not the hardest and most severe advice that is prescribed in order to it, though possibly it be a stranger to thee; for whatever it be, custom will make it easy.
5. When many instruments for the obtaining any virtue, or restraining any vice, are propounded, observe which of them fits thy person or the circumstances of thy need, and use it rather that the other; that by this means thou mayest be engaged to watch and use spiritual arts and observation about thy soul. Concerning the managing of which, as the interest is greater, so the necessities are more, and the cases more intricate, and the accidents and dangers greater and more importunate; and there is greater skill required than in the securing an estate, or restoring health to an infirm body. I wish all men in the world did heartily believe so much of this as is true; it would very much help to do the work of God.
Thus, my Lord, I have made bold by your hand to reach out this little scroll of cautions to all those, who, by seeing your honoured names set before my book, shall, by the fairness of such a frontispiece, be invited to look into it. I must confess it cannot but look like a design in me, to borrow your name and beg your patronage to my book, that, if there be no other worth in it, yet at least it may have the splendour and warmth of a burning glass, which, borrowing a flame from the eye of Heaven, shines and burns by the rays of the sun its patron. I will not quit myself from the suspicion, for I cannot pretend it to be a present either of itself fit to be offered to such a personage, or any part of a just return; but I humbly desire you would own it for an acknowledgement of those great endearments and noblest usages you have passed upon me; but so men in their religion give a piece of gum, or the fat of a cheap lamb, in sacrifice to Him that gives them all that they have or need; and unless He, who was pleased to employ your Lordship as a great minister of his providence, in making a promise of his good to me, the meanest of his servants, “that he will never leave me nor forsake me,” shall enable me, by greater services of religion, to pay my great debt to your honour, I must still increase my score; since i shall now spend as much in my needs of pardon for this boldness, as in the reception of those favours, by which I stand accountable to your Lordship in all the bands of service and gratitude; though I am, in the deepest sense of duty and affection,
My most honoured Lord,
Your Honour’s most obliged,
And most humble servant,
JEREMY TAYLOR
TO THE
RIGHT HON. AND TRULY NOBLE
RICHARD LORD VAUGHAN,
EARL OF CARBERY,
KNIGHT OF THE HONOURABLE ORDER OF THE BATH
___________________________
My Lord,
I have lived to see religion painted upon banners, and thrust out of churches; and the temple turned into a tabernacle, and that tabernacle made ambulatory, and covered with skins of beasts and torn curtains; and God to be worshipped, not as he is “the Father of our Lord Jesus,” (an afflicted Prince, the King of sufferings,) nor as the “God of Peace,” (which two appellatives God newly took upon him in the New Testament, and glories in for ever,) but he is owned now rather as “the Lord of Hosts,” which title he was preached by the Prince of Peace. But when religion puts puts on armour, and God is not acknowledged by his New Testament titles, religion may have in it the power of the sword, but not the power of godliness; and we may complain of this to God, and amongst them that are afflicted, but we have no remedy but what we must expect from the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings and the returns of the God of peace. In the meantime, and now that religion pretends to stranger actions upon the new principles; and men are apt to prefer a prosperous error before an afflicted truth; and some will think they are religious enough, if their worshippings have in them the great earnestness and passion, with much zeal and desire; that we refuse no labour; that we bestow upon it much time; that we use the best guides, and arrive at the end of glory by all the ways of grace, of prudence, and religion.
And, indeed, if we consider how much of our lives is taken up by the needs of nature; how many years are wholly spent, before we come to any use of reason; how many years more before that reason is useful to us to any great purposes, how imperfect our discourse is made by our evil education, false principles, ill company, bad examples, and want of experience; how many parts of our wisest and best years are spent in eating and sleeping, in necessary businesses and unnecessary vanities, in worldly civilities and less useful circumstances, in the learning arts and sciences, languages, or trades; that little portion of hours that is left for the practices of piety and religious walking with God, is so short and trifling, that, were not the goodness of God infinitely great, it might seem unreasonable or impossible for us to expect of him eternal joys in heaven, even after the well spending those few minutes which are left for God and God’s service, after we have served ourselves and our own occasions.
And yet it is considerable, that the fruit which comes from the many days of recreation and vanity is very little; and, although we scatter much yet we gather up but little profit; but from the few hours we spend in prayer and the exercises of a pious life, the return is great and profitable; and what we sow in the minutes and spare portions of a few years, grows up to crowns and sceptres in a happy and a glorious eternity.
1. Therefore although it cannot be enjoined, that the greatest part of our time be spent in the direct actions of devotion and religion, yet it will become, not only a duty, but also a great providence, to lay aside, for the services of God and the businesses of the Spirit, as much as we can; because God rewards our minutes with long and eternal happiness; and the greater portion of our time we give to God, the more we treasure up for ourselves; and “No man is a better merchant that be that lays out his time upon God, and his money upon the poor.”
2. Only it becomes us to remember, and to adore God’s goodness
for it, that God hath not only permitted us to serve the necessities of our nature,
but hath made them to become parts of our duty; that if we, by directing these actions
to the glory of God, intend them as instruments to continue our persons in his service,
he, by adopting them into religion, may turn our nature into grace and accept our
natural actions as actions of religion. God is pleased to esteem it for a part of
his service,
3. To which if we add, that in these and all other actions of our lives we always stand before God, acting, and speaking, and thinking in his practice, and that it matters not that our conscience is sealed with secrecy, since it lies open to God; it will concern us to behave ourselves carefully, as in the presence of our Judge.
These three considerations rightly managed, and applied to the several parts and instances of our lives, will be like Elisha stretched upon the child, apt to put life and quickness into every part of it, and to make us live the life of grace, and to do the work of God.
I shall, therefore, by way of introduction, reduce these three to practice, and show how every Christian may improve all and each of these to the advantage of piety, in the whole course of his life; that if he please to bear but one of them upon his spirit, he may feel the benefit, like an universal instrument, helpful in all spiritual and temporal actions.
SECTION I
The first general instrument of Holy Living, Care of our Time.
He that is choice of his time will also be choice of his company, and choice of his actions; lest the first engage him in vanity and loss; and the latter, by being criminal, be a throwing his time and himself away, and a going back in the accounts of eternity.
God hath given to man a short time here upon earth, and yet upon this short time eternity depends: but so, that for every hour of our life (after we are persons capable of laws, and know good from evil) we must give account to the great Judge of men and angels. And this is it which our blessed Saviour told us, that we must account for every idle word; not meaning that every word which is not designed to edification, or is less prudent, shall be reckoned for a sin; but that the time which we spend in our idle talking and unprofitable discoursings; that time which might and ought to have been employed to spiritual and useful purposes — that is to be accounted for.
For we must remember that we have a great work to do, many enemies to conquer, many evils to prevent, much danger to run through, many difficulties to be mastered, many necessities to serve, and much good to do; many children to provide for, or many friends to support, or many poor to relieve, or many diseases to cure; besides the needs of nature and of relation, our private and our public cares, and duties of the world, which necessity and the providence of God have adopted into the family of religion.
And that we need not fear this instrument to be a snare to us, or that the duty must end in scruple, vexation, and eternal fears, we must remember, that the life of every man may be so ordered (and indeed must) that it may be a perpetual serving of God: the greatest trouble and most busy trade and worldly encumbrances, when they are necessary, or charitable, or profitable in order to any of those ends which we are bound to serve, whether public or private, being a doing of God’s work. For God provides the good things of the world to serve the needs of nature, by the labours of the ploughman the skill and pains of the artisan, and the dangers and traffic of the merchant: these men are, in their callings, the ministers of the Divine Providence, and the stewards of the creation, and servants of a great family of God, the world, in the employment of procuring necessities for food and clothing, ornament, and physic. In their proportions also, a king and a priest and a prophet, a judge and an advocate, doing the works of their employment according to their proper rules, are doing the work of God; because they serve those necessities which God hath made, and yet made no provisions for them, but by their ministry. So that no man can complain that his calling takes him off from religion; his calling itself, and his very worldly employment in honest trades and offices, is a serving of God; and, if it be moderately pursued and according to the rules of Christian prudence, will leave void spaces enough for prayers and retirements of a more spiritual religion.
God has given every man work enough to do, that there shall be no room for idleness; and yet hath so ordered the world, that there shall be space for devotion. He that hath the fewest businesses of the world is called upon to spend more time in the dressing of the soil; and he that hath the most affairs may so order them that they shall be a service of God; whilst at certain periods, they are blessed with prayers and actions of religion, and all day long are hallowed by a holy intention.
However, so long as idleness is quite shut out from our lives, all the sins of wantonness, softness, and effeminacy, are prevented and there is but little room left for temptation; and, therefore, to a busy man temptation is fain to climb up together with his business, and sins creep upon him only by accidents and occasions; whereas, to an idle person they come in a full body, and with open violence and the impudence of a restless importunity.
Idleness is called ‘the sin of Sodom and her daughters,’
Idleness is the greatest prodigality in the world; it throws away that which is invaluable in respect of its present use, and irreparable when it is past, being to be recovered by no power of art or nature. But the way to secure and improve our time we may practise in the following rules.
Rules for employing our Time.
1. In the morning, when you awake, accustom yourself to think first upon God, or something in order to his service; and at night, also let him close thine eyes: and let your sleep be necessary and healthful, not idle and expensive of time beyond the needs and conveniences of nature; and sometimes be curious to see the preparation which the sun makes, when he is coming forth from his chambers of the east.
2. Let every man that hath a calling be diligent in pursuance of its employment, so as not lightly or without reasonable occasion to neglect it in any of those times which are usually, and by the custom of prudent persons and good husbands, employed in it.
3. Let all the intervals or void spaces of time be employed in prayers, reading, meditating, works of nature, recreation, charity, friendliness and neighbourhood, and means of spiritual and corporal health; ever remembering so to work in our calling, as not to neglect the work of our high calling; but to begin and end the day with God, with such forms of devotion as shall be proper to our necessities.
4. The resting days of Christians, and festivals of the church,
must in no sense be days of idleness; for it is better to plough upon holy days
than to do nothing, or to do viciously: but let them be spent in the works of the
day, that is, of religion and charity, according to the rules appointed.
5. Avoid the company of drunkards and busybodies, and all such as are apt to talk much to little purpose; for no man can be provident of his time that is not prudent in the choice of his company; and if one of the speakers be vain, tedious, and trifling, he that hears, and he that answers in the discourse, are equal losers of their time.
6. Never talk with any man, or undertake any trifling employment,
merely to pass the time away;
7. In the midst of the works of thy calling, often retire to God
8. Let your employment be such as may become a reasonable person; and not be a business fit for children or distracted people, but fit for your age and understanding. For a man may be very idly busy, and take great pains to so little purpose, that, in his labours and expense of time, he shall serve no end but of folly and vanity. There are some trades that wholly serve the ends of idle persons and fools, and such as are fit to be seized upon by the severity of laws and banished from under the sun; and there are some people who are busy; but it is, as Domitian was, in catching flies.
9. Let your employment befitted to your person and calling. Some there are that employ their time in affairs infinitely below the dignity of their person; and being called by God or by the republic to help to bear great burdens, and to judge a people, do enfeeble their understanding and disable their persons by sordid and brutish business. Thus Nero went up and down Greece, and challenged the fiddlers at their trade. Eropus, a Macedonian king, made lanterns. Harcatius, the king of Parthia, was a mole-catcher; and Biantes, the Lydian, filed needles. He that is appointed to minister to holy things must not suffer secular affairs and sordid arts to eat up great portions of his employment: a clergyman must not keep a tavern, nor a judge be an innkeeper; and it was a great idleness in Theophylact, the patriarch of C.P. to spend his time in the stable of horses, when he should have been in his study, or in the pulpit, or saying his holy offices. Such employments are the diseases of labour, and the rust of time which it contracts, not by lying still, but by dirty employment.
10. Let your employment be such as becomes a Christian; that is, in no sense mingled with sin: for he that takes pains to serve the ends of covetousness, or ministers to another’s lust, or keeps a shop of impurities or intemperance, is idle in the worst sense; for every hour so spent runs him backward, and must be spent again in the remaining and shorter part of his life, and spent better.
11. Persons of great quality, and of no trade, are to be most prudent and curious in their employment and traffic of time. They are miserable if their education hath been so loose and undisciplined as to leave them unfurnished of skill to spend their time: but most miserable are they, if such misgovernment and unskilfulness make them fall into vicious and baser company, and drive on their time by the sad minutes and periods of sin and death. They that are learned know the worth of time, and the manner how well to improve a day; and they are to prepare themselves for such purposes, in which they may be most useful in order to arts or arms, to counsel in public, or government in their country; but for others of them, that are unlearned, let them choose good company, such as may not tempt them to a vice, or join with them in any; but that may supply their defects by counsel and discourse, by way of conduct and conversation. Let them learn easy and youthful things, read history and the laws of the land, learn the customs of their country, the condition of their own estate, profitable and charitable contrivances of it; let them study prudently to govern their families, learn the burdens of their tenants, the necessities of their neighbours, and in their proportion supply them, and reconcile their enmities, and prevent their lawsuits, or quickly end them; and in this glut of leisure and disemployment, let them set apart greater portions of their time for religion and the necessities of their souls.
12. Let the women of noble birth and great fortunes do the same things in their proportions and capacities; nurse their children, look to the affairs of the house, visit poor cottages, and relieve their necessities; be courteous to the neighborhood, learn in silence of their husbands or their spiritual guides, read good books, pray often and speak little, and “learn to do good works for necessary uses;” for by that phrase St. Paul expresses the obligation of Christian women to good housewifery, and charitable provisions for their family and neighbourhood.
13. Let all persons of all conditions avoid all delicacy and niceness in their clothing or diet, because such softness engages them upon great mispendings of their time, while they dress and comb out all their opportunities of their morning devotion, and half the day’s severity, and sleep out the care and provision of their souls.
14. Let every one of every condition avoid curiosity, and all inquiry into things that concern them not. For all business in things that concern us not, is an employing our time to no good of ours, and therefore not in order to a happy eternity. In this account our neighbours’ necessities are not to be reckoned: for they concern us, as one member is concerned in the grief of another: but going from house to house, tattlers and busybodies, which are the canker and rust of idleness, as idleness is the rust of time, are reproved by the apostle in severe language, and forbidden in order to this exercise.
15. As much as may be, cut off all impertinent and useless employments of your life unnecessary and fantastic visits, long waitings upon great personages, where neither duty, nor necessity, not charity, obliges us; all vain meetings, all laborious trifles, and whatsoever spends much time to no real, civil, religious, or charitable purpose.
16. Let not your recreations be lavish spenders of your time;
but choose such which are healthful, short, transient, recreative, and apt to refresh
you; but at no hand dwell upon them, or make them your great employment: for he
that spends his time in sports, and calls it recreation, is like him whose garment
is all made of fringes, and his meat nothing but sauces; they are healthless, chargeable,
and useless. And therefore avoid such games, which require much time or long attendance;
or which are apt to steal thy affections from more severe employments. For to whatsoever
thou hast given thy affections, thou wilt not grudge to give thy time. Natural necessity
and the example of St. John, who recreated himself with sporting with a tame partridge,
17. Set apart some portions of every day for more solemn devotion and religious employment, which be severe in observing: and if variety of employment, or prudent affairs, or civil society, press upon you, yet so order thy rule, that the necessary parts of it be not omitted; and though just occasions may make our prayers shorter, yet let nothing but a violent, sudden, and impatient necessity, make thee, upon any one day, wholly to omit thy morning and evening devotions; which if you be forced to make very short, you may supply and lengthen with ejaculations and short retirements in the day-time, in the midst of your employment or of your company.
18. Do not the ‘work of God negligently’
19. When the clock strikes, or however else you shall measure the day, it is good to say a short ejaculation every hour, that the parts and returns of devotion may be the measure of your time; and do so also in all the breaches of thy sleep; that those spaces, which have in them no direct business of the world, may be filled with religion.
20. If, by thus doing, you have not secured your time by an early and fore-handed care, yet be sure by a timely diligence to redeem the time; that is, to be pious and religious in such instances in which formerly you have sinned, and to bestow your time especially upon such graces, the contrary whereof you have formerly practised, doing actions of chastity and temperance with as great a zeal and earnestness as you did once act your uncleanness; and then, by all arts, to watch against your present and future dangers, from day to day securing your standing: this is properly to redeem your time, that is, to buy your security of it at the rate of any labour and honest acts.
21. Let him that is most busied set apart some solemn time every
year,
22. In this we shall be much assisted, and we shall find the work
more easy, if, before we sleep, every night
23. Let all these things be done prudently and moderately, not with scruple and vexation. For these are good advantages, but the particulars are not Divine commandments; and therefore are to be used as shall be found expedient to every one’s condition. For provided that our duty be secured, for the degrees and for the instruments every man is permitted to himself and the conduct of such who shall be appointed to him. He is happy that can secure every hour to a sober or a pious employment: but the duty consists not scrupulously in minutes and half hours, but in greater portions of time; provided that no minute be employed in sin, and the great portions of our time be spent in sober employment, and all the appointed days, and some portions of every day, be allowed for religion. In all the lesser parts of time, we are left to our own elections and prudent management, and to the consideration of the great degrees and differences of glory that are laid up in heaven for us, according to the degrees of our care, and piety, and diligence.
The Benefits of this Exercise.
This exercise, besides that it hath influence upon our whole lives, it hath a special efficacy for the preventing of, 1. beggarly sins, that is, those sins which idleness and beggary usually betray men to; such as are lying, flattery, stealing, and dissimulation. 2. It is a proper antidote against carnal sins, and such as proceed from fulness of bread and emptiness of employment. 3. It is a great instrument of preventing the smallest sins and irregularities of our life, which usually creep upon idle, disemployed, and curious persons. 4. It not only teaches us to avoid evil, but engages us upon doing good, as the proper business of all our days. 5. It prepares us so against sudden changes that we shall not easily be surprised at the sudden coming of the day of the Lord: for he that is curious of his time will not easily be unready and unfurnished.
SECTION II.
The second general instrument of Holy Living, Purity of Intention.
That we should intend and design God’s glory in every action
we do, whether it be natural or chosen, is expressed by St. Paul,
This grace is so excellent that it sanctifies the most common action of our life; and yet so necessary that, without it, the very best actions of our devotion are imperfect and vicious. For he that prays out of custom, or gives alms for praise, or fasts to be accounted religious, is but a pharisee hypocrite in his fast. But a holy end sanctifies all these and all other actions, which can be made holy, and gives distinction to them, and procures acceptance.
For, as to know the end distinguishes a man from a beast, so to
choose a good end distinguishes him from an evil man. Hezekiah repeated his good
deeds upon his sick-bed, and obtained favour of God, but the pharisee was accounted
insolent for doing
Holy intention is to the actions of a man that which the soul is to the body, or form to its matter, or the root to the tree, or the sun to the world, or the fountain to a river, or the base to a pillar: for, without these, the body is a dead trunk, the matter is sluggish, the tree is a block, the world is darkness, the river is quickly dry, the pillar rushes into flatness and a ruin; and the action is sinful, or unprofitable and vain. The poor farmer that gave a dish of cold water to Artaxerxes was rewarded with a golden goblet; and he that gives the same to a disciple in the name of a disciple, shall have a crown; but if he gives water in dispute, when the disciple needs wine or a cordial, his reward shall be to want that water to cool his tongue.
Rules for our Intentions.
1. In every action reflect upon the end; and in your undertaking it, consider why you do it, and why you propound to yourself for a reward, and to your actions as its end.
2. Begin every action in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; the meaning of which is, 1, that we be careful that we do not the action without the permission or warrant of God; 2, that we design it to the glory of God, if not in the direct action, yet at least in its consequence; if not in the particular, yet at least in the whole order of things and accidents; 3, that it may be so blessed that what you intend for innocent and holy purposes, may not, by any chance, or abuse, or misunderstanding of men, be turned into evil, or made the occasion of sin.
3. Let every action of concernment be begun with prayer, that God would not only bless the action, but sanctify your purpose; and made an oblation of the action to God: holy and well intended actions being the best oblations and presents we can make to God; and, when God is entitled to them, he will the rather keep the fire upon the altar bright and shining.
4. In the prosecution of the action, renew and re-enkindle your purpose by short ejaculations to these purposes: ‘Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name, let all praise be given;’ and consider: “Now I am working the work of God; I am his servant, I am in a happy employment, I am doing my master’s business, I am not at my own dispose, I am using his talents, and all the gain must be his:” for then be sure, as the glory is his, so the reward shall be thine. If thou bringest his goods home with increase, he will make thee ruler over cities.
5. Have a care, that, while the altar thus sends up a holy frame,
thou dost not suffer the birds to come and carry away the sacrifice: that is, let
not that which began well, and was intended for God’s glory, decline and end in
thy own praise, or temporal satisfaction, or a sin. A story, told to represent the
vileness of unchastity, is well begun; but if thy female auditor be pleased with
thy language, and begins rather to like thy person for thy story than to dislike
the crime, be watchful, lest this goodly head of gold descend in silver and brass,
and end in iron and clay, like Nebuchadnezzar’s image; for from the end it shall
have its name and reward.
6. If any accidental event, which was not first intended by thee, can come to pass, let it not be taken into thy purposes, not at all be made use of; as if, by telling a true story, you can do an ill turn to your enemy, by no means do it; but, when the temptation is found out, turn all thy enmity upon that.
7. In every more solemn action of religion join together many good ends, that the consideration of them may entertain all your affections; and that, when any one ceases, the purity of your intention may be supported by another supply. He that fasts only to tame a rebellious body, when he is provided of a remedy either in grace or nature, may be tempted to leave off his fasting. But be that in his fast intends the mortification of every unruly appetite, and accustoming himself to bear the yoke of the Lord, a contempt of the pleasures of meat and drink, humiliation of all wilder thoughts, obedience and humility, austerity and charity, and the convenience and assistance to devotion, and to do an act of repentance; whatever happens, will have reason enough to make him to continue his purpose, and to sanctify it. And certain it is, the more good ends are designed in an action the more degrees of excellency the man obtains.
8. If any temptation to spoil your purpose happens in a religious duty, do not presently omit the action, but rather strive to rectify your intention, and to mortify the temptation. St. Bernard taught us this rule: for when the devil, observing him to preach excellently and to do much benefit to his hearers, tempted him to vain-glory, hoping that the good man, to avoid that, would cease preaching, he gave this answer only, “I neither began for thee, neither for thee will I make an end.”
9. In all actions which are of long continuance, deliberation, and abode, let your holy and pious intention be actual; that is, that it be, by a special prayer or action, by a peculiar act of resignation or oblation, given to God; but in smaller actions a pious habitual intention; that is, that it be included within your general care that no action have an ill end; and that it be comprehended in your general prayers, whereby you offer yourself and all you do to God’s glory.
10. Call not every temporal end a defiling of thy intention, but only, 1, when it contradicts any of the ends of God; or 2, when it is principally intended in an action of religion. For sometimes a temporal end is part of our duty; and such are all the actions of our calling, whether our employment be religious or civil. We are commanded to provide for our family; but if the minister of divine offices shall take upon him that holy calling for covetous or ambitious ends, or shall not design the glory of God principally and especially, he hath polluted his hands and his heart; and the fire of the altar is quenched, or it sends forth nothing but the smoke of mushrooms or unpleasant gums. And it is a great unworthiness to prefer the interest of a creature before the ends of God, the Almighty Creator.
But because many cases may happen in which a man’s heart may deceive him, and he may not well know what is in his own spirit; therefore, by these following signs, we shall best make a judgment whether our intentions be pure and our purposes holy.
Signs of our Purity of Intentions.
1. It is probable our hearts
2. It is likely our hearts are pure and our intentions spotless, when we are not solicitous of the opinion and censures of men: but only that we do our duty, and be accepted of God. For our eyes will certainly be fixed there from whence we expect our reward: and if we desire that God should approve us, it is a sign we do his work, and expect him our paymaster.
3. He that does as well in private, between God and his own soul,
as in public, in pulpits, in theaters, and market-places, hath given himself a good
testimony that his purposes are full of honesty, nobleness, and integrity. For what
Helkanah said to the mother of Samuel, ‘Am I not better to thee than ten sons?’
is most certainly verified concerning God; that he, who is to be our judge, is better
than ten thousand witnesses. But he that would have his virtue published, studies
not virtue, but glory. “He is not just
4. It is well, also, when we are not solicitous or troubled concerning the effect and event of all our actions; but that being first by prayer recommended to him, is left at his dispose: for then, in case the event be not answerable to our desires, or to the efficacy of the instrument, we have nothing left to rest in but the honesty of our purposes; which it is the more likely we have secured, by how much more we are indifferent concerning the success. St. James converted but eight persons, when he preached in Spain; and our blessed Saviour converted fewer than his own disciples did; and if thy labours prove unprosperous, if thou beset much troubled at that, it is certain thou didst not think thyself secure of a reward for thine intention; which thou mightst have done if it had been pure and just.
5. He loves virtue for God’s sake and its own that loves and honours it wherever it is to be seen; but he that is envious or angry at a virtue that is not his own, at the perfection or excellency of his neighbour, is not covetous of the virtue, but of its reward and reputation; and then his intentions are polluted. It was a great ingenuity in Moses that wished all the people might be prophets; but if he had designed his own honour, he would have prophesied alone. But he that desires only that the work of God and religion shall go on, is pleased with it whosoever is the instrument.
6. He that despises the world, and all its appendant vanities, is the best judge, and the most secured of his intentions; because he is the farthest removed from temptation. Every degree of mortification is a testimony of the purity of our purposes; and in what degree we despise sensual pleasure, or secular honours, or worldly reputation, in the same degree we shall conclude our heart right to religion and spiritual designs.
7. When we are not solicitous concerning the instruments and means of our actions, but use those means which God hath laid before us, with resignation, indifferency, and thankfulness, it is a good sign that we are rather intent upon the end of God’s glory than our own conveniency, or temporal satisfaction. He that is indifferent whether he serve God in riches or in poverty, is rather a seeker of God than of himself; and he that will throw away a good book because it is not curiously gilded, is more curious to please his eye than to inform his understanding.
8. When a temporal end consisting with a spiritual, and pretended to be subordinate to it, happens to fail and be defeated if we can rejoice in that, so God’s glory may be secured, and the interests of religion, it is a great sign our hearts are right, and our ends prudently designed and ordered.
When our intentions are thus balanced, regulated, and discerned, we may consider, 1. That this exercise is of so universal efficacy in the whole course of a holy life that it is like the soul to every holy action, and must be provided for in every undertaking; and is, of itself alone, sufficient to make all natural and indifferent actions to be adopted into the family of religion.
2. That there are some actions, which are usually reckoned as parts of our religion, which yet, of themselves, are so relative and imperfect, that, without the purity of intention, they degenerate: and unless they be directed and proceed on to those purposes which God designed them to, they return into the family of common secular, or sinful actions. Thus, alms are for charity, fasting for temperance, prayer is for religion, humiliation is for humility, austerity or sufferance is in order to the virtue of patience; and when these actions fail of their several ends, or are not directed to their own purposes, alms are misspent, fasting is an impertinent trouble, prayer is but lip-labour, humiliation is but hypocisy, sufferance is but vexation; for such were the alms of the pharisee, the fast of Jezebel, the prayer of Judah reproved by the prophet Isaiah, the humiliation of Ahab, the martyrdom of heretics; in which nothing is given to God but the body, or the forms of religion; but the soul and the power of godliness is wholly wanting.
3. We are to consider that no intention can sanctify an unholy
or unlawful action. Saul, the king, disobeyed God’s commandment, and spared the
cattle of Amalek to reserve the best for sacrifice; and Saul, the pharisee, persecuted
the church of God with a design to do God service; and they that killed the apostles
had also good purposes, but they had unhallowed actions. When there be both truth
in election, and charity in the intention;
SECTION III
The third general instrument of Holy Living; or the Practice of the Presence of God.
That God is present in all places, that he sees every action,
hears all discourses and understands every thought, is no strange thing to a Christian
ear who hath been taught this doctrine, not only by right reason and the consent
of all the wise men in the world, but also by God himself in holy Scripture. ‘Am
I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off? Can any hide himself in
secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and
earth?’ ‘Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight; but all
things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do.’
Several Manners of the Divine Presence.
The presence of God is understood by us in several manners, and to several purposes.
1. God is present by his essence; which, because it is infinite, cannot be contained within the limits of any place; and, because he is of an essential purity and spiritual nature, he cannot be undervalued by being supposed present in the places of unnatural uncleanness; because as the sun, reflecting upon the mud of strands and shores, is unpolluted in its beams, so is God not dishonoured when we suppose him in every of his creatures, and in every part of every one of them; and is still as unmixed with any unhandsome adherence as is the soul in the bowels of the body.
2. God is everywhere present by his power.
3. God is more specially present, in some places, but the several and more special manifestations of himself to extraordinary purposes. First, by glory. Thus, his seat is in heaven, because there he sits encircled with all the outward demonstrations of his glory, which he is pleased to show to all the inhabitants of those his inward and secret courts. And thus they that ‘die in the Lord, may be properly said to be ‘gone to God;’ with whom although they were before, yet now they enter into his courts, into the secret of his tabernacle, into the retinue and splendour of his glory. That is called walking with God, but this is dwelling or being with him. ‘I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ;’ so said St. Paul. But this manner of Divine Presence is reserved for the elect people of God, and for their portion in their country.
4. God is, by grace and benediction, specially present in holy
places,
5. God is especially present in the hearts of his people by his
Holy Spirit; and indeed the hearts of holy men are temples in the truth of things,
and, in type and shadow, they are heaven itself. For God reigns in the hearts of
his servants; there is his kingdom. The power of grace hath subdued all his enemies:
there is his power. They serve him night and day, and give him thanks and praise;
that is his glory. This is the religion and worship of God in the temple. The temple
itself is the heart of man; Christ is the high-priest, who from thence sends up
the incense of prayers, and joins them to his own intercession, and presents all
together to his Father; and the Holy Ghost, by his dwelling there, hath also consecrated
it into a temple;
6. God is especially present in the consciences of all persons, good and bad, by way of testimony and judgment; that is, he is there a remembrance to call our actions to mind, a witness to bring them to judgment, and a judge to acquit or to condemn. And although this manner of presence is, in this life, after the manner of this life, that is imperfect, and we forget many actions of our lives; yet the greatest changes of our state of grace or sin, our most considerable actions, are always present, like capital letters to an aged and dim eye; and, at the day of judgment, God shall draw aside the cloud, and manifest this manner of his presence more notoriously, and make it appear that he was an observer of our very thoughts, and that he only laid those things by which, because we covered with dust and negligence, were not then discerned. But when we are risen from our dust and imperfection they all appear plain and legible.
Now the consideration of this great truth is of a very universal
use in the whole course of the life of a Christian. All the consequents and effects
of it are universal. He that remembers that God stands a witness and a judge, beholding
every secresy, besides his impiety, must have put on impudence, if he be not much
restrained in his temptation to sin. “For the greatest part of sin is taken away,
Rules of exercising this Consideration.
1. Let this actual thought often return, that God is omnipresent,
filling every place; and say with David,
2. In the beginning of actions of religion, make an act of adoration, that is, solemnly worship God, and place thyself in God’s presence, and behold him with the eye of faith; and let thy desires actually fix on him as the object of thy worship, and the reason of thy hope, and the fountain of thy blessing. For when thou hast placed thyself before him, and kneelest in his presence, it is most likely all the following parts of thy devotion will be answerable to the wisdom of such an apprehension, and the glory of such a presence.
3. Let everything you see represent to your spirit the presence, the excellency, and the power of God; and let your conversation with the creatures lead you unto the Creator; for so shall your actions be done more frequently, with an actual eye to God’s presence, by your often seeing him in the glass of the creation. In the face of the sun you may see God’s beauty; in the fire you may feel his heat warming; in the water, his gentleness to refresh you: he it is that comforts your spirit when you have taken cordials; it is the dew of heaven that makes your field give you bread; and the breasts of God are the bottles that minister drink to your necessities. This philosophy, which is obvious to every man’s experience, is a good advantage to our piety; and, by this act of understanding, our wills are checked from violence and misdemeanour.
4. In your retirement, make frequent colloquies, or short discoursings, between God and thy soul. Seven times a-day do I praise thee: and in the night season also I thought upon thee, while I was waking. So did David; and every act of complaint or thanksgiving, every act of rejoicing or of mourning, every petition and every return of the heart in these intercourses, is a going to God, an appearing in his presence, and a representing him present to thy spirit and to thy necessity. And this was long since by a spiritual person called, “a building to God a chapel in our heart.” It reconciles Martha’s employment with Mary’s devotion, charity and religion, the necessities of our calling, and the employments of devotion. For thus, in the midst of the works of your trade, you may retire into your chapel, your heart, and converse with God by frequent addresses and returns.
5. Represent and offer to God acts of love and fear, which are the proper effects of this apprehension, and the proper exercise of this consideration. For, as God is everywhere present by his power, he calls for reverence and godly fear; as he is present to thee in all thy needs, and relieves them, he deserves thy love; and since, in every accident of our lives, we find one or other of these apparent, and in most things we see both, it is a proper and proportionate return, that, to every such demonstration of God, we express ourselves sensible of it by admiring the Divine goodness, or trembling at his presence; ever obeying him because we love him, and ever obeying him because we fear to offend him. This is that which Enoch did, who thus ‘walked with God.’
6. Let us remember that God is in us, and that we are in him:
we are his workmanship, let us not deface it; we are in his presence, let us not
pollute it by unholy and impure actions. God hath ‘also wrought all our works in
us:’
7. ‘God is in the bowels of thy brother;’ refresh them, when he needs it, and then you give your alms in the presence of God, and to God; and he feels the relief which thou providest for thy brother.
8. God is in every place; suppose it, therefore, to be a church:
and that decency of deportment and piety of carriage, which you are taught by religion,
or by custom, or by civility and public manners, to use in churches, the same use
in all places; with this difference only, that in churches let your deportment be
religious in external forms and circumstances also; but there and everywhere let
it be religious in abstaining from spiritual indecencies, and in readiness to do
good actions, that it may not be said of us, as God once complained of his people,
‘Why hath my beloved done wickedness in my house?’
9. God is in every creature: be cruel towards none, neither abuse any by intemperance. Remember, that the creatures and every member of thy own body, is one of the lesser cabinets and receptacles of God. They are such which God hath blessed with his presence, hallowed by his touch, and separated from unholy use, by making them to belong to his dwelling.
10. He walks as in the presence of God that converses with him in frequent prayer and frequent communion; that runs to him in all his necessities; that asks counsel of him in all his doubtings; that opens all his wants to him; that weeps before him for his sins; that asks remedy and support for his weakness; that fears him as a judge; reverences him as a lord; obeys him as a father; and loves him as a patron.
The benefits of this Exercise.
The benefits of this consideration and exercise being universal
upon all the parts of piety, I shall less need to specify any particulars; but yet,
most properly, this exercise of considering the Divine presence is, 1. An excellent
help to prayer, producing in us reverence and awfulness to the Divine Majesty of
God, and actual devotion in our offices. 2. It produces a confidence in God and
fearlessness of our enemies, patience in trouble and hope of remedy; since God is
so nigh in all our sad accidents, he is a disposer of the hearts of men and the
events of things, he proportions out our trials, and supplies us with remedy, and,
where his rod strikes us, his staff supports us. To which we may add this, that
God, who is always with us, is especially, by promise, with us in tribulation, to
turn the misery into a mercy, and that our greatest trouble may become our advantage,
by entitling us to a new manner of the Divine presence. 3. If is apt to produce
joy and rejoicing in God, we being more apt to delight in the partners and witnesses
of our conversation, every degree of mutual abiding and conversing being a relation
and an endearment: we are of the same household with God; he is with us in our natural
actions, to preserve us; in our recreations, to restrain us; in our public actions,
to applaud or reprove us; in our private, to observe us; in our sleeps, to watch
by us; in our watchings, to refresh us; and if we walk with God in all his ways,
as he walks with us in all ours, we shall find perpetual reasons to enable us to
keep that rule of God, ‘Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice.’ And
this put me in mind of a saying of an old religious person,
PRAYERS AND DEVOTIONS,
According to the Religion and Purposes of this foregoing Considerations.
I.
For grace to spend our time well.
O eternal God, who from all eternity dost behold and love thy own glories and perfections infinite, and hast created me to do the work of God after the manner of men, and to serve thee in this generation and according to my capacities, give me thy grace, that I may be a curious and prudent spender of my time, so as I may best prevent or resist all temptation, and be profitable to the Christian commonwealth, and, by discharging all my duty, may glorify thy name. Take from me all slothfulness, and give me a diligent and an active spirit, and wisdom to choose my employment; that I may do works proportionable to my person and to the dignity of a Christian, and may fill up all the spaces of my time with actions of religion and charity; that, when the devil assaults me, he may not find me idle; and my dearest Lord, at his sudden coming, may find me busy in lawful, necessary, and pious actions, improving my talent entrusted to me by thee, my Lord; that I may enter into the joy of my Lord, to partake of his eternal felicities, even for thy mercy’s sake, and for my dearest Saviour’s sake. Amen.
Here follows the devotion of ordinary days, for the right employment of those portions of time which every day must allow for religion.
The first Prayers in the morning, as soon as we are dressed.
Humbly and reverently compose yourself, with heart lift up to God, and your head bowed, and meekly kneeling upon your knees, say the Lord’s Prayer: after which use the following collects, or as many of them as you shall choose.
I. An Act of Adoration, being the song that the angels sing in heaven.
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come:
II. An Act of Thanksgiving, being the song of David, for the morning.
Sing praises unto the Lord, O ye saints of his, and give thanks to him for a remembrance of his holiness. For his wrath endureth but the twinkling of an eye, and in his pleasure is life: heaviness may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. Thou, Lord, hast preserved me this night from the violence of the spirits of darkness, from all sad casualties and evil accidents, from the wrath which I have every day deserved; thou hast brought my soul out of hell; thou hast kept my life from them that go down into the pit; thou hast showed me marvelous great kindness, and hast blessed me for ever: the greatness of thy glory reacheth unto the heavens, and thy truth unto the clouds. Therefore shall every good man sing of thy praise without ceasing. O my God, I will give thanks unto thee for ever. Hallelujah!
III. An Act of Oblation, or presenting ourselves to God for the day.
Most holy and eternal God, lord and sovereign of all the creatures, I humbly present to thy Divine Majesty myself, my soul and body, my thoughts and my words, my actions and intentions, my passions and my sufferings, to be disposed by thee to thy glory; to be blessed by thy providence; to be guided by thy counsel; to be sanctified by thy Spirit; and afterwards that my body and soul may be received into glory: for nothing can perish which is under thy custody; and the enemy of souls cannot devour what is thy portion, nor take it out of thy hands. This day, O Lord, and all the days of my life, I dedicate to thy honour, and the actions of my calling to the uses of grace, and the religion of all my days to be united to the merits and intercession of my holy Saviour Jesus, that in him and for him I may be pardoned and accepted. Amen.
IV. An Act of Repentance or Contrition.
For as for me, I am not worthy to be called thy servant, much less am I worthy to be thy son; for I am the vilest of sinners and the worst of men; a lover of the things of the world, and a despiser of the things of God; proud and envious, lustful and intemperate, greedy of sin, and impatient of reproof; desirous to seem holy, and negligent of being so; transported with interest; fooled with presumption and false principles; disturbed with anger, with a peevish and unmortified spirit, and disordered by a whole body of sin and death. Lord, pardon all my sins for my sweetest Saviour’s sake; thou, who didst die for me, holy Jesus, save me and deliver me; reserve not my sins to be punished in the day of wrath and eternal vengeance; but wash away my sins, and blot them out of thy remembrance, and purify my soul with the waters of repentance and the blood of the cross; that, for what is past, thy wrath may not come out against me; and, for the time to come, I may never provoke thee to anger or to jealousy. O just and dear God, be pitiful and gracious to thy servant. Amen.
V. The Prayer or Petition.
Bless me, gracious God, in my calling to such purposes as thou shalt choose for me, or employ me in: relieve me in all my sadnesses; make my bed in my sickness; give me patience in my sorrows, confidence in thee, and grace to call upon thee in all temptations. O be thou my guide in all my actions; my protector in all dangers; give me a healthful body, and a clear understanding; a sanctified and just, a charitable and humble, a religious and a contented spirit; let not my life be miserable and wretched; nor my name stained with sin and shame; nor my condition lifted up to a tempting and dangerous fortune: but let my condition be blessed, my conversation useful to my neighbours, and pleasing to thee; that when my body shall lie down in its bed of darkness, my soul may pass into the regions of light, and live with thee for ever, through Jesus Christ. Amen.
VI. An Act of Intercession or Prayer for others, to be added to this or any other office, as our devotion or duty, or their needs, shall determine us.
O God of infinite mercy, who hast compassion on all men, and relievest the necessities of all that call to thee for help, hear the prayers of thy servant, who is unworthy to ask any petition for himself, yet, in humility and duty, is bound to pray for others.
For the Church.
O let thy mercy descend upon the whole church; preserve her in truth and peace, in unity and safety, in all storms, and against all temptations and enemies; that she, offering to thy glory the never-ceasing sacrifice of prayer and thanksgiving, may advance the honour of her Lord, and be filled with his Spirit, and partake of his glory. Amen.
For the King.
In mercy, remember the king; preserve his person in health and honour; his crown in wealth and dignity; his kingdoms in peace and plenty; the churches under his protection in piety and knowledge, and a strict and holy religion; keep him perpetually in thy fear and favour, and crown him with glory and immortality. Amen.
For the Clergy.
Remember them that minister about holy things; let them be clothed with righteousness, and sing with joyfulness. Amen.
For Wife or Husband.
Bless thy servant (my wife, or husband) with health of body and of spirit. O let the hand of thy blessing be upon his/her head night and day, and support him/her in all necessities, strengthen him/her in all temptations, comfort him/her in all his/her sorrows, and let him/her be thy servant in all changes; and make us both to dwell with thee for ever in thy favour, in the light of thy countenance, and in thy glory. Amen.
For our Children.
Bless my children with healthful bodies, with good understandings, with the graces and gifts of thy Spirit, with sweet dispositions and holy habits; and sanctify them throughout in their bodies, and souls, and spirits, and keep them unblamable to the coming of the Lord Jesus. Amen.
For Friends and Benefactors.
Be pleased, O Lord, to remember my friends, all that have prayed for me, and all that have done me good. (Here name such whom you would especially recommend.) Do thou good to them, and return all their kindness double into their own bosom, rewarding them with blessings, and sanctifying them with thy graces, and bringing them to glory.
For our Family.
Let all my family and kindred, my neighbours and acquaintance (here name what other relations you please) receive the benefit of my prayers, and the blessings of God, the comforts and supports of thy providence, and the sanctification of thy Spirit.
For all in Misery.
Relieve and comfort all the persecuted and afflicted; speak peace to troubled consciences; strengthen the weak; confirm the strong; instruct the ignorant; deliver the oppressed from him that spoileth him; and relieve the needy that hath no helper; and bring us all, by the waters of comfort, and in the ways of righteousness, to the kingdom of rest and glory, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Another Form of Prayer for the Morning.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, etc. Our Father, etc.
I.
Most glorious and eternal God, Father of mercy, and God of all comfort, I worship and adore thee with the lowest humility of my soul and body, and give thee all thanks and praise for thy infinite and essential glories and perfections, and for the continual demonstration of thy mercies upon me, upon all mine, and upon thy holy catholic church.
II.
I acknowledge, dear God, that I have deserved the greatest of thy wrath and indignation; and that, if thou hadst dealt with me according to my deserving, I had now, at this instant, been desperately bewailing my miseries in the sorrows and horrors of a sad eternity. But thy mercy triumphing over thy justice and my sins, thou hast still continued to me life and time of repentance; thou hast opened to me the gates of grace and mercy, and perpetually callest upon me to enter in, and to walk in the paths of a holy life, that I might glorify thee, and be glorified of thee eternally.
III.
Behold, O God, for this thy great and unspeakable goodness, for the preservation of me this night, and for all other thy graces and blessings, I offer up my soul and body, all that I am, and all that I have, as a sacrifice to thee and thy service, humbly begging of thee to pardon all my sins, to defend me from all evil, to lead me into all good; and let my portion be amongst thy redeemed ones in the gathering together of the saints, in the kingdom of grace and glory.
IV.
Guide me, O Lord, in all the changes and varieties of the world; that in all things that shall happen I may have an evenness and tranquility of spirit; that my soul may be wholly resigned to thy divine will and pleasure, never murmuring at thy gentle chastisements and fatherly correction; never waxing proud and insolent, though I feel a torrent of comforts and prosperous successes.
V.
Fix my thoughts, my hopes, and my desires upon heaven and heavenly things; teach me to despise the world, to repent deeply for my sins; give me holy purposes of amendment and ghostly strength, and assistance to perform faithfully whatsoever I shall intend piously. Enrich my understanding with an eternal treasure of Divine Truths, that I may know thy will: and thou, who workest in us to will and to do of thy good pleasure, teach me to obey all thy commandments, to believe all thy revelations, and make me partaker of all thy gracious promises.
VI.
Teach me to watch over all my ways, that I may never be surprised by sudden temptations or a careless spirit, nor ever return to folly and vanity. Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth, and keep the door of my lips, that I offend not in my tongue, neither against piety nor charity. Teach me to think of nothing but thee, and what is in order to thy glory and service: to speak nothing but of thee and thy glories; and to do nothing but what becomes thy servant, whom thy infinite mercy, by the graces of thy Holy Spirit, hath sealed up to the day of redemption.
VII.
Let all my passions and affections be so mortified and brought under the dominion of grace, that I may never, be deliberation and purpose, nor yet by levity, rashness, or inconsideration, offend thy Divine Majesty. make me such as thou wouldst have me to be: strengthen my faith, confirm my hope, and give me a daily increase of charity, that, this day and ever, I may serve thee according to all my opportunities and capacities, growing from grace to grace, till at last, by thy mercies, I shall receive the consummation and perfection of grace, even the glories of thy kingdom, in the full fruition of the face and excellencies of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; to whom be glory and praise, honour and adoration, given by all angels, and all men, and all creatures, now, and to all eternity. Amen.
*To this may be added the prayer of intercession for others, whom we are bound to remember, which is at the end of the foregoing prayer; or else you may take such special prayers which follow at the end of the fourth chapter (for parents, for children, etc.).
After which, conclude with this Ejaculation. Now in all tribulation and anguish of spirit, in all dangers of soul and body, in prosperity and adversity, in the hour of death and in the day of judgment, holy and most blessed Saviour Jesus, have mercy upon me, save me, and deliver me and all faithful people. Amen.
*Between this and noon, usually are said the public prayers appointed by authority, to which all the clergy are obligated and other devout persons that have leisure, to accompany them.
*Afternoon, or at any time of the day, when a devout person retires into his closet for private prayer or spiritual exercises, he may say the following devotions.
An Exercise to be used at any time of the day.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, etc. Our Father, etc. The Hymn, collected out of the Psalms, recounting the Excellences and Greatness of God.
O be joyful in God, all ye lands; sing praises unto the honour of his name, make
his name to be glorious. O come hither, and behold the works of God, how wonderful
he is in his doings towards the children of men. He ruleth with his power for ever.
He is the Father of the fatherless, and defendeth the cause
of the widow, even God in his holy habitation. He is the God that maketh men to
be of one mind in a house, and bringeth the prisoners out of captivity; but letteth
the runagates continue in scarceness.
It is the Lord that commandeth the waters; it is the glorious
God that maketh the thunder; it is the Lord that ruleth the sea. The voice of the
Lord is a glorious voice.
Let all the earth fear the Lord: stand in awe of him, all ye that
dwell in the world. Thou shalt show us wonderful things in thy righteousness, O
God of our salvation; thou that art the hope of all the ends of the earth, and of
them that remain in the broad sea.
Glory be to the Father, etc.
Or this:
O Lord, thou art my God, I will exalt thee; I will praise thy name for thou hast
done wonderful things; thy counsels of old are faithfulness and truth.
Thou, in thy strength, settest fast the mountains, and
art girded about with power. Thou stillest the raging of the sea, and the noise
of his waves, and the uttermost parts of his people.
They, also, that remain in the uttermost parts of the earth shall be afraid at thy tokens; thou, that makest the outgoings of the morning and evening to praise thee.
O Lord God of Hosts, who is like unto thee? thy truth, most mighty
Lord, is on every side.
God is very greatly to be feared in the council of the saints,
and to be had in reverence of all men that are round about him.
Righteousness and equity are in the habitation of thy seat; mercy
and truth shall go before thy face. Glory and worship are before him; power and
honour are in his sanctuary.
Thou, Lord, art the thing that I long for; thou art my hope even
from my youth. Through thee have I been holden up, ever since I was born; thou art
he that took me out of my mother’s womb; my praise shall be always of thee.
Glory be to the Father, etc.
*After this may be read some portion of Holy Scripture, out of the New Testament, or out of the Sapiential books of the Old, viz. Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, etc., because these are of great use to piety and to civil conversation. Upon which when you have awhile meditated, humbly composing yourself upon your knees, say as followeth:
Ejaculations.
My help standeth in the name of the Lord, who hath made heaven and earth.
Show the light of thy countenance upon thy servant, and I shall be safe.
Do well, O Lord, to them that be true of heart, and evermore mightily defend
them.
Direct me in thy truth, and teach me; for thou are my Saviour, and my great
master.
Keep me from sin and death eternal, and from my enemies visible and invisible.
Give me grace to live a holy life, and thy favour, that I may die a godly and happy death.
Lord, hear the prayer of thy servant, and give me thy Holy Spirit.
The Prayer.
O eternal God, merciful and gracious, vouchsafe thy favour and thy blessing to thy servant: let the love of thy mercies, and the dread and fear of thy majesty, make me careful and inquisitive to search thy will, and diligent to perform it, and to persevere in the practices of a holy life, even till the last of my days.
II.
Keep me, O Lord, for I am thine by creation; guide me, for I am thine by purchase; thou hast redeemed me by the blood of thy Son; and loved me with the love of a father, for I am thy child by adoption and grace: let thy mercy pardon my sins, thy providence secure me from the punishments and evils I have deserved, and thy care watch over me, that I may never any more offend thee: make me, in malice, to be a child; but in understanding, piety, and the fear of God, let me be a perfect man in Christ, innocent and prudent, readily furnished and instructed to every good work.
III.
Keep me, O Lord, from the destroying angel, and from the wrath of God: let thy anger never rise against me, but thy rod gently correct my follies, and guide me in thy ways, and thy staff support me in all sufferings and changes. Preserve me from fracture of bones, from noisome, infectious, and sharp sicknesses; from great violences of fortune and sudden surprises: keep all my senses entire till the day of my death, and let my death be neither sudden, untimely, nor unprovided: let it be after the common manner of men, having in it nothing extraordinary, but an extraordinary piety, and the manifestation of thy great and miraculous mercy.
IV.
Let no riches make me ever forget myself, no poverty ever make me to forget thee: let no hope or fear, no pleasure or pain, no accident without, no weakness within, hinder or discompose my duty, or turn me from the ways of thy commandments. O, let thy Spirit dwell with me for ever, and make my soul just and charitable, full of honesty, full of religion, resolute and constant in holy purposes, but inflexible to evil. Make me humble and obedient, peaceable and pious; let me never envy any man’s goods, nor deserve to be despised myself: and if I be, teach me to bear it with meekness and charity.
V.
Give me a tender conscience; a conversation discreet and affable, modest and patient, liberal and obliging; a body chaste and healthful, competency of living according to my condition, contentedness in all estates, a resigned will and mortified affections; that I may be as thou wouldst have me, and my portion may be in the lot of the righteous, in the brightness of thy countenance, and the glories of eternity. Amen.
Holy is our God. Holy is the Almighty. Holy is the Immortal. Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabbaoth, have mercy upon me.
A Form of Prayer for the Evening, to be said by such who have not time or opportunity to say the public prayers appointed for this office.
I.
Evening Prayer.
O eternal God, great Father of men and angels, who hast established the heavens and the earth in a wonderful order, making day and night to succeed each other; I make my humble address to thy Divine Majesty, begging of thee mercy and protection this night and ever. O Lord, pardon all my sins, my light and rash words, the vanity and impiety of my thoughts, my unjust and uncharitable actions, and whatsoever I have transgressed against thee this day, or at any time before. Behold, O God, my soul is troubled in the remembrance of my sins, in the frailty and sinfulness of my flesh, exposed to every temptation, and of itself not able to resist any. Lord God of mercy, I earnestly beg of thee to give me a great portion of thy grace, such as may be sufficient and effectual for the mortification of all my sins and vanities and disorders, that as I have formerly served my list and unworthy desires, so now I may give myself up wholly to thy service and the studies of a holy life.
II.
Blessed Lord, teach me frequently and sadly to remember my sins; and be thou pleased to remember them no more: let me never forget thy mercies, and do thou still remember to do me good. Teach me to walk always as in thy presence: ennoble my soul with great degrees of love to thee, and consign my spirit with great fear, religion, and veneration of thy holy name and laws; that it may become the great employment of my whole life to serve thee, to advance thy glory, to root out all the accursed habits of sin; that in holiness of life, in humility, in charity, in chastity, and all the ornaments of grace, I may be patience wait for the coming of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
III.
Teach me, O Lord, to number my days, that I may apply my heart unto wisdom; ever to remember my last end, that I may not dare to sin against thee. Let thy holy angels be ever present with me, to keep me in all my ways from the malice and violence of the spirits of darkness, from evil company, and the occasions and opportunities of evil, from perishing in popular judgments, from all the ways of sinful shame, from the hands of all mine enemies, from a sinful life, and from despair in the day of my death. Then, O brightest Jesus, shine gloriously upon me, let thy mercies and the light of thy countenance sustain me in all my agonies, weaknesses, and temptations. Give me opportunity of a prudent and spiritual guide, and of receiving the holy sacrament; and let thy loving spirit so guide me in the ways of peace and safety, that, with the testimony of a good conscience, and the sense of thy mercies and refreshment, I may depart this life in the unity of the church, in the love of God, and a certain hope of salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord, and most blessed Saviour. Amen.
Our Father, etc.
Another form of Evening Prayer, which may also be used at bed-time.
Our Father, etc.
I will lift up my eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.
My help cometh of the Lord, which made heaven and earth.
He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.
Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord is thy keeper, the Lord is thy shade, upon thy right hand.
The sun shall not smite thee by day, neither the moon by night.
The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil; he shall preserve thy soul.
The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in, from this time forth for evermore.
Glory be to the Father, etc.
I.
Visit, I beseech thee, O Lord, this habitation with thy mercy, and me with thy grace and salvation. Let thy holy angels pitch their tents round about and dwell here, that no illusion of the night may abuse me, the spirits of darkness may not come near to hurt me, no evil or sad accident oppress me; and let the eternal Spirit of the Father dwell in my soul and body, filling every corner of my heart with light and grace. Let no deed of darkness overtake me; and let thy blessing, most blessed God, be upon me for ever, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
II.
Into thy hands, most blessed Jesus, I commend my soul and body, for thou hast redeemed both with thy precious blood. So bless and sanctify my sleep unto me that it may be temperate, holy, and safe; a refreshment to my wearied body, to enable it so to serve my soul, that both may serve thee with a never-failing duty. O, let me never sleep in sin or death eternal, but give me a watchful and prudent spirit, that I may omit no opportunity of serving thee; that whether I sleep or awake, live or die, I may be thy servant and thy child: that when the work of my life is done, I may rest in the bosom of my Lord, till by the voice of the archangel, the trump of God, I shall be awakened, and called to sit down and feast in the eternal supper of the Lamb. Grant this, O Lamb of God, for the honour of thy mercies, and the glory of thy name, O most merciful Saviour and Redeemer Jesus. Amen.
III.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus, who hath sent his angels, and kept me this day from the destruction that walketh at noon, and the arrow that flieth by day; and hath given me his Spirit to restrain me from those evils to which my own weaknesses, and my evil habits, and my unquiet enemies, would easily betray me. Blessed and for ever hallowed by thy name for that never-ceasing shower of blessing, by which I live, and am content and blessed, and provided for in all necessities, and set forward in my duty and way to heaven. Blessing honour, glory, and power be unto Him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb, for ever and ever. Amen.
Holy is our God! Holy is the Almighty! Holy is the Immortal! Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabbaoth, have mercy upon me!
Ejaculations and short Meditations to be used in the night, when we awake.
Stand in awe and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed and be still.
I will lay me down in peace and sleep; for thou, Lord, only makest me to dwell in
safety.
O Father of spirits, and the God of all flesh, have mercy and pity upon all sick and dying Christians, and receive the souls which thou hast redeemed returning unto thee.
Blessed are they that dwell in the heavenly Jerusalem, where there
is no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it; for the glory of God
does lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.
Meditate on Jacob’s wrestling with the angel all night: he thou also importunate with God for a blessing, and give not over till he hath blessed thee.
Meditate on the angel passing over the children of Israel, and destroying the Egyptians for disobedience and oppression. Pray for the grace of obedience and charity, and for the Divine protection.
Meditate on the angel who destroyed in a night the whole army of the Assyrians for fornication. Call to mind the sins of thy youth, the sins of thy bed; and say with David, ‘My reins chasten me in the night season, and my soul refuseth comfort.’ Pray for pardon and the grace of chastity.
Meditate on the agonies of Christ in the garden, his sadness and affliction all that night; and thank and adore him for his love, that made him suffer so much for thee; and hate thy sins which made it necessary for the Son to suffer so much.
Meditate on the last four things. 1. The certainty of death. 2. The terrors of the day of judgment. 3. The joys of heaven. 4. The pains of hell: and the eternity of both.
Think upon all thy friends who are gone before thee; and pray that God would grant to thee to meet them in a joyful resurrection.
“The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night;
Lord, in mercy remember thy servant in the day of judgment.
Thou shalt answer for me, O Lord my God. In thee, O Lord, have I trusted: let me never be confounded. Amen.
I desire the Christian reader to observe, that all these offices or forms of prayer (if they should be used every day) would not spend above an hour and a half: but because some of them are double (and so but one of them to be used in one day) it is much less: and by affording to God one hour in twenty-four thou mayest have the comforts and rewards of devotion. But he that thinks this is too much, either is very busy in the world, or very careless of heaven. I have parted the prayers into smaller portions, that he may use which and how many he please in any one of the forms.
Ad. Sect. 2.
A Prayer for holy intention is the beginning and pursuit of any considerable action, as Study, Preaching, etc.
O eternal God, who has made all things for man and man for thy glory, sanctify my body and soul, my thoughts, and my intentions, my words and actions, that whatsoever I shall think, or speak, or do, may be by me designed to the glorification of thy name; and by thy blessing it may be effective and successful in the work of God, according as it can be capable. Lord, turn my necessities into virtue; the works of nature into the works of grace, by making them orderly, regular, temperate, subordinate, and profitable to ends beyond their own proper efficacy: and let no pride or self-seeking, no covetousness or revenge, no impure mixture or unhandsome purposes, no little ends and low imaginations, pollute my spirit, and unhallow any of my words and actions; but let my body be a servant of my spirit, and both body and spirit servants of Jesus; that doing all things for thy glory here, I may be partaker of thy glory hereafter: through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Ad. Sect. 3.
A prayer meditating and referring to the Divine presence.
* This Prayer is especially to be used in temptation to private sin.
O almighty God, infinite and eternal, thou fillest all things with thy presence; thou art everywhere by thy essence and by thy power; in heaven by glory, in holy places by thy grace and favour, in the hearts of thy servants by thy Spirit, in the consciences of all men by thy testimony and observation of us. Teach me to walk always as in thy presence, to fear thy majesty, to reverence thy wisdom and omniscience; that I may never dare to commit any indecency in the eye of my Lord and my Judge; but that I may with so much care and reverence demean myself that my Judge may not be my accuser but my advocate; that I, expressing the belief of thy presence here by careful walking, may feel the effects of it in the participation of eternal glory; through Jesus Christ. Amen.
CHAPTER II.
OF CHRISTIAN SOBRIETY.
SECTION I.
Of Sobriety in the general sense.
Christian religion, in all its moral parts, in nothing else but the law of nature, and great reason; complying with the great necessities of all the world, and promoting the great profit of all relations, and carrying us through all accidents and variety of changes, to that end which God hath from eternal ages purposed for that live according to it, and which he hath revealed in Jesus Christ: and, according to the apostle’s arithmetic, hath but these three parts of it; 1. Sobriety, 2. Justice, 3. Religion. “For the grace of God, being salvation, hath appeared to all men; teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live. 1. Soberly, 2. Righteously, and, 3. Godly, in this present world, looking for that blessed hope and glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ. The first contains all our deportment in our personal and private capacities, the fair treating of our bodies and our spirits. The second enlarges our duty in all relations to our neighbour. The third contains the offices of direct religion, and intercourse with God.
Christian sobriety is also that duty that concerns ourselves in the matter of meat, and drink, and pleasures, and thoughts; and it hath within it the duties of 1. Temperance, 2. Chastity, 3. Humility, 4. Modesty, 5. Content.
It is a using severity, denial, and frustration of our appetite, when it grows unreasonable in any of these instances: the necessity of which we shall to best purpose understand, by considering the evil consequences of sensuality, effeminacy, or fondness after carnal pleasures.
Evil Consequences of Voluptuousness or Sensuality.
1. A longing after sensual pleasures is a dissolution of
the spirit of a man, and makes it loose, soft, and wandering; unapt for noble, wise,
or spiritual employments; because the principles upon which pleasure is chosen and
pursued are sottish, weak, and unlearned, such as prefer the body before the soul, Tu sia nimum vicisi potius quam animus
te, est quod gaudeas. Qui animum vincunt, quam quos animus, semper prokiores cluent.—Triuum 2.2. 29.
2. The nature of sensual pleasure is vain, empty, and unsatisfying, biggest always in expectation, and a mere vanity in the enjoying, and leaves a sting and thorn behind it when it goes off. Our laughing, if it be loud and high, commonly ends in a deep sigh; and all the instances of pleasure have a sting in the tail, though they carry beauty on the face, and sweetness on the lip.
3. Sensual pleasure is a great abuse to the spirit of a man, being
a kind of fascination or witchcraft, blinding the understanding and enslaving the
will. And he that knows he is free-born, or redeemed with the blood of the Son of
God, will not easily suffer the freedom of his soul to be entangled and
rifled.
4. It is most contrary to the state of a Christian, whose life
is a perpetual exercise, a wrestling and warfare, to which sensual pleasure disables
him, by yielding to that enemy with whom he must strive if ever he will be crowned.
5. It is by a certain consequence the greatest impediment in the world to martyrdom: that being a fondness, this being a cruelty to the flesh; to which a Christian man, arriving by degrees, must first have crucified the lesser affections: for he that is overcome by little arguments of pain, will hardly consent to lose his life with torments.
Degrees of Sobriety.
Against this voluptuousness, sobriety is opposed in three degrees.
1. A despite or disaffection to pleasures, or a resolving against all entertainment of the instances and temptations of sensuality; and it consists in the internal faculties of will and understanding, decreeing and declaring against them disapproving and disliking them, upon good reason and strong resolution.
2. A tight and actual war against all the temptations and offers of sensual pleasure in all evil instances and degrees: and it consists in prayer, in fasting, in cheap diet and hard lodging, and laborious exercises, and avoiding occasions, and using all arts and industry of fortifying the spirit, and making it severe, manly, and Christian.
3. Spiritual pleasure is the highest degree of sobriety; and in
the same degree in which we relish and are in love with spiritual delights, the
hidden manna,
Rules for suppressing Voluptuousness.
The precepts and advices which are of best and of general use in the curing of sensuality, are these:
1. Accustom thyself to cut off all superfluity in the provisions
of thy life, for our desires will enlarge beyond the present possession so long
as all the things of this world are unsatisfying: if, therefore, you suffer them
to extend beyond the measures of necessity or moderated conveniency, they will still
swell: but you reduce them to a little compass when you make nature to be your limit.
We must more take care that our desires should cease
2. Suppress your sensual desires in their first approach;
3. Divert them with some laudable employment, and take off their
edge by inadvertency, or a not attending to them. For, since the faculties of a
man cannot at the same time, with any sharpness, attend to two objects, if you employ
your spirit upon a book or a bodily labour, or any innocent and indifferent employment,
you have no room left for the present trouble of a sensual temptation. For to this
sense it was, that Alexander told the queen of Caria, that his tutor, Leonidas,
had provided two cooks for him;
4. Look upon pleasures, not upon that side that is next the sun,
or where they look beauteously; that is, as they come towards you to be enjoyed,
for then they paint and smile, and dress themselves up in tinsel and glass gems,
and counterfeit imagery; but when thou hast rifled and discomposed them with enjoying
their false beauties, and that they begin to go off, then behold them in their nakedness
and weariness.
5. Often consider and contemplate the joys of heaven, that, when they have filled thy desires, which are the sails of the soul, thou mayst steer only thither, and never more look back to Sodom. And when thy soul dwells above, and looks down upon the pleasures of the world, they seem like things at distance, little and contemptible, and men running after the satisfaction of their sottish appetites seem foolish as fishes, thousands of them running after a rotten worm, that covers a deadly book; or, at the best, but like children with great noise pursuing a bubble rising from a walnut-shell, which ends sooner than the noise.
6. To this the example of Christ and his apostles, of Moses, and all the wise men of all ages of the world, will much help; who, understanding how to distinguish good from evil, did choose a sad and melancholy way to felicity, rather than the broad, pleasant, and easy path to folly and misery.
But this is but the general. Its first particular is temperance.
SECTION II.
Of Temperance in Eating and Drinking.
Sobriety is the bridle of the passions of desire, and temperance is the bit and curb of that bridle, a restraint put into a man’s mouth, a moderate use of meat and drink, so as may best consist with our health, and may not hinder but help the works of the soul by its necessary supporting us, and ministering cheerfulness and refreshment.
Temperance consists of the actions of the soul principally: for it is a grace that chooses natural means in order to proper and natural, and holy ends; it is exercised about eating and drinking, because they are necessary; but therefore it permits the use of them only as they minister to lawful ends; it does not eat and drink for pleasure, but for need, and for refreshment, which is a part or a degree of need. I deny not that eating and drinking may be, and in healthful bodies always is, with pleasure; because there is in nature no greater pleasure than that all the appetites which God hath made should be satisfied: and a man may choose a morsel that is pleasant, the less pleasant being rejected as being less useful, less apt to nourish, or more agreeing with an infirm stomach, or when the day is festival, by order or by private joy. In all these cases it is permitted to receive a more free delight, and to design it too, as the less principal: that is, that the chief reason why we choose the more delicious be the serving that end for which such refreshments and choices are permitted. But when delight is the only end, and rest itself, and dwells there long, then eating and drinking is not a serving of God, but an inordinate action; because it is not in the way to that end whither God directed it. But the choosing of a delicate before a more ordinary dish is to be done as other human actions are in which there are no degrees and precise natural limits described, but a latitude is indulged; it must be done moderately, prudently, and according to the accounts of wise, religious, and sober men: and then God, who gave us such variety of creatures, and our choice to use which we will, may receive glory from our temperate use, and thanksgiving; and we may use them indifferently without scruple, and a making them to become snares to us, either by too licentious and studied use of them, or too restrained and scrupulous fear of using them at all, but in such certain circumstances, in which no man can be sure he is not mistaken.
But temperance is meat and drink is to be estimated by the following measures.
Measures of Temperance in Eating.
1. Eat not before the time, unless necessity, or charity, or any intervening accident, which may make it reasonable and prudent, should happen. Remember, it had almost cost Jonathan his life, because he tasted a little honey before the sun went down, contrary to the king’s commandment; and although a great need which he had excused him from the sin of gluttony, yet it is inexcusable when thou eatest before the usual time, and thrustest thy hand into the dish unseasonably, out of greediness of the pleasure, and impatience of the delay.
2. Eat not hastily and impatiently, but with such decent and timely action that your eating be human act, subject to deliberation and choice, and that you may consider in the eating: whereas, he that eats hastily cannot consider particularly of the circumstances, degrees, and little accidents and chances, that happen in his meal; but may contract many little indecencies, and be suddenly surprised.
3. Eat not delicately or nicely, that is, be not troublesome to
thyself or others in the choice of thy meats or the delicacy of thy sauces. It was
imputed us a sin to the sons of Israel, that they loathed manna and longed for flesh:
the quails stunk in their nostrils, and the wrath of God fell upon them. And the
the manner of dressing, the sons of Eli were noted of indiscreet curiosity: they
would not have the flesh boiled but raw, that they might roast it with fire. Not
that it was a sin to eat it, or desire meat roasted; but that when it was appointed
to be boiled, they refused it: which declared an intemperate and a nice palate.
It was lawful in all senses to comply with a weak and a nice stomach, but not with
a nice and curious palate. When our health requires it, that ought to be provided
for; but not so our sensuality and intemperate longings. Whatsoever is set before
you eat it, be it never so delicate; and be it plain and common, so it be wholesome,
and fit for you, it must not be refused upon curiosity: for every degree of that
is a degree of intemperance. Happy and innocent were the ages of our forefathers,
who ate herbs and parched corn, and drank the pure stream, and broke their fast
with nuts and roots;
4. Eat not too much: load neither thy stomach nor thy understanding. If thou sit at a bountiful table, be not greedy upon it, and say not there is much meat on it. Remember that a wicked eye is an evil thing: and what is created more wicked than an eye? Therefore it weepeth upon every occasion. Stretch not thy hand whithersoever it looketh, and thrust it not with him into the dish. A very little is sufficient for a man well nurtured, and he fetcheth not his wind short upon his bed.
Signs and Effects of Temperance.
We shall best know that we have the grace of temperance by the following signs, which are as so many arguments to engage us also upon its study and practice.
1. A temperate man is modest: greediness is unmannerly and rude.
And this is intimated in the advice of the son of Sirach. When thou sittest amongst
many, reach not thy hand out first of all. Leave off first for manner’s sake, and
be not insatiable lest thou offend. 2. Temperance is accompanied with gravity of
deportment: greediness is garish, and rejoices loosely at the sight of dainties.
Of Drunkenness.
But I desire that it be observed, that because intemperance in eating is not so soon perceived by others as immoderate drinking, and the outward visible effects of it are not either so notorious or so ridiculous, therefore gluttony is not of so great disreptuation amongst men as drunkenness; yet, according to its degree, it puts on the greatness of the sin before God, and is most strictly to be attended to, lest we be surprised by our security and want of diligence, and the intemperance is alike criminal in both, according as the affections are either to the meat or drink. Gluttony is more uncharitable to the body, and drunkenness to the soul, or the understanding part of man; and therefore in Scripture is more frequently forbidden and declaimed against than the other: and sobriety hath by use obtained to signify temperance in drinking.
Drunkenness is an immoderate affection and use of drink. That
I call immoderate that is beside or beyond that order of good things for which God
hath given us the use of drink. The ends are digestion of our meat, cheerfulness
and refreshment of our spirits, or any end of health; beside which if we go, or
at any time beyond it, it is inordinate and criminal — it is the vice of drunkenness.
It is forbidden by our blessed Saviour in these words:
Evil Consequents to Drunkenness.
The evils and sad consequents of drunkenness (the consideration
of which are as so many arguments to avoid the sin) are to this sense reckoned by
the writers of holy Scripture, and other wise personages of the world. 1. It causeth
woes and mischief,
Signs of Drunkenness.
But if it be inquired concerning the periods and distinct significations of this crime; and when a man is said to be drunk; to this I answer, that drunkenness in in the same manner to be judged as sickness. As every illness or violence done to health, in every part of its continuance, is a part or degree of sickness; so is every going off from our natural and common temper and our usual severity of behaviour, a degree of drunkenness. He is not only drunk that can drink no more; for few are so: but he hath sinned in a degree of drunkenness who hath done anything towards it beyond his proper measure. But its parts and periods are usually thus reckoned: 1. apish gestures; 2. much talking; 3. immoderate laughing; 4. dullness of sense; 5. scurrility, that is, wanton, or jeering, or abusive language; 6. an useless understanding; 7. stupid sleep; 8. epilepsies, or fallings and reelings, and beastly vomitings. The least of these, even when the tongue begins to be untied, is a degree of drunkenness.
But that we may avoid the sin of intemperance in meats and drinks, besides the former rules of measures, these counsels also may be useful.
Rules for obtaining Temperance.
1. Be not often present at feasts, nor at all in dissolute company, when it may be avoided, for variety of pleasing objects steals away the heart of man; and company is either violent or enticing, and we are weak or complying, or perhaps desirous enough to be abused. But if you be unavoidably or indiscreetly engaged, let not mistaken civility or good nature engage thee either to the temptation of staying, (if thou understandest thy weakness,) or the sin of drinking inordinately.
2. Be severe in your judgment concerning your proportions, and
let no occasion make you enlarge far beyond your ordinary. For a man is surprised
by parts; and while he thinks one glass more will not make him drunk, that one glass
hath disabled him from well discerning his present condition and neighbour-danger.
While men think themselves wise, they become fools: they think they shall taste
the aconite and not die, or crown their heads with juice of poppy and not be drowsy;
and if they drink off the whole vintage, still they think they can swallow another
goblet.
3. Come not to table but when thy need invites thee; and, if thou beest in health, leave something of thy appetite unfilled, something of thy natural heat unemployed, that it may secure thy digestion and serve other needs of nature or the spirit.
4. Propound to thyself (if thou beest in a capacity) a constant rule of living, of eating and drinking, which, though it may not be fit to observe scrupulously, lest it become a snare to thy conscience, or endanger thy health upon every accidental violence; yet let not thy rule be broken often nor much, but upon great necessity and in small degrees.
5. Never urge any man to eat or drink beyond his own limits and
his own desires. He that does otherwise is drunk with his brother’s surfeit,
6. Use St. Paul’s instruments of sobriety: ‘Let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and, for an helmet, the hope of salvation.’ Faith, hope, and charity are the best weapons in the world to fight against intemperance. The faith of the Mahometans forbids them to drink wine, and they abstain religiously, as the sons of Rechab; and the faith of Christ forbids drunkenness to us, and therefore is infinitely more powerful to suppress this vice, when we remember that we are Christians, and to abstain from drunkenness and gluttony is part of the faith and discipling of Jesus, and that with these vices neither our love to God nor our hopes of heaven can possibly consist; and, therefore, when these enter the heart the others go out at the mouth; for this is the devil that is cast out by fasting and prayer, which are the proper actions of these graces.
7. As a pursuance of this rule, it is a good advice, that, as we begin and end all our times of eating with prayer and thanksgiving, so, at the meal, we remove and carry up our mind and spirit to the celestial table, often thinking of it, and often desiring it; that by enkindling thy desire to heavenly banquets, thou mayest be indifferent and less passionate for the earthly.
8. Mingle discourses, pious, or in some sense, profitable, and in all senses charitable and innocent, with thy meal, as occasion is ministered.
9. Let your drink so serve your meat as your meat doth your health; that it be apt to convey and digest it, and refresh the spirits; but let it never go beyond such a refreshment as may a little lighten the present load of a sad or troubled spirit, never to inconvenience, lightness, sottishness, vanity, or intemperance; and know that the loosing the bands of the tongue, and the very first dissolution of its duty, is one degree of the intemperance.
10. In all cases be careful, that you be not brought under the power of such things which otherwise are lawful enough in the use. “All things are lawful for me; but I will not be brought under the power of any”, said St. Paul. And to be perpetually longing, and impatiently desirous of anything, so that a man cannot abstain from it, is to lose a man’s liberty, and to become a servant of meat and drink, or smoke. And I wish this last instance were more considered by persons who little suspect themselves guilty of intemperance, though their desires are strong and impatient, and the use of it perpetual and unreasonable to all purposes, but that they have made it habitual and necessary as intemperance itself is made to some men.
11. Use those advices which are prescribed as instruments, to suppress voluptuousness, in the foregoing section.
SECTION III.
Of Chastity
Reader, stay, and read not the advices of the following section, unless thou hast a chaste spirit, or desirest to be chaste, or at least art apt to consider whether you ought or no. For there are some spirits so atheistical, and some so wholly possessed with a spirit of uncleanness, that they turn the most prudent and chaste discourses into dirty and filthy apprehensions; like choleric stomachs, changing their very cordials and medicines into bitterness, and, in a literal sense, turning the grace of God into wantonness. They study cases of conscience in the matter of carnal sins, not to avoid, but to learn ways how to offend God and pollute their own spirits; and search their houses with a sunbeam, that they may be instructed in all the corners of nastiness. I have used all the care I could in the following periods, that I might neither be wanting to assist those that need it, nor yet minister any occasion of fancy or vainer thoughts to those that need them not. If any man will snatch the pure taper from my hand and hold it to the devil, he will only burn his own fingers, but shall not rob me of the reward of my care and good intention, since I have taken heed how to express the following duties, and given him caution how to read them.
Chastity is that duty which was mystically intended by God in the law of circumcision. It is the circumcision of the heart, the cutting off all superfluity of naughtiness, and a suppression of all irregular desires in the matters of sensual or carnal pleasure. I call all desires irregular and sinful that are not sanctified: 1. by the holy institution, or by being within the protection of marriage; 2. by being within the order of nature; 3. by being within the moderation of Christian modesty. Against the first are fornication, adultery, and all voluntary pollutions of either sex. Against the second are all unnatural lusts and incestuous mixtures. Against the third is all immoderate use of permitted beds, concerning meats and drinks, there being no certain degree of frequency or intention prescribed to all persons; but it is to be ruled as the other actions of a man, by proportion to the end, by the dignity of the person in the honour and severity of being a Christian, and by other circumstances of which I am to give account.
Chastity is that grace which forbids and restrains all these,
keeping the body and soul pure in that state in which it is placed by God, whether
of the single or of the married life; concerning which our duty is thus described
by St. Paul: ‘For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should
abstain from fornication; that every one of you should know how to possess his vessel
in sanctification and honour, not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles
which know not God.’
Chastity is either abstinence or continence. Abstinence is that
of virgins or widows; continence of married persons. Chaste marriage are honourable
and pleasing to God; widowhood is pitiable in its solitariness and loss, but amiable
and comely when it is adorned with gravity and purity, and not sullied with remembrances
of the past license, nor with present desires of returning to a second bed. But
virginity is a life of angels, the enamel of the soul, the huge advantage of religion,
the great opportunity for the retirements of devotion;
Natural virginity, of itself, is not a state more acceptable to
God; but that which is chosen and voluntary, in order to the conveniences of religion
and separation from worldly encumbrances, is therefore better than the married life,
not that it is more holy, but that it is a freedom from cares, an opportunity to
spend more time in spiritual employments. It is not allayed with businesses and
attendances upon lower affairs; and if it be a chosen condition to these ends, it
containeth in it a victory over lusts, and greater desires of religion and self-denial,
and therefore is more excellent than the married life, in that degree in which it
hath greater religion, and a greater mortification, a less satisfaction of natural
desires, and a greater fulness of the spiritual: and just so is to expect that little
coronet, or special reward, which God hath prepared (extraordinary and besides the
great crown of all faithful souls) for those ‘who have not defiled themselves with
women, but follow the virgin Lamb for ever.’
But some married persons, even in their marriage, do better please God than some virgins in their state of virginity: they, by giving great example of conjugal affection, by preserving their faith unbroken, by educating children in the fear of God, by patience, and contentedness, and holy thoughts, and the exercise of virtues proper to that state, do not only please God, but do in a higher degree than those virgins whose piety is not answerable to their great opportunities and advantages.
However, married persons, and widows, and virgins, are all servants of God, and co-heirs in the inheritance of Jesus, if they live within the restraints and laws of their particular estate, chastely, temperately, justly, and rigorously.
The evil Consequent of Uncleanness.
The blessings and proper effects of chastity we shall best understand, by reckoning the evils of uncleanness and carnality.
1. Uncleanness, of all vices, is the most shameful. ‘The eye of
the adulterer waiteth for the twilight, saying, No eye shall see me; and disguiseth
his face. In the dark they dig through houses, which they had marked for themselves
in the day-time; they knew not the light, for the morning is to them as the shadow
of death. He is swift as the waters; their portion is cursed in the earth; he beholdeth
not the way of the vineyards.’
2. The appetites of uncleanness are full of cares and trouble,
and its fruitation is sorrow and repentance. The way of the adulterer is hedged
with thorns;
3. Most of its kinds are of that condition that they involve the ruin of two souls, and he that is a fornicator or adulterous steals the soul, as well as dishonours the body of his neighbour; and so it becomes like the sin of falling Lucifer, who brought a part of the stars with his tail from heaven.
4. Of all carnal sins, it is that alone which the devil takes delight to imitate and counterfeit; communicating with witches and impure persons in the corporal act, but in this only.
5. Uncleanness, with all its kinds, is a vice which hath a professed
enmity against the body, ‘Every sin which a man doth is without the body; but he
that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.’
6. Uncleanness is hugely contrary to the spirit of government
7.The gospel hath added two arguments against uncleanness which
were never before used, nor, indeed, could be; since God hath given the Holy Spirit
to them that are baptized, and rightly confirmed and entered into covenant with
him, our bodies are made temples of the Holy Ghost, in which he dwells; and therefore
uncleanness is sacrilege, and defiles a temple. It is St. Paul’s argument, ‘Know
ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost?’
8. The next special argument which the gospel ministers, especially
against adultery, and for the preservation of the purity of marriage, is, that marriage
is by Christ hallowed into a mystery, to signify the sacramental and mystical union
of Christ and his church.
9. St. Gregory reckons uncleanness to be the parent of these monsters, blindness of mind, inconsideration, precipitancy, or giddiness in actions, self-love, hatred of God, love of the present pleasures, a despite or despair of the joys of religion here, and of heaven hereafter. Whereas, a pure mind in a chaste body is the mother of wisdom and deliberation, sober counsels and ingenuous actions, open deportment and a sweet carriage, sincere principles and unprejudicate understanding, love of God and self-denial, peace and confidence, holy prayers and spiritual comfort, and a pleasure of spirit infinitely greater than the sottish and beastly pleasures of unchastity. “For to overcome pleasure is the greatest pleasure; and no victory is greater than that which is gotten over our lusts and filthy inclinations.”
10. Add to all these, the public dishonesty and disreputation that all the nations of the world have cast upon adulterous and unhallowed embraces. Abimelech, to the men of Gerar, made it death to meddle with the wife of Isaac, and Judah condemned Thamar to be burnt for her adulterous conception; and God, besides the law made to put the adulterous person to death, did constitute a settled and constant miracle to discover the adultery of a suspected woman, that her bowels should burst with drinking the waters of jealousy. The Egyptian law was to cut off the nose of the adulteress, and the offending part of the adulterer. The Locrians put out both the adulterer’s eyes. The Germans (as Tacitus reports) placed the adulteress amidst her kindred, naked, and shaved her head, and caused her husband to beat her with clubs through the city. The Gortynaeans crowned the man with wool, to shame him for his effeminacy; and the Cumani caused the woman to ride upon an ass, naked, and hooted at, and for ever after called her by an appellative of scorn, “a rider upon the ass.” All nations, barbarous and evil, agreeing in their general design, of rooting so dishonest and shameful a vice from under heaven.
The middle ages of the church were not pleased that the adulteress should be put to death: but in the primitive ages, the civil laws by which Christians were then governed gave leave to the wronged husband to kill his adulterous wife if he took her in the fact; but because it was a privilege indulged to men, rather than a direct detestation of the crime, a consideration of the injury rather than of the uncleanness, therefore it was soon altered; but yet hath caused an inquiry, Whether is worse, the adultery of the man or the woman?
The resolution of which case, in order to our present affair,
is thus: in respect of the person, the fault is greater in a man than in a woman,
who is of a more pliant and easy spirit, and weaker understanding, and hath nothing
to supply the unequal strengths of men, but the defensative of a passive nature
and armour of modesty, which is the natural ornament of that sex. “And it is unjust
that the man should demand chastity and severity from his wife which himself will
not observe towards her,
Acts of Chastity in general.
The actions and proper office of the grace of chastity in general, are these:
1. To resist all unchaste thoughts: at no hand entertaining pleasure in the unfruitful fancies and remembrances of uncleanness, although no definite desire or resolution be entertained.
2. At no hand to entertain any desire, or any fantastic imaginative loves, though by shame, or disability, or other circumstance, they be restrained from act.
3. To have a chaste eye and hand:
4. To have a heart and mind chaste and pure; that is, detesting all uncleanness; disliking all its motions, past actions, circumstances, likenesses, discourses: and this ought to be the chastity of virgins and widows, of old persons and eunuchs especially, and generally of all men, according to their several necessities.
5. To discourse chastely and purely;
6. To disapprove by an after-act all involuntary and natural pollutions: for, if a man delights in having suffered any natural pollution, and with pleasure remembers it, he chooses that which was in itself involuntary; and that which, being natural, was innocent, becoming voluntary, is made sinful.
7. They that have performed these duties and parts of chastity will certainly abstain from all exterior actions of uncleanness, those noonday and midnight devils, those lawless and ungodly worshippings of shame and uncleanness, whose birth is in trouble, whose growth is in folly, and whose end is in shame.
But besides these general acts of chastity which are common to all states of men and women, there are some few things to the severals.
Acts of Virginal Chastity.
1. Virgins must remember, that the virginity of the body is only excellent in order to the purity of the soul; who therefore must consider, that since they are in the some measure in a condition like that of angels, it is their duty to spend much of their time in angelical employment: for in the same degree that virgins live more spiritually than other persons, in the same degree is their virginity a more excellent state. But else, it is no better than that of involuntary or constrained eunuchs; a misery and a trouble, or else a mere privation, as much without excellency as without mixture.
2. Virgins must contend for a singular modesty; whose first part must be an ignorance in the distinction of sexes, or their proper instruments; or if they accidentally be instructed in that, it must be supplied with an inadvertency or neglect of all thoughts and remembrances of such difference; and the following parts of it must be pious and chaste thoughts, holy language, and modest carriage.
3. Virgins must be retired and unpublic: for all freedom and looseness of society is a violence done to virginity, not in its natural, but in its moral capacity; that is, it loses part of its severity, strictness, and opportunity of advantages, by publishing that person whose work is religion, whose company is angels, whose thoughts must dwell in heaven, and separate from all mixtures of the world.
4. Virgins have a peculiar obligation to charity: for this is
the virginity of the soul; as purity, integrity, and separation is of the body:
which doctrine we are taught by St. Peter: ‘Seeing ye have purified your souls in
obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that
ye love one another with a pure heart, fervently.’
5. These rules are necessary for virgins that offer that state to God, and mean not to enter into the state of marriage; for they that only wait the opportunity of a convenient change are to steer themselves by the general rules of chastity.
Rules for Widows or Vidual Chastity.
For widows, the fontanel of whose desires hath been opened by the former permissions of the marriage-bed, they must remember,
1. That God hath now restrained the former license, bound up their eyes, and shut up their heart into a narrower compass, and hath given them sorrow to be a bridle to their desires. A widow must be a mourner; and she that is not cannot so well secure the chastity of her proper state.
2. It is against public honesty to marry another man so long as she is with child by her former husband: and of the same fame it is, in a lesser proportion, to marry within the year of mourning; but anciently it was infamous for her to marry till by common account the body was dissolved into its first principle of earth.
3. A widow must restrain her memory and her fancy, not recalling or recounting her former permissions and freer licenses with any present delight: for then she opens that slice which her husband’s death and her own sorrow have shut up.
4. A widow that desires her widowhood should be a state pleasing to God, must spend her time as devoted virgins should, in fastings and prayers and charity.
5. A widow must forbid herself to sue those temporal solaces, which in her former estate were innocent, but now are dangerous.
Rules for Married Persons, or Matrimonial Chastity.
Concerning married persons, besides the keeping of their
mutual faith and contract with each other, these particulars are useful to be observed:
1. Although their mutual endearments are safe within the protection of marriage, yet they that have wives or husbands must be as though they had them not; that is, they must have an affection greater to each other than they have to any person in the world, but not greater than they have to God: but that they be ready to part with all interest in each other’s person rather than sin against God.
2. In their permissions and license they must be sure to observe the order of nature, and the ends of God. “He is an ill husband that uses his wife as a man treats a harlot,” having no other end but pleasure. Concerning which our best rule is, that although in this, as in eating and drinking, there is an appetite to be satisfied which cannot be done without pleasing that desire, yet, since that desire and satisfaction was intended by nature for other ends, they should never be separate from those ends, but always be joined with all or one of these ends, “with a desire of children, or to avoid fornication, or to lighten and ease the cares and sadnesses of household affairs, or to endear each other: “but never with a purpose, either in act or desire, to separate the sensuality from these ends which hallow it. Onan did separate his act from it proper end, and so ordered his embraces that his wife should not conceive, and God punished him.
3. Married persons must keep such modesty and decency of treating each other, that they never force themselves into high and violent lusts, with arts and misbecoming devices; always remembering, that those mixtures are most innocent which are most simple and most natural, most orderly and most safe.
4. It is a duty of matrimonial chastity to be restrained and temperate in the use of their lawful pleasures: concerning which, although no universal rule can antecedently be given to all persons, any more than to all bodies one proportion of meat and drink, yet married persons are to estimate the degree of their license according to the following proportions. 1. That it be moderate, so as to consist with health. 2. That it be so ordered as not to be too expensive of time, that precious opportunity of working out our salvation. 3. That when duty is demanded, it be always paid (so far as is in our powers and election) according to the foregoing measures. 4. That it be with a temperate affection, without violent transporting desires, or too sensual applications. Concerning which a man is to make judgment by proportion to other actions, and the severities of his religion, and the sentences of sober and wise persons; always remembering, that marriage is a provision for supply of the natural necessities of the body, not for the artificial and procured appetites of the mind. And it is a sad truth, that many married persons, thinking that the flood-gates of liberty are set wide open without measures or restraint, (so they sail in that channel,) have felt the final rewards of intemperance and lust, by their unlawful using of lawful permissions. Only let each of them be temperate, and both of them be modest. Socrates was wont to say, that those women to whom nature hath not been indulgent in good features and colours, should make it up themselves with excellent manners; and those who were beautiful and comely should be careful that so fair a body be not polluted with unhandsome usages. To which Plutarch adds, that a wife, if she be unhandsome, should consider how extremely ugly she would be if she wanted modesty: but if she be handsome, let her think how gracious that beauty would be if she super adds chastity.
5. Married persons by consent are to abstain from their mutual entertainments at solemn times of devotion; not as a duty of itself necessary, but as being the most proper act of purity, which, in their condition, they can present to God, and being a good advantage for attending their preparation to the solemn duty and their demeanour in it. It is St. Paul’s counsel, that ‘by consent for a time they should abstain, that they may give themselves to fasting and prayer.’ And though when Christians did receive the holy communion every day, it is certain they did not abstain but had children; yet, when the communion was more seldom, they did with religion abstain from the marriage-bed during the time of their solemn preparatory devotions, as anciently they did from eating and drinking, till the solemnity of the day was past.
6. It were well if married persons would, in their penitential prayers, and in their general confessions, suspect themselves, and accordingly ask a general pardon for all their indecencies, and more passionate applications of themselves in the offices of marriage; that what is lawful and honourable in its kind may not be sullied with imperfect circumstances; or, if it be, it may be made clean again by the interruption and recallings of such a repentance, of which such uncertain parts of action are capable.
But, because of all the dangers of a Christian, none more pressing and troublesome than the temptations to lust, no enemy more dangerous than that of the flesh, no accounts greater than what we have to reckon for at the audit of concupiscence, therefore it concerns all that would be safe from this death to arm themselves by the following rules, to prevent or to cure all the wounds of our flesh made by the poisoned arrows of lust.
Remedies against Uncleanness.
1. When a temptation of lust assaults thee, do not resist
it by heaping up arguments against it and disputing with it; considering its offers
and its dangers, but fly from it;
2. Avoid idleness, and fill up all the spaces of thy time with severs and useful employment; for lust usually creeps in at those emptinesses where the soul is unemployed, and the body is at ease. For no easy, healthful, and idle person was ever chaste, if he could be tempted. But of all employments bodily labour is most useful, and of greatest benefit for the driving away the devil.
3. Give no entertainment to the beginnings, the first motions
and secret whispers of the spirit of impurity: for if you totally suppress it, it
dies;
4. Corporal mortification, and hard usages of our body, hath,
by all ages of the church, been accounted a good instrument, and of some profit
against the spirit of fornication. A spare diet, and a thin course table, seldom
refreshment, frequent fasts, not violent, and interrupted with returns to ordinary
feeding, but constantly little, unpleasant, of wholesome but sparing nourishment:
for by such cutting off the provisions of vectorial, we shall weaken the strengths
of our enemy. To which if we add lyings upon the ground, painful postures in prayer,
reciting our devotions with our arms extended at full length, like Moses praying
against Amalek, or our blessed Saviour hanging upon his painful bed of sorrows,
the cross, and (if the lust be upon us, and sharply tempting) by inflicting any
smart to overthrow the strongest passion by the most violent pain, we shall find
great ease for the present, and the resolution and apt sufferance against the future
danger. And this was St. Paul’s remedy. ‘I bring my body under;’ he used some rudenesses
towards it. But it was a great nobleness of chastity which St. Jerome reports of
a son of the king of Nicomedia,
5. Fly from all occasions, temptations, loosenesses of company,
balls and revellings, indecent mixtures of wanton dancings, idle talk, private society
with strange women, starings upon a beauteous face, the company of women that are
singers, amorous gestures, garish and wanton dresses, feasts and liberty, banquets
and perfumes,
6. He that will secure his chastity must first cure his pride and his rage. For oftentimes lust is the punishment of a proud man, to tame the vanity of his pride by the shame and affronts of unchastity; and the same intemperate heat that makes anger does enkindle lust.
7. If thou beest assaulted with an unclean spirit, trust not thyself alone; but run forth into company whose reverence and modesty may suppress, or whose society may divert thy thoughts: and a perpetual witness of thy conversation is of especial use against this vice, which evaporates in the open air like camphier, being impatient of light and witnesses.
8. Use frequent and earnest prayers to the King of purities, that first of virgins, the eternal God, who is of an essential purity, that he would be pleased to reprove and cast out the unclean spirit. For beside the blessings of prayer by way of reward, it hath a natural virtue to restrain this vice: because a prayer against it is an unwillingness to act it; and so long as we heartily pray against it our desires are secured, and then this devil hath no power. This was St. Paul’s other remedy: ‘For this cause I besought the Lord thrice.’ And there is much reason and much advantage in the use of this instrument; because the main thing that in this affair is to be secured is a man’s mind. He that goes about to cure lust by bodily exercises alone(as St. Paul’s phrase is) or mortifications, shall find them sometimes instrumental to it, and incitations of sudden desires, but always insufficient and of little profit: but he that hath a chaste mind shall find his body apt enough to take laws; and let it do its worst, it cannot make a sin, and in its greatest violence can but produce a little natural uneasiness, not so much trouble as a severe fasting-day, or a hard night’s lodging upon boards. If a man be hungry he must eat; and if he be thirsty he must drink in some convenient time, or else he dies; but if the body be rebellious, so the mind be chaste, let it do its worst, if you resolve perfectly not to satisfy it, you can receive no great evil by it. Therefore the proper cure is by application to the spirit and securities of the mind, which can no way so well be secured as by frequent and fervent prayers, and sober resolutions, and severe discourses. Therefore,
9. Hither bring in succor from consideration of the Divine presence and of his holy angels, mediation of death, and the passions of Christ upon the cross, imitation of his purities, and of the Virgin Mary, his unspotted and holy mother, and of such eminent saints, who, in their generations, were burning and shining lights, unmingled with such uncleannesses, which defile the soul, and who now follow the Lamb, withersoever he goes.
10. These remedies are of universal efficacy, in all cases extraordinary
and violent; but in ordinary and common, the remedy which God hath provided, that
is, honourable marriage,
SECTION IV.
Of Humility.
Humility is the great ornament and jewel of Christian religion; that whereby it is distinguished from all the wisdom of the world; it not having been taught by the wise men of the Gentiles, but first put into a discipline, and made part of a religion, by our Lord Jesus Christ, who propounded himself imitable by his disciples so signally in nothing as in the twin sisters of meekness and humility. ‘Learn of me, for I am meek and humble; and ye shall find rest unto your souls.’
For all the world, all that we are, and all that we have, our bodies and our souls, our actions and our sufferings, our conditions at home, our accidents abroad, our many sins, and our seldom virtues, are as so many arguments to make our souls dwell low in the deep valleys of humility.
Arguments against Pride, by way of consideration.
1. Our body is weak and impure, sending out more uncleannesses from its several sinks than could be endured, if they were not necessary and natural; and we are forced to pass that through our mouths, which as soon as we see upon the ground, we loathe like rottenness and vomiting.
2. Our strength is inferior to that of many beasts, and our infirmities so many that we are forced to dress and tend horses and asses, that they may help our needs, and relieve our wants.
3. Our beauty is in colour inferior to many flowers, and in proportion of parts it is no better than nothing; for even a dog hath parts as well proportioned and fitted to his purposes, and the designs of his nature, as we have; and when it is most florid and gay, three fits of an ague can change it into yellowness and leanness, and the hollowness and wrinkles of deformity.
4. Our learning is then best when it teaches most humility; but to be proud of learning is the greatest ignorance in the world. For our learning is so long in getting, and so very imperfect, that the greatest clerk knows not the thousandth part of what he is ignorant; and knows so uncertainly what he seems to know, and knows no otherwise than a fool or a child even what is told him or what he guesses at, that except those things which concern his duty, and which God hath revealed to him, which also every woman knows so far as is necessary, the most learned man hath nothing to be proud of, unless this be a sufficient argument to exalt him, that he uncertainly guesses at some more unnecessary things than many others, who yet know all that concerns them, and mind other things more necessary for the needs of life and commonwealths.
5. He that is proud of riches is a fool. For if he be exalted above his neighbours, because he hath more gold, how much inferior is he to a gold mine! How much is he to give place to a chain of pearl, or a knot of diamonds! For certainly that hath the greatest excellence from whence he derives all his gallantry and pre-eminence over his neighbours.
6. If a man be exalted by reason of any excellence in his soul, he may please to remember that all souls are equal; and their differing operations are because their instrument is in better tune, their body is more healthful or better tempered; which is no more praise to him than it is that he was born in Italy.
7. He that is proud of his birth is proud of the blessings of others, not of himself; for if his parents were more eminent in any circumstance than their neighbours, he is to thank God, and rejoice in them; but still he may be a fool, or unfortunate, or deformed; and when himself was born, it was indifferent to him whether his father were a king, or a peasant, for he knew not anything nor chose anything; and most commonly it is true, that he that boasts of his ancestors, who were the founders and raisers of a noble family, doth confess that he hath in himself a less virtue and a less honour, and therefore he is degenerated.
8. Whatsoever other difference there is between thee and thy neighbour, if it be bad, it is thine own, but thou hast no reason to boast of thy misery and shame: if it be good thou hast received it from God; and then thou art more obliged to pay duty and tribute, use and principal to him, and it were a strange folly for a man to be proud of being more in debt than another.
9. Remember what thou wert before thou wert begotten. Nothing.
What wert thou in the first regions of thy dwelling, before thy birth? Uncleanness.
What wert thou for many years after? A great sinner. What in all thy excellencies?
A mere debtor to God, to thy parents, to the earth, to all the creatures. But we
may, if we please, use the method of the Platonists,
Acts or Offices of Humility.
The grace of humility is exercised by these following rules.
1. Think not thyself better for anything that happens to thee from without. For although thou mayest, by gifts bestowed upon thee, be better than another, as one horse is better than another, that is of more use to others; yet as thou art a man, thou hast nothing to commend thee to thyself but that only by which thou art a man, that is, by what thou choosiest and refusest.
2. Humility consists not in railing against thyself, or wearing mean clothes, or going softly and submissively; but in hearty and real evil or mean opinion of thyself. Believe thyself an unworthy person heartily, as thou believest thyself to be hungry, or poor, or sick, when thou art so.
3. Whatsoever evil thou sayest of thyself, be content that others should think to be true: and if thou callest thyself fool, be not angry if another say so of thee. For if thou thinkest so truly, all men in the world desire other men to be of their opinion; and he is an hypocrite that accuses himself before others, with an intent not to be believed. But he that calls himself intemperate, foolish, lustful, and is angry when his neighbours call him so, is both a false and a proud person.
4. Love to be concealed, and little esteemed:
5. Never be ashamed of thy birth, or thy parents, or thy trade,
6. Never speak anything directly tending to thy praise or glory; that is, with the purpose to be commended, and for no other end. If other ends be mingled with thy honour, as if the glory of God, or charity, or necessity, or anything of prudence be thy end, you are not tied to omit your discourse or your design, that you may avoid praise, but pursue your end, though praise come along in the company. Only let not praise be the design.
7. When thou hast said or done anything for which thou receivest praise or estimation, take it indifferently, and return it to God, reflecting upon his as the giver of the gift, or the blesser of the action, or the aid of the design; and give God thanks for making thee an instrument of his glory, for the benefit of others.
8. Secure a good name to thyself by living virtuously and humbly; but let this good name be nursed abroad, and never be brought home to look upon it: let others use it for their own advantage; let them speak of it if they please; but do not thou at all use it, but as an instrument to do God glory, and thy neighbour more advantage. Let thy face, like Moses’s, shine to others, but make no looking-glasses for thyself.
9. Take no content in praise when it is offered thee; but let thy rejoicing in God’s gift be allayed with fear, lest this good bring thee to evil. Use the praise as you use your pleasure in eating and drinking; if it comes, make it do drudgery; let it serve other ends, and minister to necessities, and to caution, lest by pride you lose your just praise, which you have deserved, or else, by being praised unjustly, you receive shame into yourself with God and wise men.
10. Use no stratagems and devices to get praise. Some use to inquire into the faults of their own actions or discourses, on purpose to hear that it was well done or spoken, and without fault; others bring the matter into talk, or thrust themselves into company, and intimate and give occasion to be thought or spoken of. These men make a bait to persuade themselves to swallow the hook, till by drinking the waters of vanity they swell and burst.
11. Make no suppletories to thyself, when thou art disgraced or
slighted, by pleasing thyself with supposing thou didest deserve praise, though
they understood thee not, or enviously detracted from thee: neither do thou get
to thyself a private theatre and flatterers,
12. Entertain no fancies of vanity and private whispers of this devil of pride, such as was that of Nebuchadnezzar: ‘Is not this great Babylon, which I have built for the honour of my name, and the might of my majesty, and the power of my kingdom?’ Some fantastic spirits will walk alone, and dream waking of greatness, of palaces, of excellent orations, full theatres, loud applauses, sudden advancement, great fortunes, and so will spend an hour with imaginative pleasure; all their employment being nothing but fumes of pride, and secret indefinite desires and significations of what their heart wishes. In this, although there is nothing of its own nature directly vicious, yet is either an ill mother or an ill daughter an ill sign or an ill effect; and therefore at no hand consisting with the safety and interests of humility.
13. Suffer others to be praised in thy presence, and entertain their good and glory with delight; but at no hand disparage them, or lessen the report, or make an objection; and think not the advancement of thy brother is a lessening of thy worth. But this act is also to extend further.
14. Be content that he should be employed, and thou laid by as unprofitable; his sentence approved, thine rejected; he be preferred, and thou fixed in a low employment.
15. Never compare thyself with others, unless it be to advance them and to depress thyself. To which purpose, we must be sure, in some sense or other, to think ourselves the worst in every company where we come: one is more learned than I am, another is more prudent, a third more charitable, or less proud. For the humble man observes their good, and reflects only upon his own vileness; or considers the many evils of himself certainly known to himself, and the ill of others but by uncertain report; or he considers that the evils done by another are out of much infirmity or ignorance, but his own sins are against a clearer light, and if the other had so great helps, he would have done more good and less evil; or he remembers, that his old sins before his conversion were greater in the nature of the thing, or in certain circumstances, than the sins of other men. So St. Paul reckoned himself the chiefest of sinners, because formerly he had acted the chiefest sin of persecuting the church of God. But this rule is to be used with this caution, that though it be good always to think meanest of ourselves, yet it is not ever safe to speak it, because those circumstances and considerations which determine thy thoughts are not known to others as to thyself; and it may concern others that they hear thee give God thanks for the graces he hath given thee. But if thou preservest thy thoughts and opinions of thyself truly humble, you may with more safety give God thanks in public for that good which cannot, or ought not to be concealed.
16. Be not always ready to excuse every oversight, or indiscretion, or ill action, but if thou beest guilty of it confess it plainly; for virtue scorns a lie for its cover, but to hide a sin with it is like a crust of leprosy drawn upon an ulcer. If thou beest not guilty (unless it be scandalous,) be not over-earnest to remove it, but rather use it as an argument to chastise all greatness of fancy and opinion in thyself; and accustom thyself to bear reproof patiently and contentedly, and the harsh words of thy enemies, as knowing that the anger of an enemy is a better monitor, and represents our faults, or admonishes us of our duty, with more heartiness than the kindness does or precious balms of a friend.
17. Give God thanks for every weakness, deformity, and imperfection, and accept is as a favour and grace of God, and an instrument to resist pride, and nurse humility, ever remembering, that when God, by giving thee a crooked back, hath also made thy spirit stoop or less vain, thou art more ready to enter the narrow gate of heaven, than by being straight, and standing upright, and thinking highly. Thus the apostles rejoiced in their infirmities, not moral, but natural and accidental, in their being beaten and whipped like slaves, in their nakedness, and poverty.
18. Upbraid no man’s weakness to him to discomfort him, neither
report it to disparage him, neither delight to remember it to lessen him, or to
set thyself above him. Be sure never to praise thyself, or to dispraise any man
else, unless God’s glory or some holy end do hallow it. And it was noted to the
praise of Cyrus, that, amongst his equals in age,
19. Besides the foregoing parts and actions, humility teaches
us to submit ourselves and all our faculties to God, ‘to believe all things, to
do all things, to suffer all things,’ which his will enjoins us; to be content in
every state or change, knowing we have deserved worse than the worst we feel, and,
as Anytus said to Alcibiades, he hath taken but half when he might have taken all,
to adore his goodness, to fear his greatness, to worship his eternal and infinite
excellencies, and to submit ourselves to all our superiors, in all things, according
to godliness, and to be meek and gentle in our conversation towards others.
Now, although, according to the nature of every grace, this begins as a gift, and is increased like a habit, that is, best by its own acts; yet, besides the former acts and offices of humility, there are certain other exercises and considerations, which are good helps and instruments for the procuring and increasing this grace, and the curing of pride.
Means and Exercises for obtaining and increasing the Grace of Humility.
1. Make confession of thy sins often to God; and consider what all that evil amounts to which you then charge upon yourself. Look not upon them as scattered in the course of a long life; now an intemperate anger, then too full a meal; now idle talking, and another time impatience; but unite them into one continued representation, and remember, that he whose life seems fair, by reason that his faults are scattered at large distances in the several parts of his life, yet, if all his errors and follies were articled against him, the man would seem vicious and miserable; and possibly this exercise, really applied upon thy spirit may be useful.
2. Remember that we usually disparage others upon slight grounds and little instances, and toward them one fly is enough to spoil a whole box of ointment; and if a man be highly commended, we think him sufficiently lessened if we clap one sin or folly or infirmity into his account. Let us, therefore, be just to ourselves, since we are so severe to others, and consider that whatsoever good any one can think or say of us, we can tell him of hundreds of base, and unworthy, and foolish actions, any one of which were enough (we hope) to destroy another’s reputation; therefore, let so many be sufficient to destroy our over-high thoughts of ourselves.
3. When our neighbour is cried up by public fame and popular noises, that we may disparage and lessen him, we cry out that the people is a herd of unlearned and ignorant persons, ill judges, loud trumpets, but which never give certain sound; let us use the same art to humble ourselves, and never take delight and pleasure in public reports and acclamations of assemblies, and please ourselves with their judgment, of whom, in other the like cases, we affirm that they are mad.
4. We change our opinion of others by their kindness or unkindness towards us. If he be my patron, and bounteous, he is wise, he is noble, his faults are but warts, his virtues are mountains; but if he proves unkind, or rejects our importunate suit, then he is ill-natured, covetous, and his free meal is called gluttony; that which before we called civility is now very drunkenness, and all he speaks if flat, and dull, and ignorant as a swine. This, indeed, is unjust towards others; but a good instrument if we turn the edge of it upon ourselves. We use ourselves ill, abusing ourselves with false principles, cheating ourselves with lies and pretences, stealing the choice and elections from our wills, placing voluntary ignorance in our understandings, denying the desires of the spirit, setting up a faction against every noble and just desire, the least of which, because we should resent up to reviling the injurious person, it is but reason we should at least not flatter ourselves with fond and too kind opinions.
5. Every day call to mind some one of thy foulest sins, or the most shameful of thy disgraces, or the indiscreetest of thy actions, or anything that did then most trouble thee, and apply it to the present swelling of thy spirit and opinion, and it may help to allay it.
6. Pray often for his grace with all humility of gesture and passion of desire, and in thy devotion interpose many acts of humility, by way of confession and address to God, and reflection upon thyself.
7. Avoid great offices and employments, and the noises of worldly
honour.
8. Make no reflex upon thy own humility, nor upon any other grace with which God hath enriched thy soul. For since God oftentimes hides from his saints and servants the sight of those excellent things by which, they shine to others (though the dark side of the lantern be toward themselves,) that he may secure the grace of humility, it is good that thou do so thyself; and if thou beholdest a grace of God in thee, remember to give him thanks for it, that thou mayest not boast in that which is none of they own; and consider how thou hast sullied it by handling it with dirty fingers, with thy own imperfections, and with mixture of anhandsome circumstances. Spiritual pride is very dangerous, not only by reason it spoils so many graces, by which we draw nigh unto the kingdom of God, but also because it so frequently creeps upon the spirit of holy persons. For it is no wonder for a beggar to call himself poor, or a drunkard to confess that he is no sober person; but for a holy person to be humble, for one whom all men esteem a saint to fear lest himself become a devil, and to observe his own danger, and to discern his own infirmities, and make discovery of his bad adherences, is as hard as for a prince to submit himself to be guided by tutors, and make himself subject to discipline, like the meanest of his servants.
9. Often meditate upon the effects of pride on one side, and humility
on the other. First, That pride is like a canker, and destroys the beauty of the
fairest flowers, the most excellent gifts and graces; but humility crowns them all.
Secondly, That pride is a great hinderance to the perceiving the things of God,
10. Remember that the blessed Saviour of the world hath done more
to prescribe, and transmit, and secure this grace than any other;
11. Drive away all flatterers from thy company, and at no hand endure them, for he that endures himself so to be abused by another is not only a fool for entertaining the mockery, but loves to have his own opinion of himself to be heightened and cherished.
12. Never change thy employment for the sudden coming of another to thee; but if modesty permits, or discretion, appear to him that visits thee the same that thou wert to God and thyself in thy privacy. But if thou wert walking or sleeping, or in any other innocent employment or retirement, snatch not up a book to seem studious, nor fall on thy knees to seem devout, nor alter anything to make him believe thee better employed than thou wert.
13. To the same purpose it is of great use that he who would preserve his humility should choose some spiritual person to whom he shall oblige himself to discover his very thoughts and fancies, every act of his, and all his intercourse with others, in which there may be danger; that by such an openness of spirit he may expose every blast of vain glory, every idle thought, to be chastened and lessened by the rod of spiritual discipline: and he that shall find himself tied to confess every proud thought, every vanity of his spirit, will also perceive they must not dwell with him, nor find any kindness from him; and, besides this, the nature of pride is so shameful and unhandsome, that the very discovery of it is a huge mortification and means of suppressant it. A man would be ashamed to be told that he inquires after the faults of his last oration or action on purpose to be commended; and, therefore, when the man shall tell his spiritual guide the same shameful story of himself, it is very likely he will be humbled and heartily ashamed of it.
14. Let every man suppose what opinion he should have of one that should spend his time in playing with drum-sticks and cockle-shells, and that should wrangle all day long with a little boy for pins, or should study hard and labour to cozen a child of his gauds; and who would run into a river, deep and dangerous, with a great burden upon his back, even then when he were told of the danger, and earnestly importuned not to do it? and let him but change the instances and the person, and he shall find that he hath the same reason to think as bad of himself, who pursues trifles with earnestness, spending mistime in vanity, and his labour for that which profits not; who, knowing the laws of God, the rewards of virtue, the cursed consequents of sin, that it is an evil spirit that tempts him to do it, a devil, one that hates him, that longs extremely to ruin him; that it is his own destruction that he is then working; that the pleasures of his sin are base and brutish, unsatisfying in the enjoyment, soon over, shameful in their story, bitter in the memory, painful in the effect here, and intolerable hereafter, and for ever; yet in despite of all this, he runs foolishly into his sin and his ruin, merely because he is a fool, and winks hard, and rushes violently like a horse into the battle, or, like a madman, to his death. He that can think great and good things of such a person, the next step may court the pack for an instrument of pleasure, and admire a swing for wisdom, and go for counsel to the prodigal and trifling grasshopper.
After the use of these and such like instruments and considerations, if you would try how your soul is grown, you shall know that humility, like the root of a goodly tree, is thrust very far into the ground by these goodly fruits which appear above ground.
Signs of Humility.
1. The humble man trusts not to his own discretion, but
in matters of concernment relies rather upon the judgment of his friends, counsellors,
or spiritual guides. 2. He does not pertinaciously pursue the choice of his own
will, but in all things lets God choose for him, and his superiors, in those things
which concern them. 3. He does not murmur against commands.
SECTION V.
Of Modesty.
Modesty is the appendage of sobriety, and is to chastity, to temperance, and to humility, as the fringes are to a garment. It is a grace of God, that moderates the over-activeness and curiosity of the mind, and orders the passions of the body and external actions, and is directly opposed to curiosity, to boldness, to indecency. The practice of modesty consists in the following rules:
Acts and Duties of Modesty, as it is opposed to Curiosity.
1. Inquire not into the secrets of God, but be content to learn thy duty according to the quality of thy person or employment; that i plainly, if thou beest not concerned in the conduct of others; but if thou beest a teacher, learn it so as may best enable thee to discharge thy office. God’s commandments were proclaimed to all the world; but God’s counsels are to himself and to his secret ones, when they are admitted within the veil.
2. Inquire not into the things which are too hard for thee, but learn modestly to know thy infirmities and abilities; and raise not thy mind up to inquire into mysteries of state, or the secrets of government, or difficulties theological, if thy employment really be, or thy understanding be judged to be, of a lower rank.
3. Let us not inquire into the affairs of others that concern us not, but be busied within ourselves and our own spheres; ever remembering that to pry into the actions or interests of other men not under our charge, may minister to pride, to tyranny, to uncharitableness, to trouble, but can never consist with modesty, unless where duty or the mere intentions of charity and relation do warrant it.
4. Never listen at the doors or windows:
Every man hath in his own life sins enough, in his own mind trouble enough, in his own fortune evils enough, and in performance of his offices failings more than enough, to entertain his own inquiry; so that curiosity after the affairs of others cannot be without envy, and an evil mind. What is it to me, if my neighbour’s grandfather were a Syrian, or his grandmother illegitimate; or that another is indebted five thousand pounds, or whether his wife be expensive? But commonly curious persons, or (as the apostle’s phrase is) ‘busybodies,’ are not solicitous or inquisitive into the beauty and order of a well-governed family, or after the virtues of an excellent person; but if there be anything for which men keep locks and bars, and porters, things that blush to see the light, and either are shameful in manners, or private in nature, these things are their care and their business. But if great things will satisfy our inquiry, the course of the sun and moon, the spots in their faces, the firmament of heaven, and the supposed orbs, the ebbing and flowing of the sea, are work enough for us; or if this be not, let him tell me whether the number of the stars be even or odd, and when they began to be so, since some ages have discovered new stars which the former knew not, but might have seen if they had been where now they are fixed. If these be too troublesome search lower, and tell me why this turf this year brings forth a daisy, and the next year a plantain; why the apple bears his seed in his heart, and wheat bears it in his head: let him tell why a graft, taking nourishment from a crab-stock, shall have a fruit more noble than its nurse and parent: let him say why the best of oil is at the top, the best of wine in the middle, and the best of honey at the bottom, otherwise than it is in some liquors that are thinner, and in some that are thicker. But these things are to such as please busybodies; they must feed upon tragedies, and stories of misfortunes and crimes: and yet tell them ancient stories of the ravishment of chaste maidens, or the debauchment of nations, or the extreme poverty of learned persons, or the persecutions of the old saints, or the changes of government, and sad accidents happening in royal families amongst the Arsacidae, the Caesars, the Ptolemies, these were enough to scratch the itch of knowing sad stories; but unless you stem them something sad and new, something that is done within the bounds of their own knowledge or relation, it seems tedious and unsatisfying; which shows plainly, it is an evil spirit; envy and idleness married together, and begot curiosity. Therefore Plutarch rarely well compares curious and inquisitive ears to the execrable gates of cities, out of which only malefactors and hangmen and tragedies pass — nothing that is chaste or holy. If a physician should go from house to house unsent for, and inquire what woman hath a cancer in her bowels, or what man hath a fisula in his colic-gut, though he could pretend to cure it, he would be almost as unwelcome as the disease itself; and therefore it is inhuman to inquire after crimes and disasters without pretence of amending them, but only to discover them. We are not angry with searchers and publicans, when they look only on public merchandise; but when they break open trunks, and pierce vessels, and unrip packs, and open sealed letters.
Curiosity is the direct incontinency of the spirit: and adultery itself in its principle is many times nothing but a curious inquisition after, and envying of, another man’s enclosed pleasures; and there have been many who refused fairer objects that they might ravish an enclosed woman from her retirement and single possessor. But these inquisitions are seldom without danger, never with our baseness; they are neither just, nor honest, nor delightful, and very often useless to the curious inquirer. For men stand upon their guards against them, as they secure their meat against harpies and cats, laying all their counsels and secrets out of their way; or as men clap their garments close about them, when the searching and saucy winds would discover their nakedness; as knowing that what men willingly hear they do willingly speak of. Knock, therefore, at the door before you enter upon your neighbour’s privacy; and remember, that there is no difference between entering into his house, and looking into it.
Acts of Modesty as it is opposed to Boldness.Αισχυνμ.
1. Let us always bear about us such impressions of reverence and fear of God as to tremble at his voice, to express our apprehensions of his greatness in all great accidents, in popular judgments, loud thunders, tempests, earthquakes; not only for fear of being smitten ourselves, or that we are concerned in the accident, but also that we may humble ourselves before his Almightiness, and express that infinite distance between his infiniteness and our weaknesses, at such times especially when he gives such visible arguments of it. He that is merry and airy at shore when he sees a sad and a loud tempest on the sea, or dances briskly when God thunders from heaven, regards not when God speaks to all the world, but is possessed with a firm immodesty.
2. Be reverent, modest, and reserved, in the presence of thy betters, giving to all, according to their equality, their titles of honour, keeping distance, speaking little, answering pertinently, not interposing without leave or reason, not answering to a question propounded to another; and even present to thy superiors the fairest side of thy discourse, of thy temper, of thy ceremony, as being ashamed to serve excellent persons with unhandsome intercourse.
3. Never lie before a king or a great person, nor stand in a lie
when thou art accused, nor offer to justify what is indeed a fault; but modestly
be ashamed of it, ask pardon, and make amends.
4. Never boast of thy sin, but at least lay a veil upon thy nakedness and shame, and python hand before thine eyes, that thou mayest have this beginning of repentance, to believe thy sin to be thy shame. For he that blushes not at his crime, but adds shamelessness to his shame, hath no instrument left to restore him to the hopes of virtue.
5. Be not confident and affirmative i an uncertain matter, but report things modestly and temperately, according to the degree of that persuasion, which is, or ought to be, begotten in thee by the efficacy of the authority, or the reason inducing thee.
6. Pretend not to more knowledge than thou hast, but be content to seem ignorant where thou art so, lest thou beest either brought to shame, or retirest into shamelessness.
Acts of Modesty as it is opposed to Indecency.
1. In your prayers, in churches and places of religion, use reverent postures, great attention, grave ceremony, the lowest gestures of humility, remembering that we speak to God, in our reverence to whom we cannot possibly exceed; but that the expression of this reverence be according to law or custom, and the example of the most prudent and pious persons; that is, let it be the best in its kind to the best of essences.
2. In all public meetings, private addresses, in discourse, in journeys, use those forms of salutation, reverence, and decency, which the custom prescribes, and is usual amongst the most sober persons, giving honour to whom honour belongeth, taking place of none of thy betters, and in all cases of question concerning civil precedency giving it to any one that will take it, if it be only thy own right that is in question.
3. Observe the proportion of affections in all meetings, and to all persons: be not merry at a funeral, nor sad upon a festival’ but rejoice with them that rejoice, and weep with them that weep.
4. Abstain from wanton and dissolute laughter, petulant and uncomely jests, loud talking, jeering, and all such actions, which in civil account are called indecencies and incivilities.
5. Towards your parents use all modesty of duty and humble carriage; towards them and all your kindred, be severe in the modesties of chastity, ever fearing, lest the freedoms of natural kindness should enlarge into any neighbourhood of unhandsomeness. For all incestuous mixtures, and all circumstances and degrees towards it, are the highest violations of modesty in the world; for therefore incest is grown to be so high a crime, especially in the last periods of the world, because it breaks that reverence which the consent of all nations and the severity of human laws hath enjoined towards our parents and nearest kindred, in imitation of that law which God gave to the Jews in prosecution of modesty in this instance.
6. Be a curious observer of all those things which are of good
report, and are parts of public honesty.
7. Be grave, decent, and modest, in thy clothing and ornament;
never let it be above thy condition not always equal to it; never light or amorous
discovering a nakedness through a thin veil which thou pretendest to hide; never
to lay a snare for a soul; but remember what becomes a Christian, professing holiness,
chastity, and the discipline of the holy Jesus: and the first effect of this let
your servants feel by your gentleness and aptness to be pleased with their usual
diligence, and ordinary conduct.
8. Hither also is to be reduced singular and affected walking,
proud, nice, and ridiculous gestures of body, painting and lascivious dressings;
all of which together God reproves by the prophet: ‘The Lord saith, Because the
daughters of Sion are haughty, and walk with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes,
walking and mincing as they go, and make a tinkling with their feet; therefore the
Lord will smite her with a scab of the crown of the head, and will take away the
bravery of their tinkling ornaments.’
9. As those meats are to be avoided which tempt our stomachs beyond
our hunger, so, also, should prudent persons decline all such spectacles, relations,
theatres, loud noises and outcries, which concern us not, and are besides our natural
or moral interest. Our senses should not, like petulant and wanton girls, wander
into markets and theatres without just employment; but when they are sent abroad
by reason, return quickly with their errand, and remain modestly at home under their
guide, till they be sent again.
10. Let all persons be curious in observing modesty towards themselves, in the handsome treating their own body, and such as are in their power, whether living or dead. Against this rule they offend who expose to others their own, or pry into others’ nakedness beyond the limits of necessity, or where a leave is not made holy by a permission from God. It is also said, that God was pleased to work a miracle about the body of Epiphanius to reprove the immodest curiosity of an unconcerned person who pried too near, when charitable people were composing it to the grave. In all these cases and particulars, although they seem little, yet our duty and concernment is not little. Concerning which I use the words of the son of Sirach, “He that despiseth little things shall perish by little and little.”
SECTION VI.
Of Contentedness in all Estates and Accidents.
Virtues and discourses are, like friends, necessary in
all fortunes; but those are the best, which are friends in our sadnesses, and support
us in our sorrows and sad accidents: and in this sense, no man that is virtuous
can be friendless; nor hath any man reason to complain of the Divine Providence,
or accuse the public disorder of things, or his own infelicity, since God hath appointed
one remedy for all the evils in the world, and that is a contented spirit: for this
alone makes a man pass through fire, and not be scorched; through seas, and not
be drowned; through hunger and nakedness, and want nothing. For since all the evil
in the world consists in the disagreeing between the object and the appetite, as
when a man hath what he desires not, or desires what he hath not, or desires amiss;
he that composes his spirit to the present accident, hath variety of instances for
his virtues, but none to trouble him, because his desires enlarge not beyond his
present fortune; and a wise man is placed in the variety of chances, like the nave
or centre of a wheel, in the midst of all the circumvolutions and changes of posture,
without violence or change save that it turns gently in compliance with its changed
parts, and is indifferent which part is up, and which id down; for there is some
virtue or other to be exercised, whatever happens, either patience or thanksgiving,
love or fear, moderation or humility, charity or contentedness, and they are every
one of them equally in order to his great end and immortal felicity: and beauty
is not made by white or red, by black eyes and a round face, by a straight body
and a smooth skin; but by a proportion to the fancy. No rules can make amiability;
our minds and apprehensions make that; and so is our felicity; and we may be reconciled
to poverty and a low fortune, if we suffer contentedness and the grace of God to
make the proportions. For no man is poor that does not think himself so: but if,
in a full fortune, with impatience he desires more, he proclaims his wants and his
beggarly condition.
1. Contentedness in all estates is a duty of religion; it is the great reasonableness of complying with the Divine Providence, which governs all the world, and hath so ordered us in the administration of his great family. He were a strange fool that should be angry because dogs and sheep need no shoes, and yet himself is full of care to get some. God hath supplied those needs to them by natural provisions, and to thee by an artificial: for he hath given the reason to learn a trade, or some means to make or buy them, so that it only differs in the manner of our provision: and which had you rather want, shoes or reason? Any my patron, that hath given me a farm, is freer to me than if he gives a loaf ready baked. But, however, all these gifts come from him, and therefore it is fit he should dispense them as he pleases; and if we murmur here, we may, at the next melancholy fit, be troubled that God did not make us to be angels or stars. For if that which we are or have do not content us, we may be troubled for everything in the world which is besides our being or our possessions.
God is the master of the scenes; we must not choose which part we shall act; it concerns us only to be careful that we do it well, always saying, ‘If this please God, let it be as it is;’ and we, who pray that God’s will may be done in earth as it is in heaven, must remember that the angels do whatsoever is commanded them, and go wherever they are sent, and refuse no circumstances; and if their employment be crossed by a higher degree, they sit down in peace, and rejoice in the event; and when the angel of Judea could not prevail in behalf of the people committed to his charge, because the angel of Persia opposed it, he only told the story at the command of God, and was as content, and worshipped with as great an ecstasy in his proportion, as the prevailing spirit. Do thou so likewise: keep the station where God hath placed you, and you shall never long for things without, but sit at home, feasting upon the Divine Providence and thy own reason, by which we are taught that it is necessary and reasonable to submit to God.
For is not all the world God’s family? Are not we his creatures? Are we not as clay in the hand of the potter? Do we not live upon his meat, and move by his strength, and do our work by his light? Are we anything but what we are from him? And shall there be a mutiny among the flocks and herds, because their lord or their shepherd chooses their pastures, and suffers them not to wander into the deserts and unknown ways? If we choose, we do it so foolishly that we cannot like it long, and most commonly not at all: but God, who can do what he pleases, is wise to choose safely for us, affectionate to comply with our needs, and powerful to execute all his wise decrees. Here, therefore, is the wisdom of the contented man, to let God choose for him; for when we have given up our wills to him, and stand in that station of the battle where our great general hath placed us, our spirits must needs rest while our conditions have for their security the power, the wisdom, and the charity of God.
2. Contentedness in all accidents brings great peace of spirit, and is the great and only instrument of temporal felicity. It removes the sting from the accident, and makes a man not to depend upon chance and the uncertain dispositions of men for his well-being, but only on God and his own spirit. We ourselves make our fortunes good or bad; and when God lets loose a tyrant upon us, or a sickness, or scorn, or a lessened fortune, if we fear to die, or know not to be patient, or are proud, or covetous, then the calamity sits heavy on us. But if we know how to manage a noble principle, and fear not death so much as a dishonest action, and think impatience a worse evil than a fever, and pride to be the biggest disgrace, and poverty to be infinitely desirable before the torments of covetousness; then we who now think vice to be so easy, and make it so familiar, and think the cure so impossible, shall quickly be of another mind, and reckon these accidents amongst things eligible.
But no man can be happy that hath great hopes and great fears
of things without, and events depending upon other men, or upon the chances of fortune.
The rewards of virtue are certain, and our provisions for our natural support are
certain; or if we want meat till we die, then we die of that disease — and there
are many whores than to die of an atrophy or consumption, or unapt and courser nourishment.
But he that suffers a transporting passion concerning things within the power of
others, is free from sorrow and amazement no longer than his enemy shall give him
leave; and it is ten to one but he shall be smitten then and there where it shall
most trouble him; for so the adder teaches us where to strike, by her curious and
fearful defending of her head. The old Stoics, when you told them of a sad story,
would still answer, “Yes, for the tyrant hath sentenced you also to prison. Well,
what is that? he will put a chain upon my leg; but he cannot bind my soul. No, but
he will kill you. Then I will die. If presently, let me go, that I may presently
be freer than himself; but if not till anon or tomorrow, I will dine first, or sleep,
or do what reason or nature calls for, as at other times.” This, in Gentile philosophy,
is the same with the discourse of St. Paul,
We are in the world like men playing at tables, the chance is not in our power, but to play it is; and when it is fallen we must manage it as we can; and let nothing trouble us, but when we do a base action, or speak like a fool, or think wickedly — these things God hath put into our powers; but concerning those things which are wholly in the choice of another, they cannot fall under our deliberation, and therefore neither are they fit for our passions. My fear may make me miserable, but it cannot prevent what another hath in his power and purpose; and prosperities can only be enjoyed by them who fear not at all to lose them; since the amazement and passion concerning the future takes off all the pleasure of the present possession. Therefore, if thou hast lost thy land, do not also lose thy constancy; and if thou must die a little sooner, yet do not die impatiently. For no chance is evil to him that is content; and to a man nothing is miserable unless it be unreasonable. No man can make another man to be his slave unless be hath first enslaved himself to life and death, to pleasure or pain, to hope or fear: command these passions, and you are freer than the Parthian kings.
Instruments or Exercises to procure Contentedness.
Upon the strength of these premises, we may reduce this virtue to practice by its proper instruments first, and then by some more special considerations or arguments of content.
1. When anything happens to our displeasure, let us endeavour to take off its trouble by turning it into spiritual or artificial advantage, and handle it on that side in which it may be useful to the designs of reason; for there is nothing but hath a double handle, or at least we have two hands to apprehend it. When an enemy reproaches us, let us look on him as an impartial relater of our faults, for he will tell thee truer than thy fondest friend will; and thou mayest call them precious balms, though they break thy head, and forgive his anger, while thou makest use of the plainness of his declamation. The ox, when he is weary, treads surest; and if there be nothing else in the disgrace, but that it makes us to walk warily, and tread sure for fear of our enemies, that is better than to be flattered into pride and carelessness. This is the charity of Christian philosophy, which expounds the sense of the Divine Providence fairly, and reconciles us to it by a charitable construction; and we may as well refuse all physic, if we consider it only as unpleasant in the taste; and we may find fault with the rich valleys of Thasus, because they are circled by sharp mountains; but so also we may be in charity with every unpleasant accident, because, though it taste bitter, it is intended for health and medicine.
If, therefore, thou fallest from thy employment in public, take sanctuary in an honest, retirement, being indifferent to thy gain abroad, or thy safety at home. If thou art out of favour with thy prince, secure the favour of the King of kings, and then there is no harm come to thee. And when Zeno Citiensis lost all his goods in a storm, he retired to the studies of philosophy, to his short cloak and a severe life, and gave thanks to fortune for his prosperous mischance. When the north wind blows hard, and it rains sadly none but fools sit down in it and cry; wise people defend themselves against it with a warm garment, or a good fire and a dry roof. When a storm of a sad mischance beats upon our spirits, turn it into some advantage by observing where it can serve another end, either of religion or prudence, of more safety or less envy: it will turn into something that is good, if we list to make it so; at least it may make us weary of the world’s vanity, and take off our confidence from uncertain riches, and make our spirits to dwell in those regions where content dwells essentially. If it does any good to our souls, it hath made more than sufficient recompense for all the temporal affliction. He that threw a stone at a dog, and hit his cruel step-mother, said, that although he intended it otherwise, yet the stone was not quite lost; and if we fail in the first design, if we bring it home to another equally to content us, or more to profit us, then we have put our conditions past the power of chance; and this was called, in the old Greek comedy, “a being revenged on fortune by becoming philosophers,” and turning the chance into reason or religion: for so a wise man shall overrule his stars, and have a greater influence upon his own content than all the constellations and planets of the firmament.
2. Never compare thy condition with those above thee; but, to secure thy content, look upon those thousands with whom thou wouldest net, for any interest, change thy fortune and condition. A soldier must not think himself unprosperous if he be not as successful as the son of Philip, or cannot grasp a fortune as big as the Roman empire. Be content that thou art not lessened as was Pyrrhus, or, if thou beest, that thou art not routed like Crassus; and when that comes to thee, it is a great prosperity that thou art not caged and made a spectacle like Bajazet, or thy eyes were not pulled out like Zedekiah’s, or that thou wert not flayed alive like Valentinian. If thou admirest the greatness of Xerxes, look also on those that digged the mountain Atho, or whose ears and noses were cut off because the Hellespont carried away the bridge. It is a fine thing (thou thinkest) to be carried on men’s shoulders; but give God thanks that thou art not forced to carry a rich fool upon thy shoulders, as those poor men do whom thou beholdest. There are but a few kings in mankind; but many thousands who are very miserable if compared to thee. However, it is a huge folly rather to grieve for the good of others than to rejoice for that good which God hath given us of our own.
And yet there is no wise or good man that would change persons or conditions entirely with any man in the world. It may be, he would have one man’s health added to himself, or the power of a second, or the learning of a third; but still he would receive these into his own person, because he loves that best, and therefore esteems it best, and therefore overvalues all that which he is, before all that which any other man in the world can be. Would any man be Dives to have his wealth, or Judas for his office, or Saul for his kingdom, or Absalom for his bounty, or Achitophel for his policy? It is likely he would wish all these, and yet he would be the same person still. For every man hath desires of his own, and objects just fitted o them, without which he cannot be, unless he were not himself. And let every man that loves himself so well auto love himself before all the world, consider if he have not something for which in the whole he values himself far more than he can value any man else. There is therefore no reason to take the finest feathers from all the winged nation to deck that bird that thinks already she is more valuable than any of the inhabitants of the air. Either change all or none. Cease to love yourself best, or be content with that portion of being and blessing for which you can love yourself so well.
3. It conduces much to our content, if we pass by those things
which happen to our trouble, and consider that which is pleasing and prosperous
- that, by the representation of the butter, the worse may be blotted out; and,
at the worst, you have enough to keep you alive, and to keep up and to improve your
hopes of heaven. If I be overthrown in my suit at law, yet my house is left me still
and my land; or I have a virtuous wife, or hopeful children, or kind friends, or
good hopes. If I have lost one child, it may be I have two or three still left me.
Or else reckon the blessings which already you have received, and therefore be pleased,
in the change and variety of affairs, to receive evil from the hand of God as well
as good Antipater, of Tarsus, used this art to support his sorrows on his death-bed,
and reckoned the good things of his past life, not forgetting to recount it as a
blessing, an argument that God took care of him, that he had a prosperous journey
from Cilicia to Athens. Or else please thyself with hopes of the future;
Now suppose thyself in as great a sadness as ever did load thy spirit, wouldest thou not bear it cheerfully and nobly if thou wert sure that within a certain space some strange excellent fortune would relieve thee, and enrich thee, and recompense thee, so as to overflow all thy hopes and thy desires and capacities? Now then, when a sadness lies heavy upon thee, remember that thou art a Christian designed to the inheritance of Jesus; and what dost thou think concerning thy great fortune, thy lot and portion of eternity? Dost thou think thou shalt be saved or damned? Indeed if thou thinkest thou shalt perish, I cannot blame thee to be sad, till thy heart-strings crack; but then why art thou troubled at the loss of thy money? What should a damned man do with money, which in so great a sadness it is impossible for him to enjoy? Did ever any man upon the rack afflict himself because he had received a cross answer from his mistress? or call for the particulars of a purchase upon the gallows? If thou dost really believe thou shalt be damned, I do not say it will cure the sadness of thy poverty, but it will swallow it up. But if thou believest thou shalt be saved, consider how great is that joy, how infinite is that change, how unspeakable is that glory, how excellent is the recompense, for all the sufferings in the world, if they were all laden upon thy spirit! So that let thy condition be what it will, if thou considerest thy own present condition, and comparest it to thy future possibility, thou canst not feel the present smart of a cross fortune to any great degree, either because thou hast a far bigger sorrow, or a far bigger joy. Here thou art but a stranger, travelling to the country where the glories of a kingdom are prepared for thee; it is, therefore, a huge folly to be much afflicted because thou hast a less convenient inn to lodge in by the way.
But these arts of looking forwards and backwards are more than enough to support the spirit of a Christian: there is no man but hath blessings enough in present possession to outweigh the evils of a great affliction. Tell the joints of thy body, and do not accuse the universal Providence for a lame leg, or the want of a finger, when all the rest is perfect, and you have a noble soul, a particle of divinity, the image of God himself; and by the want of a finger you may the better know how to estimate the remaining parts, and to account for every degree of the surviving blessings. Aristippus, in a great suit at law, lost a farm, and to a gentleman, who in civility pitied and deplored his loss; he answered, “I have two farms left still, and that is more than I have lost, and more than you have by one.” If you miss an office for which you stood candidate, then, besides that you are quit of the cares and the envy of it, you still have all those excellences which rendered you capable to receive it, and they are better than the best office in the commonwealth. If your estate be lessened, you need the less to care who governs the province, whether he be rude or gentle. I am crossed in my journey, and yet I escaped robbers; and I consider, that if I had been set upon by villains, I would have redeemed that evil by this which I now suffer, and have counted it a deliverance; or if I did fall into the hands of thieves, yet they did not steal my land. Or, I am fallen into the hands of publicans and sequestrators, and they have taken all from me: what now? let me look about me. They have left me the sun and moon, fire and water, a loving wife, and many friends to pity me, and some to relieve me, and I can still discourse; and, unless I list, they have not taken away my merry countenance, and my cheerful spirit, and a good conscience; they still have left me the providence of God, and all the promises of the gospel, and my religion, and my hopes of heaven, and my charity to them too; and still I sleep and digest, I eat and drink, I read and meditate; I can walk in my neighbour’s pleasant fields, and see the variety of natural beauties, and delight in all that in which God delights- that is, in virtue and wisdom, in the whole creation, and in God himself. And he that hath so many causes of joy, and so great, is very much in love with sorrow and peevishness, who loses all these pleasures, and chooses to sit down upon his little handful of thorns. Such a person is fit to bear Nero company in his funeral sorrow for the loss of one of Poppea’s hairs, or help to mourn for Lesbia’s sparrow; and because he loves it, he deserves to starve in the midst of plenty, and to want comfort while he is encircled with blessings.
4. Enjoy the present, whatsoever it be, and be not solicitous for the future; for if you take your foot from the present standing, and thrust it forward towards tomorrow’s event, you are in a restless condition: it is like refusing to quench your present thirst by fearing you shall want drink the next day. If it be well to-day, it is madness to make the present miserable by fearing it may be ill to-morrow — when your belly is full of to-day’s dinner, to fear you shall want the next day’s supper; for it may be you shall not, and then to what purpose was this day’s affliction? But if to-morrow you shall want, your sorrow will come time enough, though you do not hasten it: let your trouble tarry till its own day comes. But if it chance to be ill to-day, do not increase it by the care of to-morrow. He, therefore, that enjoys the present if it be good, enjoys as much as is possible; and if only that day’s trouble leans upon him, it is singular and finite. ‘Sufficient to the day (said Christ) is the evil thereof’: sufficient but not intolerable. But if we look abroad, and bring into one day’s thoughts the evil of many, certain and uncertain, what will be, and what will never be, our load will be as intolerable as it is unreasonable. To reprove this instrument of discontent, the ancients feigned that in hell stood a man twisting a rope of hay; and still he twisted on, suffering an ass to eat up all that was finished — so miserable is he who thrusts his passions forwards towards future events, and suffers all that he may enjoy to be lost and devoured by folly and inconsideration, thinking nothing fits to be enjoyed but that which is not or cannot be had. Just so, many young persons are loath to die, and therefore desire to live to old age, and when they are come thither, are troubled that they are come to that state of life, to which before they were come they were hugely afraid they should never come.
5. Let us prepare our minds against changes, always expecting them, that we be not surprised when they come; for nothing is so great an enemy to tranquillity and a contented spirit as the amazement and confusions of unreadiness and inconsideration; and when our fortunes are violently changed our spirits are unchanged, if they always stood in the suburbs and expectations of sorrows. ‘O death, how bitter art thou to a man that is at rest in his possessions!’ And to the rich man who had promised to himself ease and fulness for many years, it was a sad arrest that his soul was surprised the first night; but the apostles, who every day knocked at the gate of death, and looked upon it continually, went to their martyrdom in peace and evenness.
6. Let us often frame to ourselves, and represent to our considerations, the images of those blessings we have, just as we usually understand them when we want them. Consider how desirable health is to a sick man, or liberty to a prisoner; and if but a fit of the toothache seizes us with violence, all those troubles which in our health afflicted us disband instantly, and seem inconsiderable. He that in his health is troubled that he is in debt, and spends sleepless nights, and refuses meat because of his infelicity, let him fall into a fit of the stone or a high fever, he despises the arrest of all his first troubles, and is as a man unconcerned. Remember then that God hath given thee a blessing, the want of which is infinitely more trouble than thy present debt, or poverty, or loss; and therefore is now more to be valued in the possession, and ought to outweigh thy trouble. The very privative blessings, the blessings of immunity, safeguard, liberty, and integrity, which we commonly enjoy, deserve the thanksgiving of a whole life. If God should send a cancer upon thy face, or a wolf into thy side, if he should spread a crust of leprosy upon thy skin, what wouldest thou give to be but as now thou art? Wouldest thou not, on that condition, be as poor as I am, or as the meanest of thy brethren? Would you not choose your present loss or affliction as a thing extremely eligible, and a redemption to thee, if thou mightest exchange the other for this? Thou art quit from a thousand calamities, every one of which, if it were upon thee, would make thee insensible of thy present sorrow: and therefore let thy joy (which should be as great for thy freedom from them, as is thy sadness when thou feelest any of them) do the same cure upon thy discontent. For if we be not extremely foolish or vain, thankless or senseless, a great joy is more apt to cure sorrow and discontent than a great trouble is. I have known an affectionate wife, when she hath been in fear of parting with her beloved husband, heartily desire of God his life or society upon any conditions that were not sinful; and choose to beg with him rather than to feast without him; and the same person hath, upon that consideration, borne poverty nobly, when God hath heard her prayer in the other matter. What wise man in the world is there who does not prefer a small fortune with peace before a great one with contention and war and violence? And then he is no longer wise if he alters his opinion when he hath his wish.
7. If you will secure a contented spirit, you must measure your
desires by your fortune and condition, not your fortunes by your desire — that is,
be governed by your needs, not by your fancy; by nature, not by evil customs and
ambitious principles.
8. In all troubles and sadder accidents, let us take sanctuary in religion, and by innocence cast out anchors for our souls to keep them from shipwreck, though they be not kept from storm. For what philosophy shall comfort a villain that is haled to the rack for murdering his prince, or that is broken upon the wheel for sacrilege? His cup is full of pure and unmingled sorrow: his body is rent with torment, his name with ignominy, his soul with shame and sorrow, which are to last eternally. But when a man suffers in a good cause, or is afflicted, and yet walks not perversely with his God, then “Anytus and Melitus may kill me, but they cannot hurt me;” then St. Paul’s character is engraved in the forehead of our fortune; ‘We are troubled on every side, but not distressed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed. And who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good?’ For indeed everything in the world is indifferent but sin, and all the scorchings of the sun are very tolerable in respect of the burnings of a fever or a calenture. The greatest evils are from within us, and from ourselves also we must look for our greatest good; for God is the fountain of it, but reaches it to us by our own hands; and when all things look sadly round about us, then only we shall find how excellent a fortune it is to have God to our friend; and of all friendships, that only is created to support us in our needs; for it is sin that turns an ague into a fever, and a fever to the plague, fear into despair, anger into rage, and loss into madness, and sorrow to amazement and confusion. But if either we were innocent, or else by the sadness are made penitent, we are put to school, or into the theatre, either to learn how, or else actually to combat for a crown; the accident may serve an end of mercy, but is not a messenger of wrath.
Let us not, therefore, be governed by external, and present, and
seeming things; not let us make the same judgment of things that common and weak
understandings do; nor make other men, and they not the wisest, to be judges of
our felicity, so that we be happy or miserable as they please to think us: but let
reason, and experience, and religion, and hope, relying upon the divine promises,
be the measure of our judgment. No wise man did ever describe felicity without virtue,
Means to obtain Content by way of considerations.
To these exercises and spiritual instruments if we add the following considerations concerning the nature and circumstance of human chance, we may better secure our peace. For as to children, who are afraid of vain images, we use to persuade confidence by making them to handle and look nearer such things that when, in such a familiarity, they perceive them innocent they may overcome their fears: so must timorous, fantastical, sad, and discontented persons be treated; they must be made to consider and on all sides to look upon the accident, and to take all its dimensions, and consider its consequences, and to behold the purpose of God, and the common mistakes of men, and their evil sentences they usually pass upon them. For then we shall perceive, that, like colts or unmanaged horses, we start at dead bones and lifeless blocks, things that are inactive as they are innocent. But if we secure our hopes and our fears, and make them moderate and within government, we may the sooner overcome the evil of the accident; for nothing that we feel is so bad as what we fear.
1. Consider that the universal providence of God hath so ordered
it, that the good things of nature and fortune are divided, that we may know how
to bear our own and relieve each other’s wants and imperfections. It is not for
a man, but for a God to have all excellencies and all felicities.
This consideration is to be enlarged by adding to it, that there are some instances of fortune and a fair condition that cannot stand with some others; but if you desire this, you must lose that, and unless you be content with one, you must lose the comfort of both. If you covet learning, you must have leisure and a retired life; if to be a politician, you must go abroad and get experience, and do all businesses, and keep all company, and have no leisure at all; if you will be rich, you must be frugal; if you will be popular, you must be bountiful; if a philosopher, you must despise riches. The Greek that designed to make the most exquisite picture that could be imagined, fancied the eye of Chioue, and the hair of Paegnium, and Tarsia’s lip, Philenitum’s chin, and the forehead of Delphia, and set all these upon Milphidippa’s neck, and thought that he should outdo both art and nature. But when he came to view the proportions, he found, that what was excellent in Tarsia did not agree with the other excellency of Philenium; and although singly they were rare pieces, yet in the whole they made a most ugly face. The dispersed excellencies and blessings of many men, if given to one, would not make a handsome, but a monstrous fortune. Use, therefore, that faculty which nature hath given thee, and thy education hath made actual, and thy calling hath made a duty. But if thou desirest to be a saint, refuse not his persecution; if thou wouldest be famous as Epaminondas or Fabricius, accept also of their poverty, for that added lustre to their persons, and envy to their fortune, and their virtue without it could not have been so excellent. Let Euphorion sleep quietly with his old rich wife, and let medius drink on with Alexander, and remember thou canst not have the riches of the first, unless you have the old wife too; nor the favour which the second had with his prince, unless you buy it at his price, that is, lay thy sobriety down at first, and thy health a little after, and then their condition, though it look splendidly, yet, when you handle it on all sides, it will prick your fingers.
2. Consider how many excellent personages in all ages have suffered as great or greater calamities than this which now tempts thee to impatience. Agis was the most noble of the Greeks, and yet his wife bore a child by Alcibiades; and Philip was prince of Ituraea, and yet his wife ran away with his brother Herod into Galilee; and certainly, in a great fortune, that was a great calamity. But these are but single instances. Almost all the ages of the world have noted that their most eminent scholars were most eminently poor, some by choice, but most by chance, and an inevitable decree of Providence; and in the whole sex of women God hath decreed the sharpest pains of childbirth, to show that there is no state exempt from sorrow, and et that the weakest persons have strength more than enough to bear the greatest evil; and the greatest queens, and the mothers of saints and apostles, have no charter of exemption from this sad sentence. But the Lord of men and angels was also the King of sufferings; and if thy coarse robe trouble thee, remember the swaddling-clothes of Jesus; if thy bed be uneasy, yet it is not worse than his manger; and it is no sadness to have a thin table if thou callest to mind that the King of heaven and earth was fed with a little breast-milk; and yet besides this, he suffered all the sorrows which we deserved. We therefore have great reason to sit down upon our own hearths, and warm ourselves at our own fires, and feed upon content at home; for it were a strange pride to expect to be more gently treated by the Divine Providence than the best and wisest men, than apostles and saints, nay, the Son of the eternal God, the heir of both the worlds.
This consideration may be enlarged by surveying all the states
and families of the world: and he that at once saw Egina and Megara, Pyraus and
Corinth, lie gasping in their ruins, and almost buried in their own heaps, had reason
to blame Cicero for mourning impatiently the death of one woman. In the most beauteous
and splendid fortune there are many cares and proper interruptions and allays: in
the fortune of a prince there is not the coarse robe of beggary, but there are infinite
cares; and the judge sits upon the tribunal with great ceremony and ostentation
of fortune,
3. There are many accidents which are esteemed great calamities, and yet we have reason enough to bear them well and unconcernedly; for they neither touch our bodies nor our soul — or health and our virtue remain entire, our life and our reputation. It may be I am slighted, or I have received ill language; but my head aches not for it, neither hath it broken my thigh, nor taken away my virtue, unless I lose my charity or my patience. Inquire, therefore, what you are the worse, either in your soul or in your body, for what hath happened; for upon this very stock many evils will disappear, since the body and the soul make up the whole man. And when the daughter of Stilpo proved a wanton, he said it was none of his sin, and therefore there was no reason it should be his misery. And if an enemy hath taken all that from a prince whereby he was a king, he may refresh himself by considering all that is left him whereby he is a man.
4. Consider that sad accidents and a state of affliction is a school of virtue; it reduces our spirits to soberness, and our counsels to moderation; it corrects levity, and interrupts the confidence of sinning. ‘It is good for me (said David) that I have been afflicted, for thereby I have learned thy law.’ And ‘I know (O Lord) that thou of very faithfulness hast caused me to be troubled.’ For God, who in mercy and wisdom governs the world, would never have suffered so many sadnesses, and have sent them especially to the most virtuous and the wisest men, but that he intends they should be the seminary of comfort, the nursery of virtue, the exercise of wisdom, the trial of patience, the venturing for a crown, and the gate of glory.
5. Consider that afflictions are oftentimes the occasions of great temporal advantages; and we must not look upon them as they sit down heavily upon us, but as they serve some of God’s ends, and the purposes of universal Providence. And when a prince fights justly, and yet unprosperously, if he could see all those reasons for which God hath so ordered it, he would think it the most reasonable thing in the world, and that it would be very ill to have it otherwise. If a man could have opened one of the pages of the Divine counsel, and could have seen the event of Joseph’s being sold to the merchants of Amalek, he might, with much reason, have dried up the young man’s tears: and when God’s purposes are opened in the events of things, as it was in the case of Joseph, when he sustained his father’s family and became lord of Egypt, then we see what ill judgment we made of things, and that we were passionate as children, and transported with sense and mistaken interest. The case of Themistocles was almost like that of Joseph, for being banished into Egypt, he also grew in favour with the king, and told his wife “he had been undone, unless he had been undone”. For God esteems it one of his glories, that he brings good out of evil; and therefore it were but reason we should trust God to govern his own world as he pleases; and that we should patiently wait till the change cometh or the reason be discovered.
And this consideration is also of great use to them who envy the prosperity of the wicked, and the success of persecutors, and the baits of fishes, and the bread of dogs. God fails not to sow blessings in the long furrows which the ploughers plough upon the back of the church; and this success which troubles us will be a great glory to God, and a great benefit to his saints and servants, and a great ruin to the persecutors, who shall have but the fortune of Theramenes, one of the thirty tyrants of Athens, who escaped when his house fell upon him, and was shortly after put to death with torments by his colleagues in the country.
To which also may be added, that the great evils which happen to the best and wisest men are one of the great arguments upon the strength of which we can expect felicity to our souls and the joys of tolerable and eligible, when with so great advantages they minister to the faith and hope of a Christian. But if we consider what unspeakable tortures are provided for the wicked to all eternity, we should not be troubled to see them prosperous here, but rather wonder that their portion in this life is not bigger, and that ever they should be sick, or corssed, or affronted, or troubled with the contradiction and disease of their own vices, since, if they were fortunate beyond their own ambition, it could not make them recompense for one hour’s torment in hell, which yet they shall have for their eternal portion.
After all these considerations deriving from sense and experience, grace and reason, there are two remedies still remaining, and they are necessity and time.
6. For it is but reasonable to bear that accident patiently which God sends, since impatience does but entangle us, like the fluttering of a bird in a net, but cannot at all ease our trouble, or prevent the accident: it must be run through, and therefore it were better we compose ourselves to a patient than to a troubled and miserable suffering.
7. But, however, if you will not otherwise be cured, time at last will do it alone; and then consider, do you mean to mourn always, or but for a time? If always, you are miserable and foolish. If for a time, then why will you not apply those reasons to your grief at first with which you will cure it at last? or if you will not cure it with reason, see how little of a man there is in you, that you suffer time to do more with you than reason or religion! You suffer yourself to be cured, just as a beast or a tree is; let it alone, and the thing will heal itself: but this is neither honourable to thy person, nor to reputation to thy religion. However, be content to bear thy calamity, because thou art sure, in a little time, it will sit down gentle and easy, for to a moral man no evil is immortal. And here let the worst thing happen that can, it will end in death, and we commonly think that to be near enough.
8. Lastly, of those things which are reckoned amongst evils, some are better than their contraries; and to a good man the very worst is tolerable.
Poverty or a low fortune.
1. Poverty is better than riches, and a mean fortune to
be chosen before a great and splendid one. It is indeed despised, and makes men
contemptible; it exposes a man to the insolence of evil persons, and leaves a man
to the insolence of evil persons, and leaves a man defenceless; it is always suspected;
its stories are accounted lies, and all its counsels follies; it puts a man from
all employment; it makes a man's discourses tedious, and his society troublesome.
This is the worst of it; and yet all this, and far worse than this, the apostles
suffered for being Christians; and Christianity itself may be esteemed an affliction
as well as poverty, if this be all that can be said against it; for the apostles
and the most eminent Christians were really poor, and were used contemptuously;
and yet, that poverty is despised may be an argument to commend it, if it be despised
by none but persons vicious and ignorant.
For what is it that you admire in the fortune of a great king?
Is it that he always goes in a great company? You may thrust yourself into the same
crowd, or go often to church, and then you have as great a company as he hath; and
that may upon as good grounds please you as him, that is, justly neither: for so
impertinent and useless pomp, and the other circumstances of his distance, are not
made for him, but for his subjects, that they may learn to separate him from common
usages, and be taught to be governed. Ονδεις οε πενμς
τραγψοιαν σνμπλμσοι ει ργ
χορευτις. Bis sex dierum mensura consero ego agros, Berecynthia arva. Animusque menus sursum usque evectus ad polum Decidit humi, et me sic videtur alloqui; Disea haud nimis magnifacere mortalia. Tantal. in Traged.
And therefore it was not without mystery observed among the ancients,
that they who made gods of gold and silver, of hope and fear, peace and fortune,
garlic and onions, beasts and serpents, and a quartan ague, yet never deified money;
meaning that however wealth was admired by common or abused understandings, yet
from riches, that is from that proportion of good things which is beyond the necessities
of nature, no moment could be added to a man’s real content or happiness. Corn from
Sardinia, herds from Calabrian cattle, meadows through which pleasant Liris glides,
silks from Tyrus, and golden chalices to drown my health in, are nothing but instruments
of vanity or sin; and suppose a disease in the soul of him that longs for them or
admires them. And this I have otherwhere represented more largely; to which I here
add, that riches have very great dangers to their souls not only to them who covet
them, but to all that have them. For if a great personage undertakes an action passionately
and upon great interest, let him manage it indiscreetly, let the whole design be
unjust, let it be acted with all the malice and impotency in the world, he shall
have enough to flatter him, but not enough to reprove him. He had need be a bold
man that shall tell his patron he is going to hell; and that prince had need be
a good man that shall suffer such a monitor; and though it be a strange kind of
civility, and an evil dutifulness in friends and relatives to suffer him to perish
without reproof or medicine, rather than to seem unmannerly to a great sinner, yet
it is none of their least infelicities that their wealth and greatness shall put
them into sin, and yet put them past reproof. I need not instance in the habitual
intemperance of rich tables, nor the evil accidents and effects of fulness, pride
and lust, wantonness and softness of disposition, huge talking and an imperious
spirit, despite of religion, and contempt of poor persons; at the best, it is a
great temptation for a man to have in his power whatsoever he can have in his sensual
desires;
Now besides what hath been already noted in the state of poverty, there is nothing to be accounted for but the fear of wanting necessaries; of which, if a man could be secured that he might live free from care, all the other parts of it might be reckoned amongst the advantages of wise and sober persons, rather than objections against that state of fortune.
But concerning this, I consider that there must needs be great
security to all Christians, since Christ not only made express promises that we
should have sufficient for this life, but took great pains and used many arguments
to create confidence in us; and such they were, which by their own strength were
sufficient, though you abate the authority of the speaker. The Son of God told us,
his Father takes care of us: he that knew all his Father’s counsels, and his whole
kindness towards mankind, told us so. How great is that truth, how certain, how
necessary, which Christ himself proved by arguments! The excellent words and most
comfortable sentences which are our bills of exchange, upon the credit of which
we lay our cares down and receive provisions for our need, are these, ‘Take no thought
for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body,
what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?
Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather
into barns, yet your heavenly Father feedeth them! Are ye not much better than they?
Which of you, by taking thought, can add one cubit to his stature? and why take
ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow — they toil
not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his
glory was not arrayed like one of these. Therefore, if God so clothe the grass of
the field which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much
more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall
we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothes? (for after all
these things do the gentiles seek); for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have
need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,
and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the
morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself: sufficient to
the day is the evil thereof.” The same discourse is repeated by St. Luke;
Does not God provide for all the birds and beasts and fishes? Do not the sparrows fly from their bush, and every morning find meat where they laid it not? Do not the young ravens call to God, and he feeds them? And were it reasonable that the sons of the family should fear the father would give meat to the chickens and the servants, his sheep and his dogs, but give none to them? He were a very ill father that should do so; or he were a very foolish son that should think so of a good father. But besides the reasonableness of this faith and this hope, we have infinite experience of it. How innocent, how careless, how secure, is infancy! and yet how certainly provided for! We have lived at God’s charges all the days of our life, and have (as the Italian proverb says) set down to meat at the sound of a bell; and hitherto he hath not failed us: we have no reason to suspect him for the future; we do not use to serve men so; and less time of trial creates great confidences in us towards them, who for twenty years together never broke their word with us: and God hath so ordered it, that a man shall have had the experience of many years’ provision before he shall understand how to doubt; that he may be provided for an answer against the temptation shall come, and the mercies felt in his childhood may make him fearless when he is a man. Add to this, that God hath given us his Holy Spirit; he hath promised heaven to us; he hath given us his Son; and we are taught from Scripture to make this inference from hence, ‘How should not he with him give us all things else?’
The Charge of many Children.
We have a title to be provided for, as we are God’s creatures, another title as we are his children, another because God hath promised — and every of our children hath the same title; and therefore it is a huge folly and infidelity to be troubled and full of care because we have many children. Every child we have to feed is a new revenue, a new title to God’s care and providence; so that many children are a great wealth; and if it be said they are chargeable, it is no more than all wealth and great revenues are. For what difference is it? Titus keeps ten ploughs, Cornelia hath ten children: he hath land enough to employ and feed all his hinds; she, blessings and promises, and the provisions and the truth of God to maintain all her children. His hinds and horses eat up all his corn, and her children are sufficiently maintained with her little. They bring in and eat up, and she indeed eats up, but they also bring in from the store-houses of heaven, and the granaries of God; and my children are not so much mine as they are God’s — he feeds them in the womb, by ways secret and insensible, and would not work a perpetual miracle to bring them forth, and then to starve them.
Violent Necessities.
But some men are highly tempted, and are brought to a strait, that without a miracle, they cannot be relieved — what shall they do? It may be their pride or vanity hath brought the necessity upon them, and it is not a need of God’s making: and if it be not, they must cure it themselves, by lessening their desires and moderating their appetites: and yet if it be innocent, though unnecessary, God does usually relieve such necessities; and he does not only upon our prayers grant us more than he promised of temporal things, but also he gives many times more than we ask. This is no object for our faith, but ground enough for a temporal and prudent hope; and if we fail in the particular, God will turn it to a bigger mercy if we submit to his dispensation and adore him in the denial. But if it be a matter of necessity, let not any man, by way of impatience, cry out that God will not work a miracle; for God, by miracle, did give meat and drink to his people in the wilderness, of which he made no particular promise in any covenant; and if all natural means fail, it is certain that God will rather work a miracle than break his word; he can do that — he cannot do this. Only we must remember that our portion of temporal things is but food and raiment. God hath not promised us coaches and horses, rich houses and jewels, Tyrian silks and Persian carpets; neither hath he promised to minister to our needs in such circumstances as we shall appoint, but such as himself shall choose. God will enable thee either to pay thy debt (if thou beggest it of him), or else he will pay it for thee; that is, take thy desire as a discharge of thy duty, and pay it to thy creditor in blessings, or in some secret of his providence. It may be he hath laid up the corn that shall feed thee in the granary of thy brother, or will clothe thee with his wool. He enabled St. Peter to pay his gabel by the ministry of a fish, and Elias to be waited on by a crow, who was both his minister and his steward for provisions; and his holy Son rode in triumph upon an ass that grazed in another man’s pastures. And if God gives to him the domination, and reserves the use to thee, thou hast the better half of the two; but the charitable man serves God and serves thy need, and both join to provide for thee, and God blesses both. But if he takes away the flesh-pots from thee, he can also alter the appetite, and he hath given thee power and commandment to restrain it; and if he lessens the revenue, he will also shrink the necessity; or if he gives but a very little, he will make it go a great way; or if he sends thee but a course diet, he will bless it and make it healthful, and can cure all the anguish of thy poverty by giving thee patience and the grace of contentedness. For the grace of God feeds and supports the spirit in the want of provisions; and if a thin table be apt to enfeeble the spirits of one used to feed better, yet the cheerfulness of a spirit that is blessed will make a thin table become a delicacy, if the man was as well taught as he was fed, and learned his duty when he received the blessing. Poverty, therefore, is in some senses eligible, and to be preferred before riches; but in all senses it is very tolerable.
Death of Children, or nearest Relatives and Friends.
There are some persons, who have been noted excellent in their lives and passions, rarely innocent, and yet hugely penitent for indiscretions and harmless infirmities; such as was Paulina, one of the ghostly children of St. Jerome; and yet, when any of her children died, she was arrested with a sorrow so great as brought her to the margin of her grave. And the more tender our spirits are made by religion, the more easy we are to let in grief, if the cause be innocent, and be but in any sense twisted with piety and due affections; to cure which we may consider that all the world must die, and therefore to be impatient at the death of a person concerning whom it was certain and known that he must die, is to mourn because thy friend or child was not born an angel; and when thou hast awhile made thyself miserable by an importunate and useless grief, it may be thou shalt die thyself, and leave others to their choice whether they will mourn for thee or no; but by that time it will appear how impertinent that grief was which served no end of life, and ended in thy own funeral. But what great matter is it if sparks fly upward, or a stone falls into a pit; if that which was combustible be burned, or that which was liquid be melted, or that which is mortal to die? It is no more than a man does every day; for every night death hath gotten possession of that day, and we shall never live that day over again; and when the last day is come, there are no more days left for us to die. And what is sleeping and waking, but living and dying? what is spring and autumn, youth and old age, morning and evening, but real images of life and death, and really the same to many considerable effects and changes?
Untimely Death.
But it is not mere dying that is pretended by some as the
cause of their impatient mourning: but that the child died young, before he knew
good and evil, his right hand from his left, and so lost all his portion of this
world, and they know not of what excellency his portion in the next shall be. If
he died young, he lost but little, for he understood but little, and had not capacities
of great pleasures or great cares; but yet he died innocent and before the sweetness
of his soul was deflowered and ravished from him by the flames and follies of a
forward age; he went out from the dining-room before he had fallen into error by
the intemperance of his meat, or the deluge of drink; and he hath obtained this
favor of God, that his soul hath suffered a less imprisonment, and her load was
sooner taken off, that he might, with lesser delays, go and converse with immortal
spirits — and the babe is taken into paradise before he knows good and evil (for
that knowledge threw our great father out, and this ignorance returns the child
thither). But (as concerning thy own particular) remove thy thoughts back to those
days in which thy child was not born, and you are now but as then you was, and there
is no difference, but that you had a son born; and if you reckon that for evil,
you are unthankful for the blessing; if it be good, it is better that you had the
blessing for awhile, than not at all; and yet, if he had never been born, this sorrow
had not been at all.
Death unseasonable.
But others can well bear the death of infants; but when
they have spent some years of childhood or youth, and are entered into arts and
society, when they are hopeful and provided for, when the parents are to reap the
comfort of all their fears and cares, then it breaks the spirit to lose them. This
is true in many; but this is not love to the dead, but to themselves; for they miss
what they had flattered themselves into by hope and opinion; and if it were kindness
to the dead, they may consider, that since we hope he is gone to God and to rest,
it is an ill expression of our love to them that we weep for their good fortune.
For that life is not best which is longest: and when they are descended into the
grave it shall not be inquired how long they have lived, but how well: and yet this
shortening of their days is an evil wholly depending upon opinions.
Sudden Death, or Violent.
Others are yet troubled at the manner of their child’s or friends death. He was drowned, or lost his head, or died of the plague; and this is a new spring of sorrow. But no man can give a sensible account how it shall be worse for a child to die with drowning in half an-hour, than to endure a fever of one-and-twenty days. And if my friend lost his head, so he did not lose his constancy and his religion, he died with huge advantage.
Being Childless.
But by this means I am left without an heir. Well, suppose that: thou hast no heir, and I have no inheritance; and there are many kings and emperors that have died childless, many royal lines are extinguished; and Augustus Caesar was forced to adopt his wife’s son to inherit all the Roman greatness. And there are many wise persons that never married; and we read nowhere that any of the children of the apostles did survive their fathers; and all that inherit anything of Christ’s kingdom come to it by adoption, not by natural inheritance: and to die without a natural heir is no intolerable evil, since it was sanctified in the person of Jesus, who died a virgin.
Evil or unfortunate Children.
And by this means we are exposed to the greater sorrow of having a fool, a swine, or a goat, to rule after us in our families; and yet even this condition admits of comfort. For all the wild Americans are supposed to be the sons of Dodoniam; and the sons of Jacob are now the most scattered and despised people in the whole world. The son of Solomon was but a silly weak man; and the son of Hezakiah was wicked: and all the fools and barbarous people, all the thieves and pirates, all the slaves and miserable men and women of the world, are the sons and daughters of Noah; and we must not look to be exempted from that portion of sorrow which God gave to Noah, and Adam, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob: I pray God send us into the lot of Abraham. But if anything happens worse to us, it is enough for us that we bear it evenly.
Our own Death.
And how, if you were to die yourself? You know you must. Only be ready for it by the preparations of a good life; and then it is the greatest good that ever happened to thee; else there is nothing that can comfort you. But if you have served God in a holy life, send away the women and the weepers; tell them it is as much intemperance to weep too much as to laugh too much; and when thou art alone, or with fitting company, die as thou shouldest, but do not die impatiently, and like a fox catched in a trap. For if you fear death, you shall never the more avoid it, but you make it miserable. Fannius, that killed himself for fear of death, died as certainly as Portia, that ate burning coals, or Cato, that cut his own throat. To die is necessary and natural, and it may be honourable; but to die poorly, and basely, and sinfully, that alone is it that can make a man unfortunate. No man can be a slave, but he that fears pain, or fears to die. To such a man nothing but chance and peaceable times can secure his duty, and he depends upon things without for his felicity; and so is well but during the pleasure of his enemy, or a thief, or a tyrant or it may be of a dog or a wild bull.
PRAYERS FOR THE SEVERAL GRACES AND PARTS OF CHRISTIAN SOBRIETY.
A Prayer against Sensuality.
O eternal Father, thou that sittest in heaven invested with essential glories and divine perfections, fill my soul with so deep a sense of the excellences of spiritual and heavenly things, that, my affections being weaned from the pleasures of the world and the false allurements of sin, I may, with great severity, and the prudence of a holy discipline and strict desires, with clear resolutions and a free spirit, have my conversations in heaven and heavenly employments; that being, in affections as in my condition, a pilgrim and a stranger here, I may covet after and labour for an abiding city, and at last may enter into and for ever dwell in the celestial Jerusalem, which is the mother of us all, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
For Temperance.
O Almighty God and gracious Father of men and angels, who openest thy hand and fillest all things with plenty, and hast provided for thy servant sufficient to satisfy all my needs; teach me to use thy creatures soberly and temperately, that I may not, with loads of meat or drink, make the temptations of my enemy to prevail upon me, or my spirit unapt for the performance of my duty, or my body healthless, or my affections sensual and unholy. O my God, never suffer that the blessings which thou givest me may either minister to sin or sickness, but to health and holiness and thanksgiving; that in the strength of thy provisions I may cheerfully and actively and diligently serve thee; that I may worthily feast at thy table here, and be accounted worthy, through thy grace, to be admitted to thy table hereafter, at the eternal supper of the Lamb, to sing an hallelujah to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, for ever and ever. Amen.
For Chastity: to be said especially by Unmarried Persons.
Almighty God, our most holy and eternal Father, who art of pure eyes, and canst behold no uncleanness; let thy gracious and holy Spirit descend upon thy servant, and reprove the spirit of fornication and uncleanness, and cast him out; that my body may be a holy temple, and my soul a sanctuary to entertain the Prince of purities, the holy and eternal Spirit of God. O, let no impure thoughts pollute that tongue which God hath commanded to be an organ of his praises; no unholy and unchaste action rend the veil of that temple where the holy Jesus hath been pleased to enter, and hath chosen for his habitation: but seal up all my senses from all vain objects, and let them be entirely possessed with religion, and fortified with prudence, watchfulness, and mortification; that I, possessing my vessel in holiness, may lay it down with a holy hope, and receive it again in a joyful resurrection, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
A Prayer for the Love of God, to be said by Virgins, and Widows, professed or resolved so to live: and may be used by any one.
Oh holy and purest Jesus, who wert pleased to espouse every holy soul, and join it to thee with a holy union and mysterious instruments of religious society and communications; O, fill my soul with religion, and desires holy as the thoughts of cherubim, passionate beyond the love of women; that I may love thee as much as ever any creature loved thee, even with all my soul and all my faculties, and all the degrees of every faculty; let me know no loves but those of duty and charity, obedience and devotion; that I may for ever run after thee, who art the King of virgins, and with whom whole kingdoms are in love, and for whose sake queens have died, and at whose feet kings with joy have laid their crowns and sceptres. My soul is thing, O dearest Jesus; thou art my Lord, and hast bound up my eyes and heart from all stranger affections; give me for my dowry purity and humility, modesty and devotion, charity and patience, and at last bring me into the bride-chamber to partake of the felicities, and to lie in the bosom of the Bridegroom to eternal ages, O holy and sweetest Saviour Jesus. Amen.
A Prayer to be said by Married Persons in behalf of themselves and each other.
O eternal and gracious Father, who hast consecrated the holy estate of marriage to become mysterious, and to represent the union of Christ and his church, let thy Holy Spirit so guide me in the doing the duties of this state, that it may not become a sin unto me; nor that liberty, which thou hast hallowed by the holy Jesus, become an occasion of licentiousness by my own weakness and sensuality; and do thou forgive all those irregularities and too sensual applications which may have, in any degree, discomposed my spirit and the severity of a Christian. Let me, in all accidents and circumstances, be severe in my duty towards thee, affectionate and dear to my wife, (or husband,) a guide and good example to my family, and in all quietness, sobriety, prudence, and peace, a follower of those holy pairs who have served thee with godliness and a good testimony. And the blessings of the eternal God, blessings of the right hand and of the left, be upon the body and soul of thy servant, my wife, (or husband,) and abide upon her (or him) till the end of a holy and happy life; and grant that both of us may live together for ever in the embraces of the holy and eternal Jesus, our Lord and Saviour. Amen.
A Prayer for the Grace of Humility.
O holy and most gracious Master and Saviour Jesus, who by thy example and by thy precept, by the practice of a whole life and frequent discourses, didst command us to be meek and humble, in imitation of thy incomparable sweetness and great humility, be pleased to give me the grace, as thou hast given me the commandment: enable me to do whatsoever thou commandest, and command whatsoever thou pleasest. O mortify in me all proud thoughts and vain opinions of myself; let me return to thee the acknowledgment and the fruits of all those good things thou hast given me, that, by confessing I am wholly in debt to thee for them, I may not boast myself for what I have received, and for what I am highly accountable; and for what is my own teach me to be ashamed and humbled, it being nothing but sin and misery, weakness and uncleanness. Let me go before my brethren in nothing but in striving to do them honour and thee glory, never to seek my own praise, never to delight in it when it is offered: that, despising myself, I may be accepted by thee in the honours with which thou shalt crown thy humble and despised servants, for Jesus’ sake, in the kingdom of eternal glory. Amen.
Acts of Humility and Modesty by way of Prayer and Meditation.
I.
Lord, I know that my spirit is light and thorny, my body is brutish and exposed to sickness; I am constant to folly, and inconstant in holy purposes. My labours are vain and fruitless; my fortune full of change and trouble, seldom pleasing, never perfect; my wisdom is folly; being ignorant even of the parts and passions of my own body; and what am I, O Lord, before thee, but a miserable person, hugely in debt, not able to pay?
II.
Lord, I am nothing, and I have nothing of myself: I am less than the least of all thy mercies.
III.
What was I before birth? First, nothing, and then uncleanness. What during my childhood? Weakness and folly. What in my youth? Folly still, and passion, lust, and wildness. What in my whole life? A great sinner, a deceived, and an abused person. Lord, pity me; for it is thy goodness that I am kept form confusion and amazement, when I consider the misery and shame of my person, and the defilements of my nature.
IV.
Lord, what am I? And, Lord, what art thou? “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou so regardest him?”
V.
How can man be justified with God? Or how can he be clean that is born of a woman? Behold, even to the moon, and it shineth not; yea, the stars are not pure in his sight. How much less man that is a worm, and the son of man which is a worm! Job, xxxv.4, etc.
A Prayer for a contented Spirit, and the Grace of Moderation and Patience.
O Almighty God, Father and Lord of all the creatures, who hast disposed all things and all chances so as may best glorify thy wisdom, and serve the ends of thy justice, and magnify thy mercy by secret and indiscernible ways, bringing good out of evil; I most humbly beseech thee to give me wisdom from above, that I may adore thee and admire thy ways and footsteps, which are in the great deep and not to be searched out; teach me to submit to thy providence in all things, to be content in all changes of person and conditions, to be temperate in prosperity, and to read my duty in the lines of thy mercy; and in adversity to be meek, patient, and resigned; and to look through the cloud, that I may wait for the consolation of the Lord and the day of redemption; in the meantime doing my duty with an unwearied diligence, and an undisturbed resolution, having no fondness for my hopes in heaven and the rewards of holy living, and being strengthened with the spirit of the inner man, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
CHAPTER III.
OF CHRISTIAN JUSTICE.
Justice is, by the Christian religion, enjoined in all its parts by these two propositions in Scripture: “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, even so do them.” This is the measure of commutative justice, or of that justice which supposes exchange of things profitable for things profitable: that as I supply your need you may supply mine; as I do a benefit to you, I may receive one by you. And because every man may be injured by another, therefore his security shall depend upon mine: if he will not let me be safe, he shall not be safe himself; (only the manner of his being punished is, upon great reason, both by God and all the world, taken from particulars, and committed to a public disinterested person, who will do justice, without passion, both to him and to me;) if he refuses to do me advantage, he shall receive none when his needs require it. And thus God gave necessities to man, that all men might need; and several abilities to several persons, that each man might help to supply the public needs, and, by joining to fill up all wants, they may be knit together by justice, as the parts of the world are by nature. And he hath made all obnoxious to injuries, and made every little thing strong enough to do us hurt by some instrument or other; and hath given us all a sufficient stock of self-love and desire of self-preservation, to be as the chain to tie together all the parts of society, and to restrain us from doing violence lest we be violently dealt withal ourselves.
The other part of justice is commonly called distributive, and
is commanded in this rule, “Render to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is
due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour. Owe no man
any thing, but to love one another.”
SECTION I.
Of Obedience to our Superiors.
Our superiors are set over us in affairs of the world,
or the affairs of the soul and things pertaining to religion, and are called accordingly
ecclesiastical or civil. Towards whom our duty is thus generally described in the
New Testament. For temporal or civil governors the commands are these: “Render to
Caesar the things that are Caesar’s;” and, “Let every soul be subject to the higher
powers: for there is no power but of God, the powers that be are ordained of God;
whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God; and they
that resist shall receive to themselves damnation:”
For spiritual or ecclesiastical governors, thus we are commanded:
“Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves; for they watch for
your souls, as they that must give an account:”
Acts and Duties of Obedience to all our Superiors.
1. We must obey all human laws appointed and constituted by lawful authority, that is, of the supreme power, according to the constitution of the place in which we live: all laws, I mean, which are not against the law of God.
2. In obedience to human laws, we must observe the letter of the law where we can, without doing violence to the reason of the law and the intention of the lawgiver; but where they cross each other the charity of the law is to be preferred before its discipline, and the reason of it before the letter.
3. If the general reason of the law ceases in our particular, and a contrary reason rises upon us, we are to procure dispensation, or leave to omit the observation of it in such circumstances, if there be any persons or office appointed for granting it; but if there be none, or if it is not easily to be had, or not without an inconvenience greater than the good of the observation of the law in our particular, we are dispensed withal in the nature of the thing, without further process or trouble.
4. As long as the law is obligatory, so long our obedience is due; and he that begins a contrary custom without reason, sins: but he that breaks the law, when the custom is entered and fixed, is excused; because it is supposed the legislative power consents, when, by not punishing, it suffers disobedience to grow to a custom.
5. Obedience to human laws must be for conscience sake; that is, because in such obedience public order, and charity, and benefit, are concerned, and because the law of God commands us: therefore we must make a conscience in keeping the just laws of superiors: and although the matter before the making of the law was indifferent, yet now the obedience is not indifferent; but, next to the laws of God, we are to obey the laws of all our superiors, who the more public they are the first they are to be in the order of obedience.
6. Submit to the punishment and censure of the laws, and seek not to reverse their judgment by opposing, but by submitting, or flying, or silence, to pass through it or by it, as we can; and although from inferior judges we may appeal where the law permits us, yet we must sit down and rest in the judgment of the supreme; and if we be wronged, let us complain to God of the injury, not of the persons; and he will deliver thy soul from unrighteous judges.
7. Do not believe thou hast kept the law, when thou hast suffered the punishment. For although patiently to submit to the power of the sword be a part of obedience, yet this is such a part as supposes another left undone; and the law punishes, not because she is as well pleased in taking vengeance as in being obeyed, but because she is pleased she uses punishment as a means to secure obedience for the future, or in others. Therefore, although in such cases the law is satisfied, and the injury and the injustice are paid for, yet the sins of irreligion, and scandal, and disobedience to God, must still be so accounted for, as to crave pardon and be washed off by repentance.
8. Human laws are not to be broken with scandal, nor at all without reason; for he that does it causelessly is a despiser of the law, and undervalues the authority. For human laws differ from Divine laws principally in this: 1. That the positive commands of a man may be broken upon smaller and more reasons than the positive commands of God; we may, upon a smaller reason omit to keep any of the fasting-days of the church than omit to give alms to the poor; only this, the reason must bear weight according to the gravity and concernment of the law; a law, in a small matter, may be omitted for a small reason: in a great matter, not without a greater reason. and 2. The negative precepts of men may cease by many instruments, by contrary customs, by public disrelish, by long omission: but the negative precepts of God never can cease, but when they are expressly abrogated by the same authority. But what those reasons are that can dispense with the command of a man, a man may be his own judge, and sometimes take his proportions from his own reason and necessity, sometimes from public fame, and the practice of pious and severe persons, and from popular customs; in which a man shall walk most safely when he does not walk along, but a spiritual man takes him by the hand.
9. We must not be too forward in procuring dispensations, nor use them any longer than the reason continues for which we first procured them; for to be dispensed withal is an argument of natural infirmity, if it be necessary; but, if it be not, it signifies an undisciplined and unmortified spirit.
10. We must not be too busy in examining the prudence and unreasonableness of human laws: for although we are not bound to believe them all to be the wisest, yet if, by inquiring into the lawfulness of them, or by any other instrument we find them to fail of that wisdom with which some others are ordained, yet we must never make use of it to disparage the person of the lawgiver, or to countenance any man’s disobedience, much less our own.
11. Pay that reverence to the person of thy prince, of his ministers, of thy parents and spiritual guides, which, by the customs of the place thou livest in, are usually paid to such persons in their several degrees: that is, that the highest reverence be paid to the highest persons, and so still in proportion; and that this reverence be expressed in all the circumstances and manners of the city and nation.
12. Lift not up thy hand against thy prince or parent, upon what pretence soever; but bear all personal affronts and inconveniences at their hands, and seek no remedy but by patience and piety, yielding and praying, or absenting thyself.
13. Speak not evil of the ruler of thy people, neither curse thy father or mother, nor revile thy spiritual guides, nor discover and lay naked their infirmities; but treat them with reverence and religion, and preserve their authority sacred, by esteeming their persons venerable.
14. Pay tribute and customs to princes according to the laws, and maintenance to thy parents according to their necessity, and honourable support to the clergy according to the dignity of the work and the customs of the place.
15. Remember always, that duty to our superiors is not an act of commutative justice, but of distributive; that is, although kings and parents and spiritual guides are to pay a great duty to their inferiors, the duty of their several charges and government, yet the good government of a king and of parents are actions of religion, as they relate to God, and of piety, as they relate to their people and families. And although we usually all them just princes who administer their laws exactly to the people, because the actions are in the manner of justice, yet in propriety of speech, they are rather to be called pious and religious. For as he is not called a just father that educates his children well, but pious; so that prince who defends and well rules his people is religious, and does that duty for which alone he is answerable to God: the consequence of which is this, so far as concerns our duty — if the prince or parent fail of their duty, we must not fail of ours; for we are answerable to them and to God too, as being accountable to all our superiors, and so are they to theirs: they are above us, and God is above them.
Remedies against Disobedience, and Means to endear our Obedience; by way of consideration.
1. Consider, that all authority descends from God, and our superiors bear the image of the Divine power, which God imprints on them as on an image of clay, or a coin upon a less perfect metal, which whoso defaces shall not be answerable for the loss or spoil of the materials, but the defacing the king’s image; and in the same measure will God require it at our hands, if we despise his authority, upon whomsoever he hath imprinted it.
He that despiseth you, despiseth me. And Dathan and Abiram were said to be ‘gathered together against the Lord.’ And this was St. Paul’s argument for our obedience: ‘The powers that be are ordained of God.’
2. There is very great peace and immunity from sin in resigning our wills up to the command of others; for provided that our duty to God be secured, their commands are warrants to us in all things else; and the case of conscience is determined, if the command be evident and pressing: and it is certain, the action that is but indifferent and without reward, if done only upon our own choice, is an act of duty and of religion, and rewardable by the grace and favour of God, if done in obedience to the command of our superiors. For since naturally we desire what is forbidden us, (and sometimes there is no other evil in the thing but that it is forbidden us,) God hath in grace enjoined and proportionably accepts obedience, as being directly opposed to the former irregularity; and it is acceptable, although there be no other good in the thing that is commanded us but that it is commanded.
3. By obedience we are made a society and a republic, and distinguished from herds of beasts, and heaps of flies, who do what they list, and are incapable of laws, and obey none; and therefore are killed and destroyed, though never punished, and they never can have a reward.
4. By obedience we are rendered capable of all the blessings of
government, signified by St. Paul in these words: “He is the minister of God to
thee for good;”
5. No man shall ever be fit to govern others that knows not first how to obey. For if the spirit of a subject be rebellious, in a prince it will be tyrannical and intolerable; and of so ill example, that as it will encourage the disobedience of others, so it will render it unreasonable for him to exact of others what in the like case he refuses to pay.
6. There is no sin in the world which God hath punished with so great severity and high detestation as this of disobedience. For the crime of idolatry God sent the sword amongst his people; but it was never heard that the earth opened and swallowed up any but rebels against their prince.
7. Obedience is better than the particular actions of religion; and he serves God better that follows his prince in lawful services than he that refuses his command upon pretence he must go say his prayers. But rebellion is compared to that sin which of all sin seems the most unnatural and damned impiety, — ‘ Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft.’
8. Obedience is a complicated act of virtue, and many graces are exercised in one act of obedience. It is an act of humility, of mortification and self denial, of charity to God, of care of the public, of order and charity to ourselves and all our society, and a great instance of a victory over the most refractory and unruly passions.
9. To be a subject is a greater temporal felicity than to be a king: for all eminent governors according to their height, have a great burden, huge care, infinite business, little rest, innumerable fears; and all that he enjoys above another is, that he does enjoy the things of the world with others go at his single command, it is also certain he must suffer inconveniences at the needs and disturbances of all his people; and the evils of one man and of one family are not enough for him to bear, unless also he be almost crushed with the evils of mankind. He, therefore, is an ungrateful person that will press the scales down with a voluntary load, and, by disobedience, put more thorns into the crown or mitre of his superior. Much better is the advice of St. Paul; “Obey them that have the rule over you, as they that must give an account for your souls, that they may do it with joy and not with grief; for (besides that it is unpleasant to them) it is unprofitable for you.”
10. The angels are ministering spirits, and perpetually execute the will and commandment of God: and all the wise men and all the good men of the world are obedient to their governors; and the eternal Son of God esteemed it his ‘meat and drink to do the will of his Father,’ and for his obedience alone obtained the greatest glory: and no man ever came to perfection but by obedience; and thousands of saints have chosen such institutions and manners of living, in which they might not choose their own work, nor follow their own will, nor please themselves, but be accountable to others, and subject to discipline, and obedient to command; as knowing this to be the highway of the cross, the way that the King of sufferings and humility did choose, and so became the King of glory.
11. No man ever perished who followed first the will of God, and then the will of his superiors; but thousands have been damned merely for following their own will, and relying upon their own judgments, and choosing their own work, and doing their own fancies. For if we begin with ourselves, whatsoever seems good in our eyes is most commonly displeasing in the eyes of God.
12. The sin of rebellion, though it be a spiritual sin, and imitable by devils, yet it is of that disorder, unreasonableness, and impossibility, amongst intelligent spirits, that they never murmured or mutinied in their lower stations against their superiors. Nay, the good angels of an inferior order durst not revile a devil of a higher order. This consideration, which I reckon to be most pressing in the discourses of reason, and obliging next to the necessity of a Diving precept, we learn from St. Jude, viii.9, ‘Likewise also these filthy dreamers despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities. And yet Michael the archangel, when, contending with the devil, he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation.’
But because our superiors rule by their example, by their word or law, and by the rod, therefore in proportion there are several degrees and parts of obedience — several excellencies and degrees towards perfection.
Degrees of Obedience.
1. The first is the obedience of our outward work: and this is all that human laws of themselves regard; for because man cannot judge the heart, therefore it prescribes nothing to it: the public end is served, not by good wishes, but by real and actual performances, and if a man obeys against his will, he is not punishable by the laws.
2. The obedience of the will: and this is also necessary in our obedience to human laws, not because man requires it for himself, but because God commands it towards man; and if it, although man cannot, yet God will demand an account. For we are to do it as to the Lord, and not to men, and therefore we must do it willingly. But by this means our obedience in private is secured against secret arts and subterfuges; and when we can avoid the punishment, yet we shall not decline our duty, but serve man for God’s sake, that is, cheerfully, promptly, vigorously; for these are the proper parts of willingness and choice.
3. The understanding must yield obedience in general, though not in the particular instance, that is, we must be firmly persuaded of the excellency of the obedience, though we be not bound, in all cases, to think the particular law to be most prudent. But, in this, our rule is plain enough. Our understanding ought to be inquisitive, whether the civil constitution agree with our duty to God; but we are bound to inquire no further: and therefore beyond this, although he who, having no obligation to it, (as counsellors have,) inquires not at all into the wisdom or reasonableness of the law, be not always the wisest man, yet he is ever the best subject. For when he hath given up his understanding to his prince and prelate, provided that his duty to God be secured by a precedent search, he hath also, with the best and with all the instruments in the world, secured his obedience to man.
SECTION II.
Of Provision, or that part of Justice which is due from Superiors to Inferiors.
As God hath imprinted his authority in several parts upon several estates of men, as princes, parents, spiritual guides; so he hath also delegated and committed parts of his care and providence unto them, that they may be instrumental in the conveying such blessings which God knows we need, and which he intends should be the effects of government. For since God governs all the world as a king, provides for us a father, and is the great guide and conductor of our spirits as the head of the church, and the great shepherd and the bishop of our souls, they who have portions of these dignities have also their share of the administration: the sum of all which is usually signified in these two words, governing and feeding, and is particularly recited in these following rules:
Duties of Kings, and all the Supreme Power, as Lawgivers.
1. Princes of the people, and all that have legislative power, must provide useful and good laws for the defence of property, for the encouragement of labour, for the safeguard of their persons, for determining controversies, for reward of noble actions and excellent arts and rare inventions, for promoting trade, and enriching their people.
2. In the making laws, princes must have regard to the public
dispositions, to the affections and disaffections of the people, and must not introduce
a law with public scandal and displeasure; but consider the public benefit, and
the present capacity of affairs, and general inclinations of men’s minds.
3. Princes must provide, that the laws be duly executed, for a good law without execution is like an unperformed promise: and therefore they must be severe exactors of accounts from their delegates and ministers of justice.
4. The severity of laws must be tempered with dispensations, pardons, and remissions, according as the case shall alter, and new necessities be introduced, or some singular accident shall happen, in which the law would be unreasonable or intolerable, as to that particular. And thus the people, with their importunity, prevailed against Saul in the case of Jonathan, and obtained his pardon for breaking the law which his father made, because his necessity forced him to taste honey; and his breaking the law, in that case, did promote that service whose promotion was intended by the law.
5. Princes must be fathers of the people, and provide such instances of gentleness, ease, wealth, and advantages, as may make mutual confidence between them; and must fix their security under God in the love of the people; which, therefore, they must, with all arts of sweetness, remission, popularity, nobleness, and sincerity, endeavour to secure to themselves.
6. Princes must not multiply public oaths without great, eminent, and violent necessity; lest the security of the king become a snare to the people, and they become false, when they see themselves suspected; or impatient, when they are violently held fast: but the greater and more useful caution is upon things than upon persons; and if security of kings can be obtained otherwise, it is better that oaths should be the last refuge, and when nothing else can be sufficient.
7. Let not the people be tempted with arguments or disobey, by the imposition of great and unnecessary taxes: for that lost to the son of Solomon the dominion of the ten tribes of Israel.
8. Princes must, in a special manner, be guardians of pupils and widows, not suffering then persons to be oppressed, or their estates imbeciled, or in any sense be exposed to the rapine of covetous persons; but be provided for by just laws, and provident judges, and good guardians, ever having an ear ready open to their just complaints, and a heart full of pity, and one hand to support them, and the other to avenge them.
9. Princes must provide, that the laws may be so administered that they be truly and really an ease to the people, not an instrument of vexation: and therefore must be careful, that the shortest and most equal ways of trials be appointed, fees moderated, and intricacies and windings as much cut off as may be, lest injured persons be forced to perish under the oppression, or under the law, in the injury, or in the suit. Laws are like princes, those best and most beloved who are most easy of access.
10. Places of judicature ought, at no hand, to be sold by pious
princes, who remember themselves to be fathers of the people. For they that buy
the office will sell the act;
11. Ancient privileges, favours, customs, and acts of grace, indulged by former kings to their people, must not, without high reason and great necessities, be revoked by their successors, nor forfeitures be exacted violently, nor penal laws urged rigorously, nor in light cases; nor laws be multiplied without great need; nor vicious persons, which are publicly and deservedly hated, be kept in defiance of popular desires; nor anything that may unnecessarily make the yoke heavy and the affection light, that may increase murmurs and lessen charity; always remembering, that the interest of the prince and the people is so enfolded in a mutual embrace, that they cannot be untwisted without pulling a limb off, or dissolving the bands and conjunction of the whole body.
12. All princes must esteem themselves as much bound by their
word, by their grants, and by their promises, as the meanest of their subjects are
by the restraint and penalty of laws;
The Duty of Superiors as they are Judges.
1. Princes in judgment and their delegate judges must judge the causes of all persons uprightly and impartially, without any personal consideration of the power of the mighty, or the bribe of the rich, or the needs of the poor. For although the poor must fare no worse for his poverty, yet, in justice, be must fare no better for it; and although the rich must be no more regarded, yet he must not be less. And to this purpose the tutor of Cyrus instructed him, when in a controversy, where a great boy would have taken a large coat from a little boy, because his own was too little for him, and the other’s was too big, he adjudged the great coat to the great boy: his tutor answered, “Sir, if you were made to judge of decency or fitness, you had judged well in giving the biggest to the biggest; but when you are appointed judge, not whom the coat did fit, but whose it was, you should have considered the title and the possession, who did the violence, and who made it, or who bought it.” And so it must be in judgments between the rich and the poor: it is not to be considered what the poor man needs, but what is his own.
2. A prince may not, much less may inferior judges, deny justice, when it is legally and competently demanded: and if the prince will use his prerogative in pardoning an offender, against whom justice is required, he must be careful to give satisfaction to the injured person, or his relatives, by some other instrument; and be watchful to take away the scandal, that is, lest such indulgence might make persons more bold to do injury: and if he spares the life, let him change the punishment into that which may make the offender, if not suffer justice, yet do justice, and more real advantage to the injured person.
These rules concern princes and their delegates in the making or administering laws, in the appointing rules of justice, and doing acts of judgment. The duty of parents to their children and nephews is briefly described by St. Paul.
The Duty of Parents to their Children.
1. ‘Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath:’
2. ‘Bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord:’
that is, secure their religion; season their younger years with prudent and pious
principles; make them in love with virtue; and make them habitually so, before they
come to choose or to discern good from evil, that their choice or to discern good
from evil, that their choice may be with less difficulty and danger. For while they
are under discipline, they suck in all that they are first taught, and believe it
infinitely. Provide for them wise, learned, and virtuous tutors, and good company
and discipline, seasonable baptism, catechism, and confirmation.
3. Parents must show piety at home;
4. Parents must provide for their own, according to their condition,
education and employment: called by St. Paul, ‘a laying up for the children;’
5. This duty is to extend to a provision of conditions and an
estate of life. Νυρφενφατων υεν των ερων πατμφ ερος. Μερτρναν εξζι, κουδ ευον δονειν τασε.—Eurip. Androm. 988.
Rules for Married Persons.
1. Husbands must give to their wives love,
The Duty of Masters of Families.
1. The same care is to extend to all of our family, in their proportions, as to our children: for as, by St. Paul’s economy, the heir differs nothing from a servant, while he is in minority, so a servant should differ nothing from a child, in the substantial part of the care; and the difference is only in degrees. Servants and masters are of the same kindred, of the same nature, and heirs of the same promises, and therefore, 1. must be provided of necessaries, for their support and maintenance. 2. They must be used with mercy. 3. Their work must be tolerable and merciful. 4. Their restraints must be reasonable. 5. Their recreations fitting and healthful. 6. Their religion and the interest of souls taken care of. 7. And masters must correct their servants with gentleness, prudence, and mercy; not for every slight fault, not always, not with upbraiding and disgraceful language, but with such only as may express and reprove the fault, and amend the person. But in all these things measures are to be taken by the contract made, by the laws and customs of the place, by the sentence of prudent and merciful men, and by the cautions and remembrances given us by God; such as is that written by St. Paul, ‘as knowing that we also have a Master in heaven.’ The master must not be a lion in his house, lest his power be obeyed, and his person hated; his eye be waited on, and his business be neglected in secret. No servant will do his duty, unless he make a conscience, or love his master: if he does it not for God’s sake or his master’s, he will not need to do it always for his own.
The Duty of Guardians or Tutors.
Tutors and guardians are in the place of parents; and what they are in fiction of law, they must remember as an argument to engage them do do in reality of duty. They must do all the duty of parents, excepting those obligations which are merely natural.
*The duty of ministers and spiritual guides to the people is of so great burden, so various rules, so intricate and busy caution, that it requires a distinct tractate by itself.
SECTION III.
Of Negotiation, or Civil Contracts.
This part of justice is such as depends upon the laws of man directly, and upon the laws of God only by consequence and indirect reason; and from civil laws or private agreements it is to take its estimate and measures: and although our duty is plain and easy, requiring of us honesty in contracts sincerity in affirming, simplicity in bargaining, and faithfulness in performing, yet it may be helped by the addition of these following rules and considerations.
Rules and Measures of Justice in Bargaining.
1. In making contracts, use not many words; for all the business of a bargain is summed up in few sentences: and he that speaks least means fairest as having fewer opportunities or deceive.
2. Lie not at all, neither in a little thing nor in a great, neither in the substance nor in the circumstance, neither in word nor deed: that is, pretend not what is false, cover not what is true: and let the measure of your affirmation or denial be the understanding of your contractor; for he that deceives the buyer or the seller by speaking what is true in a sense not intended or understood by the other, is a liar and a thief. For in bargains you are to avoid not only what is false, but that also which deceives.
3. In prices of bargaining concerning uncertain merchandises, you may buy as cheap ordinarily, as you can; and sell as dear as you can, so it be, 1. without violence; and, 2. when you contract on equal terms with persons in all senses (as to the matter and skill of bargaining) equal to yourself, that is, merchants with merchants, wise men with wise men, rich with rich; and, 3. when there is no deceit, and no necessity and no monopoly: for in these cases, viz. when the contractors are equal, and no advantage on either side, both parties are voluntary, and therefore there can be no injustive or wrong to either. But then add also this consideration, that the public be not oppressed by unreasonable and unjust rates: for which the following rules are the best measure.
4. Let your prices be according to that measure of good and evil which is established in the fame and common accounts of the wisest and most merciful men, skilled in that manufacture or commodity; and be gain such which, without scandal, is allowed to persons in all the same circumstances.
5. Let no prices be heightened by the necessity or unskilfulness of the contractor: for the first is direct uncharitableness to the person, and injustice in the thing; because the man’s necessity could not naturally enter into the consideration of the value of the commodity; and the other is deceit and oppression: much less must any man make necessities; as by engrossing a commodity, by monopoly, by detaining corn, or the like indirect arts; for such persons are unjust to all single persons, with whom, in such cases, they contract, and oppressors of the public.
6. In intercourse with others, do not do all which you may lawfully do: but keep something within thy power: and, because there is a latitude of gain in buying and selling, take not thou the utmost penny that is lawful, or which thou thinkest so; for although it be lawful, yet it is not safe; and he that gains all that he can gain lawfully this year, possibly next year will be tempted to gain something unlawfully.
7. He that sells dearer, by reason he sells not for ready money, must increase his price no higher than to make himself recompense for the loss which, according to the rules of trade, he sustained by his forbearance, according to common computation, reckoning in also the hazard, which he is prudently, warily, and charitably to estimate. But although this be the measure of his justice, yet because it happens either to their friends, or to necessitous and poor persons, they are, in these cases to consider the rules of friendship and neighbourhood, and the obligations of charity, lest justice turn into unmercifulness.
8. No man is to be raised in his price or rents in regard of any
accident, advantage, or disadvantage of his person.
9. Let no man, for his own poverty, become more oppressing and cruel in his bargain, but quietly, modestly, diligently, and patiently, recommend his estate to God, and follow its interest and leave the success to him: for such courses will more probably advance his trade; they will certainly procure him a blessing and a recompense; and, if they cure not his poverty, they will take away the evil of it: and there is nothing else in it that can trouble him.
10. Detain not the wages of the hireling, for every degree of detention of it beyond the time is injustice and uncharitableness, and grinds his face, till tears and blood come out, but pay him exactly according to covenant, or according to his needs.
11. Religiously keep all promises and covenants, though made to
your disadvantage, though afterwards you perceive you might have done better; and
let not any precedent act of yours be altered by any after-accident. Let nothing
make you break your promise, unless it be unlawful, or impossible: that is, either
out of your natural, or out of your civil power, yourself being under the power
of another; or that it be intolerably inconvenient to yourself, and of no advantage
to another; or that you have leave expressed, or reasonably presumed.
12. Let no man take wages or fees for a work that he cannot do, or cannot with probability undertake, or in some sense profitably, and with ease, or with advantage manage. Physicians must not meddle with desperate diseases, and known to be incurable, without declaring their sense before hand; that if the patient please, he may entertain him at adventure, or to do him some little ease. Advocates must deal plainly with their clients, and tell them the true state and danger of their case; and must not pretend confidence in an evil cause: but when he hath so cleared his own innocence, if the client will have collateral and legal advantages obtained by his industry, he may engage his endeavour, provided he do no injury to the right cause, or any man’s person.
13. Let no man appropriate to his own use what God, by a special
mercy, or the republic, hath made common;
The sum of all is in these words of St. Paul, “let no man go beyond
and defraud his brother, in any matter; because the Lord is the avenger of all sueth.
SECTION IV.
Of Restitution.
Restitution is that part of justice to which a man is obliged
by a precedent contract, or a foregoing fault, by his own act or another man’s,
either with or without his will. He that borrows is bound to pay, and much more
he that steals or cheats.
Rules of making Restitution.
1. Whosoever is an effective real cause of doing his neighbour
wrong, by what instrument soever he does it, (whether by commanding or encouraging
it, by counselling or commending it,
2. He that commanded the injury to be done is first bound; then he that did it; and, after these they also are obliged who did so assist, as without them the thing would not have been done. If satisfaction be made by any of the former, the latter is tied to repentance, but no restitution; but if the injured person be not righted, every one of them is wholly guilty of the injustice, and therefore bound to restitution, singly and entirely.
3. Whosoever intends a little injury to his neighbour, and acts
it, and by a greater evil accidentally comes, he is obliged to make an entire reparation
of all the injury of that which he intended, and of that which he intended not,
but yet acted by his own instrument going further than he at first purposed it.
4. He that hinders a charitable person from giving alms to a poor
man is tied to restitution if he hindered him by fraud or violence, because it was
a right which the poor man had, when the good man had designed and resolved it,
and the fraud or violence hinders the effect but not the purpose; and therefore
he who used the deceit or the force is injurious, and did damage to the poor man.
But if the alms were hindered only by entreaty the hinderer is not tied to restitution,
because entreaty took not liberty away from the giver, but left him still master
of his own act, and he had power to alter his purpose, and so long there was no
injustice done.
5. He that refuses to do any part of his duty (to which he is otherwise obliged) without a bribe, is bound to restore that money, because he took it in his neighbour’s wrong, and not as a salary for his labour, or a reward for his wisdom, (for his stipend hath paid all that,) or he hath obliged himself to do it by his voluntary undertaking.
6. He that takes anything from his neighbour which was justly forfeited, but yet takes it not as a minister of justice, but to satisfy his own revenge or avarice, is tied to repentance, but not to restitution. For my neighbour is not the worse for my act, for thither the law and his own demerits bore him; but because I took the forfeiture indirectly I am answerable to God for my unhandsome, unjust, or uncharitable circumstances. Thus Philip of Macedon was reproved by Aristides for destroying the Phoeenses, because, although they deserved it, yet he did it not in prosecution of the law of nations, but to enlarge his own dominions.
7. The heir of an obliged person is not bound to make restitution if the obligation passed only by a personal act; but if it passed from his person to his estate, then the estate passes with all its burden. If the father, by persuading his neighbour to do injustice, be bound to restore, the action is extinguished by the death of the father, because it was only the father’s sin that bound him, which cannot directly bind the son; therefore the son is free. And this is so in all personal actions, unless where the civil law interposes and alters the case.
*These rules concern the persons that are obliged to make restitution; the other circumstances of it are thus described.
8. He that by fact, or word, or sign, either fraudulently or violently,
does hurt to his neighbour’s body, life, goods, good name, friends, or soul, is
bound to make restitution in the several instances, according as they are capable
to be made. In all these instances we must separate entreaty and enticements from
deceit or violence. If I persuade my neighbour to commit adultery, I still leave
him or her in their own power, and though I am answerable to God for my sin, yet
not to my neighbour. For I made her to be willing, yet she was willing,
9. An adulterous person is tied to restitution of the injury, so far as it is reparable, and can be made to the wronged person; that is, to make provision for the children begotten in unlawful embraces, that they may do no injury to the legitimate by receiving a common portion; and if the injured person do account of it, he must satisfy him with money for the wrong done to his bed. He is not tied to offer this, because it is no proper exchange, but he is bound to pay it if it be reasonably demanded; for every man hath justice done when himself is satisfied, though by a word, or an action, or a penny.
10. He that hath killed a man is bound to restitution, by allowing such a maintenance to the children and near relatives of the deceased as they have lost by his death, considering and allowing for all circumstances of the man’s age, and health, and probability of living. And thus Hercules is said to have made expiation for the death of Iphitus, whom he slew, by paying a lulct to his children.
11. He that hath really lessened the fame of his neighbour by
fraud or violence is bound to restore it by its proper instruments; such as are
confession of his fault, giving testimony of his innocence or worth, doing him honour,
or (if that will do it, and both parties agree) by money, which answers all things.
12. He that hath wounded his neighbour is tied to the expenses of the surgeon and other incidences, and to repair whatever loss he sustains by his disability to work or trade; and the same is in the case of false imprisonment, in which cases only the real effect and remaining detriment are to be mended and repaired, for the action itself is to be punished or repented of, and enters not into the question of restitution. But in these and all other cases, the injured person is to be restored to that perfect and good condition from which he was removed by my fraud or violence, so far as is possible. Thus a ravisher must repair the temporal detriment or injury done to the maid, and give her a dowry, or marry her if she desire it. For this restores her into that capacity of being a good wife, which by the injury was lost, as far as it can be done.
13. He that robbeth his neighbour of his goods, or detains anything violently or fraudulently, is bound not only to restore the principal, but all its fruits and emoluments, which would have accrued to the right owner during the time of their being detained. By proportion to these rules we may judge of the obligation that lies upon all sorts of injurious persons; the sacrilegious, the detainers of tithes, cheaters of men’s inheritances, unjust judges, false witnesses, and accusers; those that do fraudulently or violently bring men to sin, that force men to drink, that laugh at and disgrace virtue, that persuade servants to run away or commend such purposes; violent persecutors of religion in any instance; and all of the same nature.
14. He that hath wronged so many, or in that manner (as in the way of daily trade) that he knows not in what measure he hath done it, or who they are, must redeem his fault by alms and dargesses to the poor, according to the value of his wrongful dealing, as near as he can proportion it. Better it is to go begging to heaven, than to go to hell laden with the spoils of rapine and injustice.
15. The order of paying the debts of contract or restitution is,
in some instances, set down by the civil laws of a kingdom, in which cases their
rule is to be observed. In destitution, or want of such rules, we are, 1. to observe
the necessity of the creditor; 2. then the time of the delay; and, 3. the special
obligations of friendship or kindness; and, according to these, in their several
degrees, make our restitution, if we be not able to do all that we should; but,
if we be, the best rule is to do it so soon as we can, taking our accounts in this,
as in our human actions, according to prudence, and civil or natural conveniences
or possibilities, only securing these two things; 1. that the duty be not wholly
omitted; and, 2. that it be not deferred at all out of covetousness, or any other
principle that is vicious. Remember that the same day in which Zaccheus made restitution
to all whom he had injured, the same day Christ himself, pronounced that salvation
was come to his house.
16. But besides the obligation arising from contract or default,
there is one of another sort which comes from kindness, and the acts of charity
and friendship.
Our duty to benefactors is to esteem and love their persons, to make them proportionable returns of service, or duty, or profit, according as we can, or as they need, or as opportunity presents itself, and according to the greatness of their kindness, and to pray to God to make them recompense for all the good they have done to us; which last office is also requisite to be done for our creditors, who, in charity, have relieved our wants.
PRAYERS RELATING TO JUSTICE.
PRAYERS
TO BE SAID IN RELATION TO THE SEVERAL OBLIGATIONS AND OFFICES OF JUSTICE.
A Prayer for the Grace of Obedience, to be said by all Persons under Command.
O eternal God, great ruler of men and angels, who hast constituted all things in a wonderful order, making all the creatures subject to man, and one man to another, and all to thee, the last link of this admirable chain being fastened to the foot of thy throne; teach me to obey all those whom thou hast set over me, reverencing their persons, submitting indifferently to all their lawful commands, cheerfully undergoing those burdens which the public wisdom and necessity shall impose upon me, at no hand murmuring against government, lest the spirit of pride and mutiny, of murmur and disorder, enter into me, and consign me to the portion of the disobedient and rebellious, of the despisers of dominion, and revilers of dignity. Grant this, O holy God, for his sake, who, for his obedience to the Father, hath obtained the glorification of eternal ages, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
*Prayers for kings and all magistrates, for our parents, spiritual and natural, are in the following litanies, at the end of the fourth chapter.
A Prayer to be said by Subjects when the Land is invaded and overrun by barbarous or wicked People, enemies of the Religion or the Government.
I.
O eternal God, thou alone rulest in the kingdoms of men; thou art the great God of battles and recompenses; and by thy glorious wisdom, by thy almighty power, and by thy secret providence, dost determine the events of war, and the issues of human counsels, and the returns of peace and victory: now at last be pleased to let the light of thy countenance, and the effects of a glorious mercy and a gracious pardon, return to this land. Thou seest how great evils we suffer under the power and tyranny of war, and although we submit to and adore thy justice in our sufferings, yet be pleased to pity our misery, to hear our complaints, and to provide us of remedy against our present calamities; let not the defenders of a righteous cause go away ashamed, nor our counsels be for ever confounded, nor our parties defeated, nor religion suppressed, nor learning discountenanced, and we be spoiled of all the exterior ornaments, instruments, and advantages of piety, which thou hast been pleased formerly to minister to our infirmities, for the interests of learning and religion. Amen.
II.
We confess, dear God, that we have deserved to be totally extinct and separate from the communion of saints and the comforts of religion, to be made servants of ignorant, unjust, and inferior persons, or to suffer any other calamity which thou shalt allot us as the instrument of thy anger, whom we have so often provoked to wrath and jealousy. Lord, we humbly lie down under the burden of thy rod, begging of thee to remember our infirmities, and no more to remember our sins, to support us with thy staff, to lift us up with thy hand, to refresh us with thy gracious eye; and if a sad cloud of temporal infelicities must still encircle us, open unto us the window of heaven, that, with an eye of faith and hope, we may see beyond the cloud, looking upon those mercies which, in thy secret providence and admirable wisdom, thou designest to all thy servants from such unlikely and sad beginnings. Teach us diligently to do all our duty, and cheerfully to submit to all thy will; and, at last, be gracious to thy people that call upon thee, that put their trust in thee, that have laid up all their hopes in the bosom of God, that, besides thee, have no helper.
Amen.
III.
Place a guard of angels about the person of the king, and immure him with the defence of thy right hand, that no unhallowed arm may do violence to him. Support him with aids from heaven in all his battles, trials, and dangers, that he may, in every instant of his temptation, become dearer to thee; and do thou return to him with mercy and deliverance. Give unto him the hearts of all his people, and put into his hand a prevailing rod of iron, a sceptre of power, and a sword of justice; and enable him to defend and comfort the churches under his protection.
IV.
Bless all his friends, relatives, confederates, and lieges, direct their counsels, unite their hearts, strengthen their hands, bless their actions. Give unto them holiness of intention, that they may, with much candour and ingenuity, pursue the cause of God and the king. Sanctify all the means and instruments of their purposes, that they may not with cruelty, injustice, or oppression, proceed towards the end of their just desires; and do thou crown all their endeavours with a prosperous event, that all may co-operate to, and actually produce, those great mercies which we bed of thee — honour and safety to our sovereign, defence of his just rights, peace to his people, establishment and promotion to religion, advantages and encouragement to learning and holy living, deliverance to all the oppressed, and comfort to all thy faithful people. Grant this, O King of kings, for his sake, by whom thou hast consigned us to all thy mercies and promises, and to whom thou hast given all power in heaven and earth, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
A Prayer to be said by Kings or Magistrates for themselves and their People.
O my God and King, thou rulest in the kingdoms of men; by thee kings reign, and
princes decree justice; thou hast appointed me under thyself (and under my prince
A Prayer to be said by Parents for their Children.
O almighty and most merciful Father, who hast promised children as a reward to the righteous, and hast given them to me as a testimony of thy mercy, and an engagement of my duty, be pleased to be a Father unto them, and give them healthful bodies, understanding souls, and sanctified spirits, that they may be thy servants and thy children all their days. Let a great mercy and providence lead them through the dangers and temptations and ignorances of their youth, that they may never run into folly and the evils of an unbridled appetite. So order the accidents of their lives, that by good education, careful tutors, holy example, innocent company, prudent counsel, and thy restraining grace, their duty to thee may be secured in the midst of a crooked and untoward generation; and if it seem good in thy eyes, let me be enabled to provide conveniently for the support of their persons, that they may not be destitute and miserable in my death; or if thou shalt call me off from this world by a more timely summons, let their portion be, thy care, mercy, and providence over their bodies and souls; and may they never live vicious lives, nor die violent or untimely deaths; but let them glorify thee here with a free obedience, and the duties of a whole life, that when they have served thee in their generations, and have profited the Christian commonwealth, they may be coheirs with Jesus in the glories of thy eternal kingdom, through the same our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
A Prayer to be said by Masters of Families, Curates, Tutors, or other obliged Persons, for their Charges.
O eternal God, thou fountain of justice, mercy, and benediction, who, by my education and other effects of thy providence, hast called me to this profession, that, by my industry, I may, in my small proportion, work together for the good of myself and others, I humbly beg thy grace to guide me in my intention, and in the transaction of my affairs, that I may be diligent, just, and faithful; and give me thy favour, that this my labour may be accepted by thee as a part of my necessary duty; and give me thy blessing to assist and prosper me in my calling to such measures as thou shalt, in mercy, choose for me; and be pleased to let thy Holy Spirit be for ever present with me, that I may never be given to covetousness and sordid appetites, to lying and falsehood, or any other base, indirect, and beggarly arts; but give me prudence, honesty, and Christian sincerity, that my trade may be sanctified by my religion, by labour, by my intention and thy blessing, that when I have done my portion of work thou hast allotted me, and improved the talent thou hast entrusted to me, and served the commonwealth in my capacity, I may receive the mighty price of my high calling, which I expect and beg, in the portion and inheritance of the ever-blessed Saviour and Redeemer, Jesus. Amen.
A Prayer to be said by Debtors, and all Persons obliged, whether by Crime or Contract.
O almighty God, who art rich unto all, the treasury and fountain of all good, of all justice, and all mercy, and all bounty, to whom we owe all that we are, and all that we have, being thy debtors by reason of our sins, and by thy own gracious contract made with us in Jesus Christ; teach me, in the first place to perform all my obligations to thee, both of duty and thankfulness; and next, enable me to pay my duty to all my friends, and my debts to all my creditors, that none be made miserable or lessened in his estate by his kindness to me, or traffic with me. Forgive me all those sins and irregular actions by which I entered into debt further than my necessity required, or by which such necessity was brought upon me; but let not them suffer by occasion of my sin. Lord, reward all their kindness into their bosoms, and make them recompense where I cannot, and make me very willing in all that I can, and able for all that I am obliged to; or, if it seem good in thine eyes to afflict me by the continuance of this condition, yet make it up by some means to them, that the prayer of thy servant may obtain of thee, at least, to pay my debt in blessings. Amen.
V.
Lord, sanctify and forgive all that I have tempted to evil by my discourse or my example, instruct them in the right way whom I have led to error, and let me never run further on the score of sin; but do thou blot out all the evils I have done by the sponge of thy passion, and the blood of thy cross, and give me a deep and an excellent repentance, and a free and a gracious pardon, that thou mayest answer for me, O Lord, and enable me to stand upright in judgment; for in thee, O Lord, have i trusted, let me never be confounded. Pity me and instruct me, guide me and support me, pardon me and save me, for my sweet Saviour Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.
A Prayer for Patron and Benefactors.
O mighty God, thou fountain of all good, of all excellency both to men and angels, extend thine abundant favour and loving-kindness to my patron, to all my friends and benefactors; reward them and make them plentiful recompense for all the good which from thy merciful providence they have conveyed unto me. Let the light of thy countenance shine upon them, and let them never come into any affliction or sadness, but such as may be an instrument of thy glory and their eternal comfort. Forgive them all their sins; let thy divinest Spirit preserve them from all deeds of darkness; let thy ministering angels guard their persons from the violence of the spirits of darkness. And thou who knowest every degree of their necessity by thy infinite wisdom, give supply to all their needs by thy glorious mercy, preserving their persons, sanctifying their hearts, and leading them in the ways of righteousness, by the waters of comfort, to the land of eternal rest and glory, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
CHAPTER IV.
OF CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
Religion, in a large sense, doth signify the whole duty of man,
comprehending in it justice, charity, and sobriety; because all these being commanded
by God, they become a part of that honour and worship which we are bound to pay
to him. And thus the word is used in St. James, ‘Pure religion and undefiled before
God and the Father in this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction,
and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
Of the internal Actions of Religion
Those I call the internal actions of religion, in which the soul only is employed, and ministers to God in the special actions of faith, hope, and charity. Faith believes the revelations of God, hope expects his promises, and charity loves his excellencies and mercies. Faith gives us understanding to God, hope gives up all the passions and affections to heaven and heavenly things, and charity gives the will to the service of God. Faith is opposed to infidelity, hope to despair, charity to enmity and hostility; and these three sanctify the whole man, and make our duty to God and obedience to his commandments to be chosen, reasonable, and delightful, and therefore to be entire, persevering, and universal.
SECTION I.
OF FAITH
The Acts and Offices of Faith are,
1. To believe everything which God hath revealed to us:
2. To believe nothing concerning God but what is honourable and excellent, as knowing that belief to be no honouring of God which entertains of him any dishonourable thoughts. Faith is the parent of charity, and whatsoever faith entertains must be apt to produce love to God; but he that believes God to be cruel or unmerciful, or a rejoicer in the unavoidable damnation of the greatest part of mankind, or that he speaks one thing and privately means another, thinks evil thoughts concerning God, and such as for which we should hate a man, and therefore are great enemies of faith, being apt to destroy charity. Our faith concerning God must be as himself hath revealed and described his own excellencies; and, in our discourses; we must remove from him all imperfection, and attribute to him all excellency.
3. To give ourselves wholly up to Christ, in heart and desire, to become disciples of his doctrine with choice, (besides conviction,) being in the presence of God but as idiots, that is, without any principles of our own to hinder the truth of God; but sucking in greedily all that God hath taught us, believing it infinitely, and loving to believe it. For this is an act of love reflected upon faith, or an act of faith leaning upon love.
4. To believe all God’s promises, and that whatsoever is promised in Scripture shall, on God’s part, be as surely performed as if we had it in possession. This act makes us to rely upon God with the same confidence as we did on our parents when we were children, when we made no doubt but whatsoever we needed we should have it, if it were in their power.
5. To believe, also, the conditions of the promise, or that part of the revelation which concerns our duty. Many are apt to believe the article of remission of sins, but they believe it without the condition of repentance, or the fruits of holy life; and that is to believe the article otherwise than God intended it. For the covenant of the Gospel is the great object of faith, and that supposes our duty to answer his grace; that God will be our God, so long as we are his people. The other is not faith, but flattery.
6. To profess publicly the doctrine of Jesus Christ, openly owning whatsoever he hath revealed and commanded, not being ashamed of the word of God, or of any practices enjoined by it; and this without complying with any man’s interest, not regarding favour, nor being moved with good words, not fearing disgrace, or loss, or inconvenience, or death itself.
7. To pray without doubting, without weariness, without faintness; entertaining no jealousies or suspicions of God, but being confident of God’s hearing us, and of his returns to us, whatsoever the manner or the instance be, that, if we do our duty, it will be gracious and merciful.
These acts of faith are, in several degrees, in the servants of
Jesus; some have it but as a grain of mustard-seed; some grow up to a plant; some
have the fulness of faith; but the least faith that is must be a persuasion so strong
as to make us undertake the doing of all that duty which Christ built upon the foundation
of believing. But we shall best discern the truth of our faith by these following
signs. St. Jerome reckons three.
Signs of true Faith.
1. An earnest and vehement prayer: for it is impossible we should heartily believe the things of God and the glories of the gospel, and not most importunately desire them. For everything is desired according to our belief of its excellency and possibility.
2. To do nothing for vain-glory, but wholly for the interests of religion and these articles we believe; valuing not at all the rumours of men, but the praise of God, to whom, by faith, we have given up all our intellectual faculties.
3. To be content with God for our judge, for our patron, for our Lord, for our friend; desiring God to be all in all to us, as we are, in our understanding and affections, wholly his.
Add to these:
4. To be a stranger upon earth in our affections, and to have all our thoughts and principal desires fixed upon the matters of faith, the things of heaven. For, if a man were adopted heir to Caesar, he would (if he believed it real and affective) despise the present, and wholly be at court in his father’s eye; and his desires would outrun his swiftest speed, and all his thoughts would spend themselves in creating ideas and little fantastic images of his future condition. Now God hath made us heirs of his kingdom, and co-heirs with Jesus: if we believed this, we should think, and affect, and study accordingly. But he that rejoices in gain, and his heart dwells in the world, and is espoused to a fair estate, and transported with a light momentary joy, and is afflicted with losses, and amazed with temporal persecutions, and esteems disgrace or poverty in a good cause to be intolerable - this man either has no inheritance in heaven, or believes none; and believes not that he is adopted to the son of God — the heir of eternal glory.
5. St. James’s sign is the best: ‘Show me thy faith by thy works.’ Faith makes the merchant diligent and venturous, and that makes him rich. Ferdinando of Arragon believed the story told him by Columbus, and therefore he furnished him with ships, and got the West Indies by his faith in the undertaker. But Henry the Seventh of England believed him not, and therefore trusted him not with shipping, and lost all the purchase of that faith. It is told us by Christ, ‘He that forgiveth shall be forgiven:’ if we believe this, it is certain we shall forgive our enemies; for none of us all but need and desire to be forgiven. No man can possibly despise, or refuse to desire such excellent glories as are revelaed to them that are servants of Christ; and yet we do nothing that is commanded us as a condition to obtain them. No man could work a day’s labour without faith; but because he believes he shall have his wages at the day’s or week’s end, he does his duty. But he only believes who does that thing which other men, in like cases, do when they do believe. He that believes money gotten with danger is better than poverty with safety, will venture for it in unknown lands or seas; and so will he that believes it better to get to heaven with labour, than to go to hell with pleasure.
6. He that believes does not make haste, but waits patiently till the times of refreshment come, and dares trust God for the morrow, and is no more solicitous for the next year than he is for that which is past; and it is certain that man wants faith who dares be more confident of being supplied, when he hath money in his purse, than when he hath it only in bills of exchange from God; or that relies more upon his own industry than upon God’s providence when his own industry fails him. If you dare trust to God when the case, to human reason, seems impossible, and trust to God then also out of choice, not because you have nothing else to trust to, but because he is the only support of a just confidence, then you give a good testimony of your faith.
7. True faith is confident, and will venture all the world upon the strength of its persuasion. Will you lay your life on it, your estate, your reputation, that the doctrine of Jesus Christ is true in every article/ Then you have true faith. But he that fears men more than God, believes men more than he believes in God.
8. Faith, if it be true, living, and justifying, cannot be separated
from a good life; it works miracles, makes a drunkard become sober, a lascivious
person become chaste, a covetous man become liberal; ‘it overcomes the world-it
works righteousness,’
and makes us diligently to do, and cheerfully to suffer, whatsoever God hath placed in our way to heaven.
The Means and Instruments to obtain Faith are,
1. A humble, willing, and docile mind, or desire to be instructed in the way of God; for persuasion enters like a sunbeam, gently and without violence and open but the window, and draw the curtain and the Sun of righteousness will enlighten your darkness.
2. Remove all prejudice and love to everything, which may be contradicted by faith. ‘How can ye believe (said Christ) that receive praise one of another?’ An unchaste man cannot easily be brought to believe that, without purity, he shall never see God. He that loves riches can hardly believe the doctrine of poverty and renunciation of the world; and alms and martyrdom, and the doctrine of the cross, is folly to him that loves his ease and pleasures. He that hath within him any principle contrary to the doctrines of faith cannot easily become a disciple.
3. Prayer, which is instrumental to everything, hath a particular promise in this thing. ‘He that lacks wisdom, let him ask it of God:’ and, ‘If you give good things to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give his Spirit to them that ask him!’
4. The consideration of the divine omnipotence and infinite wisdom,
and our own ignorance, are great instruments of curing all doubting and silencing
the murmurs of infidelity.
5. Avoid all curiosity of inquiry into particulars and circumstances and mysteries, for true faith is full of ingenuity and hearty simplicity, free from suspicion, wise and confident, trusting upon generals, without watching and prying into unnecessary or indiscernible particulars. No man carries his bed into his field, to watch how his corn grows, but believes upon the general order of Providence and nature; and at harvest finds himself not deceived.
6. In time of temptation be not busy to dispute, but rely upon the conclusion, and throw yourself upon God; and contend not with him but in prayer and in the presence, and with the help of a prudent untempted guide; and be sure to esteem all changes of belief which offer themselves in the time of your greatest weakness (contrary to be temptations, and reject them accordingly.
7. It is a prudent course that, in our health and best advantages, we lay up particular arguments and instruments of persuasion and confidence, to be brought forth and used in the great day of expense; and that especially in such things in which we use to be most tempted, and in which we are least confident, and which are most necessary, and which commonly the devil uses to assault us withal in the days of our visitation.
8. The wisdom of the church of God is very remarkable in appointing festivals or holy days, whose solemnity and offices have no other special business but to record the article of the day; such as Trinity Sunday, Ascension, Easter, Christmas day; and to those persons who can only believe, not prove or dispute, there is no better instrument to cause the remembrance and plain notion, and to endear the affection and hearty assent to the article than the proclaiming and recommending it by the festivity and joy of a holy day.
SECTION II.
Of the Hope of a Christian.
Faith, differs from hope in the extension of its object,
and in the intention of degree. St. Austin thus accounts their differences:
The Acts of Hope are,
1. To rely upon God with a confident expectation of his promises; ever esteeming that every promise of God is a magazine of all that grace and relief which we can need in that instance for which the promise is made. Every degree of hope is a degree of confidence.
2. To esteem all the danger of an action, and the possibilities of miscarriage, and every cross accident that can intervene, to be no defect on God’s part, but either a mercy on his part, or a fault on ours; for then we shall be sure to trust in God when we see him to be our confidence, and ourselves the cause of all mischances. The hope of a Christian is prudent and religious.
3. To rejoice in the midst of a misfortune, or seeming sadness, knowing that this may work for good, and will, if we be not wanting to our souls. This is a direct act of hope to look through the cloud, and look for a beam of the light from God; and this is called in Scripture ‘ rejoicing in tribulation, when the God of hope fills us with all joy in believing.’ Every degree of hope brings a degree of joy.
4. To desire, to pray, and to long for the great object of our hope, the mighty price of our high calling; and to desire the other things of this life as they are promised, that is, so far as they are made necessary and useful to us, in order to God’s glory and the great end of souls. Hope and fasting are said to be the two wings of prayer. Fasting is but as the wing of a bird; but hope is like the wing of an angel, soaring up to heaven, and bears our prayers to the throne of grace. Without hope, it is impossible to pray, but hope makes our prayers reasonable, passionate, and religious; for it relies upon God’s promise, or experience, or providence, and story. Prayer is always in proportion to our hope, zealous and affectionate.
5. Perseverance is the perfection of the duty of hope, and its last act; and so long as our hope continues, so long we go on in duty and diligence; but he that is to raise a castle in an hour, sits down and does nothing towards it; and Herod, the sophister, left off to teach his son, when he saw that twenty-four pages, appointed to wait on him, and called by the several letters of the alphabet, could never make him to understand his letters perfectly.
Rules to govern our Hope.
1. Let your hope be moderate; proportioned to your state, person, and condition, whether it be or gifts or graces, or temporal favours. It is an ambitious hope for persons, whose diligence is like them that are least in the kingdom of heaven, to believe themselves endeared to God as the greatest saints; or that they shall have a throne equal to St. Paul, or the blessed Virgin Mary. A stammerer cannot, with moderation, hope for the gift of tongues; or a peasant to become learned as Origen; or if a beggar desires, or hopes, to become a king, or asks for a thousand pounds a year, we call him impudent, not passionate, much less reasonable. Hope that God will crown your endeavours with equal measures of that reward which he indeed freely gives, but yet gives according to our proportions. Hope for good success according to, or not much beyond, the efficacy of the causes and the instrument; and let the husbandman hope for a good harvest, not for a rich kingdom, or a victorious army.
2. Let your hope be well founded, relying upon just confidences;
that is, upon God, according to his revelations and promises. For it is possible
for a man to have a vain hope upon God; and, in matters of religion, it is presumption
to hope that God’s mercies will be poured forth upon lazy persons, that do nothing
towards holy and strict walking, nothing (I say) but trust and long for an event
besides and against all disposition of the means. Every false principle in religion
is a reed of Egypt, false and dangerous. Rely not in temporal things upon uncertain
prophecies and astrology, not upon our own wit or industry, not upon gold or friends,
not upon armies and princes; expect not health from physicians, that cannot cure
their own breath, much less their mortality: use all lawful instruments, but expect
nothing from them above their natural or ordinary efficacy, and, in the use of them,
from God expect a blessing. A hope that is easy and credulour is an arm of flesh,
an ill supporter without a bone.
3. Let your hope be without vanity, or garishness of spirit; but sober, grave, and silent, fixed in the heart, not borne upon the lip, apt to support our spirits within, but not to provide envy abroad.
4. Let your hope be of things possible, safe, and useful.
He that hopes for an opportunity of acting his revenge, or lust, or rapine, watches to do himself a mischief. All evils of ourselves or brethren are objects of our fear, not hope; and, when it is truly understood, things useless and unsafe can no more be wished for than things impossible can be obtained.
5. Let your hope be patient, without tediousness of spirit, or hastiness of prefixing time. Make no limits or prescriptions to God; but let your prayers and endeavours go on still with a constant attendance on the periods of God’s providence. The men of Bethulia resolved to wait upon God but five days longer; but deliverance stayed seven days, and yet came at last. And take not every accident for an argument of despair; but go on still in hoping; and begin again to work if any ill accident have interrupted you.
Means of Hope, and Remedies against Despair.
The means to cure despair, and to continue or increase hope, are partly by consideration, partly by exercise.
1. Apply your mind to the cure of all the proper causes of despair:
and they are, weakness of spirit or violence of passion. He that greedily covets
is impatient of delay, and desperate in contrary accidents; and he that is little
of heart is also of little hope, and apt to sorrow and suspicion.
2. Despise the things of the world, and be indifferent to all
changes and events of Providence; and for the things of God, the promises are certain
to be performed in kind; and where there is less variety of chance, there is less
possibility of being mocked: Ελπις και σν Τυχμ, ρεγα Χαιρετε την υυυν ενρν. Ονκ ετι γαρ σφετειροις ιπιτερποραι ερρετε αρφω Ουνεκεν ιν ρεροπεσσι πυλυπλανεες ραλα εστε. Οσσα γαρ ατρεκεως ουκ εσσεται, νμμες ιν μριν φασματα, ως εν νπνω, ερξαλλετε, νια τ εοντα αιζοιτε, στροφεοιτε, οσονς εμεν νστερον οντας Ενροιτ υν νυεντας οπερ ξευις εστι νομσαι. Pallad. Brunk. Anthol. t. ii. p.437.
3. So long as your hopes are regular and reasonable, though in
temporal affairs, such as are deliverance from enemies, escaping a storm or shipwreck,
recovery from a sickness, ability to pay your debts, etc., remember that there are
some things ordinary, and some things extraordinary, to prevent despair. In ordinary,
remember that the very hoping in God is an endearment of him, and a means to obtain
the blessing: ‘I will deliver him, because he hath put his trust in me.’ 2. There
are in God all those glorious attributes and excellences which in the nature of
things can possibly create or confirm hope. God is, 1. strong; 2. wise; 3. true;
4. loving. There cannot be added another capacity to create a confidence; for upon
these premises we cannot fail of receiving what is fit for us. 3. God hath obliged
himself by promise that we shall have the good of everything we desire; for even
losses and denials shall work for the good of them that fear God. And, if we will
trust the truth of God for performance of the general, we may well trust his wisdom
to choose for us the particular. But the extraordinaries of God are apt to supply
the defect of all natural and human possibilities. 1. God hath, in many instances,
given extraordinary virtue to the active causes and instruments — to a jaw-bone,
to kill a multitude; to three hundred men, to destroy a great army; to Jonathan
and his armour-bearer, to route a whole garrison. 2. He hath given excellent sufferance
and vigorousness to the sufferers, arming them with strange courage, heroical fortitude,
invincible resolution, and glorious patience: and thus he lays no more upon us than
we are able to bear; for when he increases our sufferings, he lessens them by increasing
our patience. 3. His providence is extra-regular, and produces strange things beyond
common rules; and he that led Israel through a sea, and made a rock pour forth waters,
and the heavens to give them bread and flesh, and whole armies to be destroyed with
fantastic noises, and the fortune of all France to be recovered and entirely revolved
by the arms and conduct of a girl, against the torrent of the English fortune and
chivalry, can do what he please, and still retain the same affections to his people,
and the same providence over mankind as ever. And it is impossible for that man
to despair who remembers that his helper is omnipotent, and can do what he please
4. If your ease be brought to the last extremity, and that you are at the pit’s brink, even the very margin of the grave, yet then despair not; at least put it off a little longer: and remember that whatsoever final accident takes away all hope from you, if you stay a little longer, and, in the meanwhile, bear it sweetly, it will also take away all despair too. For when you enter into the regions of death you rest from all your labours and your fears.
5. Let them who are tempted to despair of their salvation, consider how much Christ suffered to redeem us from sin and its eternal punishment; and he that considers this must needs believe that the desires which God had to save us were not less than infinite, and therefore not easily to be satisfied without it.
6. Let no man despair of God’s mercies to forgive him, unless he be sure that his sins are greater than God’s mercies. If they be not, we have much reason to hope that the stronger ingredient will prevail, so long as we are in the time and state of repentance, and within the possibilities and latitude of the covenant; and as long as any promise can but reflect upon him with an oblique beam of comfort. Possibly the man may err in his judgment of circumstances; and therefore let him fear: but, because it is not certain he is mistaken, let him not despair.
7. Consider that God, who knows all the events of men, and what their final condition shall be, who shall be saved, and who will perish; yet he treateth them as his own, calls them to be his own, offers fair conditions as to his own, gives them blessings, arguments of mercy, and instances of fear, to call them off from death, and to call them home to life; and, in all this, shows no despair of happiness to them; and therefore much less should any man despair for himself, since he never was able to read the scrolls of the eternal predestination.
8. Remember that despair belongs only to passionate fools or villains,
such as were Achitophel and Judas, or else to devils and damned persons; and as
the hope of salvation is a good disposition towards it, so is despair a certain
consignation to eternal ruin. A man may be damned for despairing to be saved. Despair
is the proper passion of damnation. “God hath placed truth and felicity in heaven,
curiosity and repentance upon earth, but misery and despair are the portions of
hell.”
9. Gather together into your spirit and its treasure-house, the memory, not only all the promises of God, but also the remembrances of experience and the former senses of the divine favours, that from thence you may argue from times past to the present, and enlarge to the future and to greater blessings. For although the conjectures and expectations of hope are not like the conclusions of faith, yet they are a helmet against the scorching of despair in temporal things, and an anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast, against the fluctuations of the spirit in matters of the soul. St. Bernard reckons divers principles of hope, by enumerating the instances of the divine mercy; and we may be them reduce this rule to practice, in the following manner: 1. God hath preserved me from many sins; his mercies are infinite: I hope he will still preserve me from more, and for ever. 2. I have sinned, and God smote me not; his mercies are still over the penitent: I hope he will deliver me from all the evils I have deserved. He hath forgiven me many sins of malice, and therefore surely he will pity my infirmities. 3. God visited my heart and changed it; he loves the work of his own hands, and so my heart is now become; I hope he will love this too. 4. When I repented, he received me graciously; and therefore I hope, if I do my endeavour, he will totally forgive me. 5. He helped my slow and beginning endeavours; and therefore I hope he will lead me to perfection. 6. When he had given me something first, then he gave me more; I hope, therefore, he will keep me from falling, and give me the grace of perseverance. 7. He hath chosen me to be a disciple of Christ’s in situation; he hath elected me to his kingdom of grace; and therefore I hope also to the kingdom of his glory. 8. He died for me when I was his enemy; and therefore I hope he will save me when he hath reconciled me to him and is become my friend. 9. ‘God hath given us his Son: how should not he with him give us all things else?’ All these St. Bernard reduces to these three heads, as the instruments of all our hopes: 1. The charity of God adopting us; 2. The truth of his promises; 3. The power of his performance: which, if any truly weighs, no infirmity or accident can break his hopes into indiscernible fragments, but some good planks will remain after the greatest storm and shipwreck. This was St. Paul’s instrument: ‘Experience begets hope, and hope maketh not ashamed.’
10. Do thou take care only of thy duty, of the means and proper instruments of thy purpose, and leave the end to God — lay that up with him, and he will take care of all that is entrusted to him; and this, being an act of confidence in God, is also a means of security to thee.
11. By special arts of spiritual prudence and arguments secure the confident belief of the resurrection; and thou canst not but hope for everything else which you may reasonably expect or lawfully desire upon the stock of the divine mercies and promises.
12. If a despair seizes you in a particular temporal instance, let it not defile thy spirit with impure mixture, or mingle in spiritual considerations; but rather let it make thee fortify thy soul in matters of religion, that, by being thrown out of your earthly dwelling and confidence, you may retire into the strengths of grace, and hope the more strongly in that by how much you are the more defeated in this, that despair of a fortune or a success may become the necessity of all virtue.
SECTION III.
Of Charity, or the Love of God.
Love is the greatest thing that God can give us; for himself is love; and it is the greatest thing we can give to God; for it will also give ourselves and carry with it all that is ours. The apostle calls it the band of perfection; it is the old, and it is the new, and it is the great commandment, and it is all the commandments; for it is the fulfilling of the law. It does the work of all other graces without any instrument but its own immediate virtue. For as the love to sin makes a man sin against all his own reason, and all the discourses of wisdom, and all the advices of his friends, and without temptation, and without opportunity, so does the love of God; it makes a man chaste without the laborious arts of fasting and exterior disciplines, temperate in the midst of feasts, and is active enough to choose it without any intermedial appetites, and reaches at glory through the very heart of grace without any other arms but those of love. It is a grace that loves God for himself, and our neighbours for God. The consideration of God’s goodness and bounty, the experience of those profitable and excellent emanations from him, may be, and most commonly are, the first motive of our love; but when we are once entered, and have tasted the goodness of God, we love the spring for its own excellency, passing from passion to reason, from thanking to adoring, from sense to spirit, from considering ourselves to an union with God: and this is the image and little representation of heaven; it is beatitude in picture, or rather the infancy and beginnings of glory.
We need no incentives by way of special enumeration to move us
to the love of God, for we cannot love anything for any reason real or imaginary,
but that excellence is infinitely more eminent in God. There can but two things
create love — perfection and usefulness: to which answer on our part, 1. Admiration;
and 2. Desire; and both these are centered in love. For the entertainment of the
first, there is in God an infinite nature, immensity or vastness without extension
or limit, immutability, eternity, omnipotence, omniscience, holiness, dominion,
providence, bounty, mercy, justice, perfection in himself, and the end to which
all things and all actions must be directed, and will, at last, arrive. The consideration
of which may be heightened, if we consider our distance from all these glories,
our smallness and limited nature, our nothing, our inconstancy, our age like a span,
our weakness and ignorance, our poverty, our inadvertency and inconsideration, our
disabilities and disaffections to do good, our harsh natures and unmerciful inclinations,
our universal iniquity, and our necessities and dependencies, not only on God originally
and essentially, but even our need of the meanest of God’s creatures, and our being
obnoxious to the weakest and most contemptible. But for the entertainment of the
second, we may consider that in him is a torrent of pleasure for the voluptuous;
he is the fountain of honour for the ambitious; an inexhaustible treasure for the
covetous. Our vices are in love with fantastic pleasures and images of perfection,
which are truly and really to be found nowhere but in God. And therefore our virtues
have such proper objects that it is but reasonable they should all turn into love;
for certain it is that this love will turn all into virtue. For in the scrutinies
for righteousness and judgment, when it is inquired whether such a person be a good
man or no, the meaning is not, What does he believe? or what does he hope? but what
he loves.
The Acts of Love to God are,
1. Love does all things which may please the beloved person; it performs all his commandments: and this is one of the greatest instances and arguments of our love that God requires of us — this is love, ‘That we keep his commandments.’ Love is obedient.
2. It does all the intimations and secret significations of his pleasure whom we love; and this is an argument of a great degree of it. The first instance is, it makes the love accepted; but this gives a greatness and singularity to it. The first is the least, and less than it cannot do our duty; but without this second we cannot come to perfection. Great love is also pliant and inquisitive in the instances of its expression.
3. Love gives away all things, that so he may advance the interest of the beloved person: it relieves all that he would have relieved, and spends itself in such real significations as it is enabled withal. He never loved God that will quit anything of his religion to save his money. Love is always liberal and communicative.
4. It suffers all things that are imposed by its beloved, or that
can happen for his sake, or that intervene in his service, cheerfully, sweetly,
willingly expecting that God should turn them into good, and instruments of felicity.
‘Charity hopeth all things, endureth all things.’
5. Love is also impatient of anything that may displease the beloved person, hating all sin as the enemy of its friend; for love contracts all the same relations, and marries the same friendships and the same hatreds; and all affection to a sin is perfectly inconsistent with the love of God. Love is not divided between God and God’s enemy: we must love God with all our heart; that is, give him a whole and undivided affection, having love for nothing else but such things which he allows, and which he commands or loves himself.
6. Love endeavours for ever to be present, to converse with, to
enjoy, to be united with its object; loves to be talking of him, reciting his praises,
telling his stories, repeating his words, imitating his gestures, transcribing his
copy in everything; and every degree of love; and it can endure anything but the
displeasure and the absence of its beloved. For we are not to use God and religion
as men use perfumes, with which they are delighted when they have them, but can
very well be without them. True charity is restless till it enjoys God in such instances
in which it wants him; it is like hunger and thirst, it must be fed, or it cannot
be answered:
7. True love in all accidents looks upon the beloved person, and observes his countenance, and how he approves or disapproves, and accordingly looks sad or cheerful. He that loves God is not displeased at those accidents which God chooses, nor murmurs at those changes which he makes in his family, nor envies at those gifts he bestows; but chooses as he likes; and is ruled by his judgment, and is perfectly of his persuasion, loving to learn where God is the teacher, and being content to be ignorant or silent where he is not pleased to open himself.
8. Love is curious of little things, of circumstances and measures,
and little accidents, not allowing to itself any infirmity which it strives not
to master, aiming at what it cannot yet reach, desiring to be of an angelical purity,
and of a perfect innocence, and a seraphical fervour, and fears every image of offence;
is as much afflicted at an idle word as some at an act of adultery, and will not
allow to itself so much anger as will disturb a child, nor endure the impurity of
a dream.
The Measures and Rules of Divine Love.
But because this passion is pure as the brightest and smoothest mirror, and, therefore, is apt to be sullied with every impurer breath, we must be careful that our love to God be governed by these measures:
1. That our love to God be sweet, even, and full of tranquillity, having in it no violences or transportations, but going on in a course of holy actions and duties, which are proportionable to our condition and present state; not to satisfy all the desire, but all the probabilities and measures of our strength. A new beginner in religion hath passionate and violent desires; but they must not be the measure of his actions; but he must consider his strength, his late sickness and state of death, the proper temptations of his condition, and stand at first upon defence; not go to storm a strong fort, or attack a potent enemy, or do heroical actions, and fitter for giants in religion. Indiscreet violences and untimely forwardness are the rocks of religion against which tender spirits often suffer shipwreck.
2. Let our love be prudent and without illusion, that is, that it express itself in such instances which God hath chosen or which we choose ourselves by proportion to his rules and measures. Love turns into doating when religion turns into superstition. No degree of love can be imprudent, but the expressions may: we cannot love God too much, but we may proclaim it in indecent manners.
3. Let our love be firm, constant, and inseparable; not coming and returning like the tide, but descending like a never-failing river, ever running into the ocean of divine excellency, passing on in the channels of duty and a constant obedience, and never ceasing to be what it is till it be turned into sea and vastness, even the immensity of a blessed eternity.
Although the consideration of the divine excellencies and mercies be infinitely sufficient to produce in us love to God (who is invisible, and yet not distant from us, but we feel him in his blessings, he dwells in our hearts by faith, we feed on him in the sacrament, and are made all one with him in the incarnation and glorifications of Jesus: yet, that we may the better enkindle and increase our love to God, the following advices are not useless:
Helps to increase our Love to God, by Way of Exercise.
1. Cut off all earthly and sensual loves, for they pollute and unhallow the pure and spiritual love. Every degree of inordinate affection to the things of this world, and every act of love to a sin, is a perfect enemy to the love of God; and it is a great shame to take any part of our affection from the eternal God, to bestow it upon his creature in defiance of the Creator, or to give it to the devil, our open enemy, in disparagement of him, who is the fountain of all excellences and celestial amities.
2. Lay fetters and restraints upon the imaginative and fantastic part; because our fancy, being an imperfect and higher faculty, is usually pleased with the entertainment of shadows and gauds; and because the things of the world fill it with such beauties and fantastic imagery, the fancy, presents such objects as are amiable to the affections and elective powers. Persons of fancy such as are women and children, have always the most violent loves; but, therefore, if we be careful with what representments we fill our fancy, we may the sooner rectify our love. To this purpose it is good that we transplant the instruments of fancy into religion, and for this reason music was brought into churches, and ornaments, and perfumes, and comely garments, and solemnities, and decent ceremonies, that the busy and less discerning fancy, being bribed with its proper objects, may be instrumental to a more celestial and spiritual love.
3. Remove solicitude or worldly cares, and multitudes of secular businesses, for if these take up the intention and actual application of our thoughts and our employments, they will also possess our passions, which, if they be filled with one object, though ignoble, cannot attend another, though more excellent. We always contract a friendship and relation with those with whom we converse; our very country is dear to us for our being in it; and the neighbours of the same village, and those that buy and sell with us, have seized upon some portions of our love; and, therefore, if we dwell in the affairs of the world we shall also grow in love with them; and all our love or all our hatred, all our hopes or all our fears, which the eternal God would willingly secure to himself, and esteem amongst his treasures and precious things, shall be spent upon trifles and vanities.
4. Do not only choose the things of God, but secure your inclinations and aptnesses for God and for religion; for it will be a hard thing for a man to do such a personal violence to his first desires as to choose whatsoever he hath no mind to. A man will many times satisfy the importunity and daily solicitations of his first longings; and, therefore, there is nothing can secure our loves to God but stopping the natural fountains, and making religion to grow near the first desires of the soul.
5. Converse with God by frequent prayer. In particular, desire that your desires may be right and love to have your affections regular and holy. To which purpose make very frequent addresses to God by ejaculations and communions, and an assiduous daily devotion; discover to him all your wants, complain to him of all your affronts; do as Hezekiah did, lay your misfortunes and your ill news before him, spread them before the Lord, call to him for health, run to him for counsel, beg of him for pardon; and it is as natural to love him to whom we make such addresses, and on whom we have such dependencies, as it is for children to love their parents.
6. Consider the immensity and vastness of the divine love to us,
expressed in all the emanations of his providence; 1. In his creation; 2. In his
conservation of us. For it is not my prince, or my patron, or my friend, that supports
me, or relieves my needs; but God who made the corn that my friend sends me; who
created the grapes, and supported him, who hath as many dependencies, and as many
natural necessities, and as perfect disabilities, as myself. God, indeed, made him
the instrument of his providence to me, as he hath made his own land or his own
cattle to him, with this only difference, that God, by his ministration to me, intends
to do him a favour and a reward which to natural instruments he does not; 3. In
giving his Son; 4. In forgiving our sins; 5. In adopting us to glory; and ten thousand
times ten thousand little addicents and instances happening in the doing every of
these — and it is not possible but for so great love we should give love again;
for God, we should give man; for felicity, we should part with our misery. Nay,
so great is the love of the holy Jesus, God incarnate, that he would leave all his
triumphant glories, and die once more for man, if it were necessary for procuring
felicity to him.
In the use of these instruments, love will grow in several knots and steps, like the sugar-canes of India, according to a thousand varieties in the persons loving; and it will be great or less in several persons, and in the same, according to his growth in Christianity. But in general discoursing there are but two states of love; and those are labour of love, and the zeal of love: the first is duty; the second if perfection.
The two States of Love to God.
The least love that is must be obedient, pure, simple, and communicative; that is, it must exclude all affection to sin, and all inordinate affection to the world, and must be expressive, according to our power, in the instances of duty, and must be love for love’s sake; and for this love, martyrdom is the highest instance — that is, a readiness of mind rather to suffer any evil than to do any. Of this our blessed Saviour affirmed that no man had greater love than this; that is, this is the highest point of duty, the greatest love, that God requires of man. And yet he that is the most imperfect must have this love also in preparation of mind, and must differ from another in nothing, except in the degrees of promptness and alacrity. And in this sense, he that loves God truly, (though but with a beginning and tender love,) yet he loves God with all his heart, that is, with that degree of love which is the highest point of our duty and of God’s charge upon us; and he that loves God with all his heart may yet increase with the increase of God; just as there are degrees of love to God among the saints, and yet each of them love him with all their powers and capacities.
2. But the greater state of love is the zeal of love, which runs out into excrescences and suckers, like a fruitful and pleasant tree; or bursting into gums, and producing fruits, not of a monstrous but of an extraordinary and heroical, greatness. Concerning which these cautions are to be observed:
Cautions and Rules concerning Zeal.
1. If zeal be in the beginnings of our spiritual birth,
or be short, sudden, and transient, or be a consequent of a man’s natural temper,
or come upon any cause but after a long growth of a temperate and well-regulated
love — it is to be suspected for passion and forwardness, rather than the vertical
point of love.
2.That zeal only is good which in a fervent love, hath temperate expressions. For let the affection boil as high as it can, yet if it boil over into irregular and strange actions, it will have but few, but will need many excuses. Elijah was zealous for the Lord of Hosts, and yet he was so transported with it, that he could not receive answer from God till by music he was recomposed and tamed; and Moses broke both the tables of the law by being passionately zealous against them that broke the first.
3. Zeal must spend its greatest heat principally in those things that concern ourselves; but with great care and restraint in those that concern others.
4. Remember that zeal, being an excrescence of divine love, must
in no sense contradict any action of love. Love to God includes love
5. That zeal that concerns others can spend itself in nothing but arts and actions and charitable instruments, for their good; and when it concerns the good of many that one should suffer, it must be done by persons of a competent authority, and in great necessity, in seldom instances, according to the law of God or man; but never by private right, or for trifling accidents, or in mistaken propositions. The Zealots, in the old law, had authority to transfix and stab some certain persons, but God gave them warrant; it was in the case of idolatry, or such notorious huge crimes, the danger of which was insupportable, and the cognizance of which was infallible; and yet that warrant expired with the synagogue.
6. Zeal may be let loose in the instances of internal, personal,
and spiritual actions, that are matters of direct duty, as in prayers, and acts
of adoration, and thanksgiving, and frequent addresses, provided that no indirect
act pass upon them to defile them, such as complacency and opinions of sanctity,
censuring others, scruples and opinions of necessity, unnecessary fears, superstitious
numberings of times and hours; but let the zeal be as forward as it will, as devout
as it will, as seraphical as it will, in the direct address and intercourse with
God there is no danger, no transgression. Do all the parts of your duty as earnestly
as if the salvation of all the world, and the whole glory of God, and the confusion
of all devils, all that you hope or desire, did depend upon every one action.
8. Let zeal be seated in the will and choice, and regulated with
prudence and a sober understanding, not in the fancies and affections;
The sum is this; that zeal is not a direct duty, nowhere commanded
for itself, and is nothing but a forwardness and circumstance of another duty, and
therefore is then only acceptable when it advances the love of God and our neighbours,
whose circumstance it is.
*The other part of love to God is love to our neighbour, for which I have reserved the paragraph of alms.
Of the external Actions of Religion.
Religion teaches us to present to God our bodies as well
as our souls, for God is the Lord of both; and if the body serves the soul in actions
natural and civil and intellectual, it must not be eased in the only offices of
religion, unless the body shall expect no portion of the rewards of religion, such
as are resurrection, reunion, and glorification. Our bodies are to God a living
sacrifice; and to present them to God is holy and acceptable.
The actions of the body, as it serves to religion, and as it is distinguished from sobriety and justice, either relate to the word of God, or to prayer, or to repentance, and make these kinds of external actions of religion: 1. Reading and hearing the word of God; 2. Fasting and corporal austerities, called by St. Paul bodily exercise; 3. Feasting, or keeping days of public joy and thanksgiving.
SECTION IV.
Of reading or hearing the Word of God.
Reading and hearing the word of God are but the several circumstances of the same duty: instrumental especially to faith, but consequently to all other graces of the spirit. It is all one to us whether by the eye or by the ear the Spirit conveys his precepts to us. If we hear St. Paul saying to us, that ‘whore mongers and adulterers God will judge,’ or read it in one of his epistles, in either of them we are equally and sufficiently instructed.
The Scriptures read are the same thing to us which the same doctrine was when it was preached by the disciples of our blessed Lord, and we are to learn of either with the same dispositions. There are many that cannot read the word, and they must take it in by the ear, and they that can read find the same word of God by the eye. It is necessary that all men learn it in some way or other, and it is sufficient in order to their practice that they learn it any way. The word of God is all those commandments and revelations, those promises and threatenings, the stories and sermons recorded in the Bible; nothing else is the word of God that we know of by any certain instrument. The good books and spiritual discourses, the sermons or homilies written or spoken by men, are but the words of men, or rather explications of, and exhortations according to, the word of God; but of themselves they are not the word of God. In a sermon, the text only is, in a proper sense, to be called God’s word; and yet good sermons are of great use and convenience for the advantages of religion. He that preaches an hour together against drunkenness, with the tongue of men or angels, hath spoke no other word of God but this, ‘Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess;’ and he that writes that sermon in a book, and publishes that book, hath preached to all that read it a louder sermon than could be spoken in a church. This I say to this purpose, that we may separate truth from error, popular opinions from substantial truths. For God preaches to us in the Scripture, and by his secret assistances and spiritual thoughts and holy motions: good men preach to us when they, by popular arguments and human arts and compliances, expound and press any of those doctrines which God hath preached unto us in his holy word. But,
1. The Holy Ghost is certainly the best preacher in the world, and the words of Scripture the best sermons.
2. All the doctrine of salvation is plainly set down there, that the most unlearned person, by hearing it read, may understand all his duty. What can be plainer spoken than this, ‘Thou shalt not kill; Be not drunk with wine; Husbands, love your wives; Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye so to them.’ The wit of man cannot more plainly tell us our duty, or more fully, than the Holy Ghost hath done already.
3. Good sermons and good books are of excellent use; but yet they can serve no other end but that we practice the plain doctrines of Scripture.
4. What Abraham, in the parable, said concerning the brethren
of the rich man, is here very proper; ‘They have Moses and the prophets, let them
hear them; but if they refuse to hear these neither will they believe though one
should arise from the dead to preach unto them.’
5. Reading the holy Scriptures is a duty expressly commanded us,
But this duty is reduced to practice in the following rules:
Rules for hearing or reading the Word of God.
1. Set apart some portion of thy time, according to the opportunities of thy calling and necessary employment, for the reading of Holy Scriptures; and, if it be possible, every day read or hear some of it read: you are sure that book teaches all truth, commands all holiness, and promises all happiness.
2. When it is in your power to choose, accustom yourself to such portions which are most plain and certain duty, and which contain the story of the life and death of our blessed Saviour. Read the gospels, the Psalms of David, and especially those portions of Scripture which, by the wisdom of the church, are appointed to be publicly read upon Sundays and holy days, viz. the epistles and gospels. In the choice of any other portions, you may advise with a spiritual guide, that you may spend your time with most profit.
3. Fail not diligently to attend to the reading of Holy Scriptures upon those days wherein it is most publicly and solemnly read in churches, for at such times, besides the learning our duty, we obtain a blessing along with it, it becoming to us, upon those days a part of the solemn divine worship.
4. When the word of God is read or preached to you, be sure you be of a ready heart and mind, free from worldly cares and thoughts, diligent to hear, careful to mark, studious to remember, and desirous to practise all that is commanded, and to live according to it; do not hear for any other end but to become better in our life, and to be instructed in every good work, and to increase in the love and service of God.
5. Beg of God, by prayer, that he would give you the spirit of obedience and profit, and that he would, by his Spirit, write the word in your heart, and that you describe it in your life: to which purpose serve yourself of some affectionate ejaculations to that purpose before and after this duty.
Concerning Spiritual Books and Ordinary Sermons, take in these Advices also.
6. Let not a prejudice to any man’s person hinder thee from receiving good by his doctrine, if it be according to godliness; but (if occasion offer it, or especially to godliness; but (if occasion offer it, or especially if duty present it to thee- that is if it be preached in that assembly where thou art bound to be present) accept the word preached as a message from God, and the minister as his angel in that ministration.
7. Consider and remark the doctrine that is represented to thee in any discourse; and if the preacher adds accidental advantages, anything to comply with thy weakness, or to put thy spirit into action or holy resolution, remember it and make use of it. But if the preacher be a weak person, yet the text is the doctrine, thou art to remember, that contains all thy duty; it is worth they attendance to hear that spoken often and renewed upon thy thoughts; and though thou beest a learned man, yet the same things which thou knowest already, if spoken by another, may be made active by that application. I can better be comforted by my own considerations if another hand applies them than if I do it myself; because the word of God does not work as a natural agent, but as a divine instrument; it does not prevail by the force of deduction and artificial discoursings only, but chiefly by way of blessing in the ordinance and in the ministry of an appointed person. At least obey the public order, and reverence the constitution, and give good example of humility, charity, and obedience.
8. When Scriptures are read, you are only to inquire, with diligence and modesty, into the meaning of the Spirit; but if homilies or sermons be made upon the words of Scripture, you are to consider, whether all that be spoken be conforming to the Scriptures; for although you may practise for human reasons and human arguments ministered from the preacher’s art, yet you must practise nothing but the command of God, nothing but the doctrine of Scripture; that is, the text.
9. Use the advice of some spiritual or other prudent man for the choice of such spiritual books, which may be of use and benefit for the edification of thy spirit in the ways of holy living; and esteem that time well accounted for that is prudently and affectionately employed in hearing or reading good books and pious discourses; ever remembering, that God, by hearing us speak to him in prayer, obliges us to hear him speak to us in his word, by what instrument soever it be conveyed.
SECTION V.
Of Fasting.
Fasting, if it be considered in itself, without relation to spiritual ends, is a duty nowhere enjoined or counselled. But Christianity hath to do with it as it may be made an instrument of the Spirit, by subduing the lusts of the flesh, or removing any hinderances of religion. And it hath been practised by all ages of the church, and advised in order to three ministries; 1. To prayer; 2. To mortification of bodily lusts; 3. To repentance: and it is to be practised according to the following measures:
Rules for Christian Fasting.
1. Fasting, in order to prayer, is to be measured by the proportions of the times of prayer; that is, it ought to be a total fast from all things, during the solemnity, unless a palpable necessity intervene. Thus the Jews ate nothing upon the Sabbath-days till their great offices were performed; that is, about the sixth hour: and St. Peter used it as an argument, that the apostles in Pentecost were not drunk, because it was but the third hour of the day; of such a day in which it was not lawful to eat or drink till the sixth hour: and the Jews were offended at the disciples for plucking the ears of corn on the Sabbath, early in the morning, because it was before the time in which, by their customs, they esteemed it lawful to break their fast. In imitation of this custom, and in prosecution of the reason of it, the Christian church hath religiously observed fasting, before the holy communion; and the more devout persons (though without any obligation at all) refused to eat or drink till they had finished their morning devotions: and further yet, upon days of public humiliation, which are designed to be spent wholly in devotion, and for the averting God’s judgments, (if they were imminent,) fasting is commanded together with prayer: commanded (I say) by the church to this end — that the spirit might be clearer and more angelical, when it is quitted in some proportions from the loads of flesh.
2. Fasting, when it is in order to prayer, must be a total abstinence from all meat, or else an abatement of the quantity; for the help which fasting does to prayer cannot be served by changing flesh into fish, or milk-meats into dry diet; but by turning much into little, or little into none at all, during the time of solemn and extraordinary prayer.
3. Fasting, as it is instrumental to prayer, must be attended
with other aids of the like virtue and efficacy; such as are removing for the time
all worldly cares and secular business; and therefore our blessed Saviour enfolds
these parts within the same caution, ‘take heed, lest your hearts be overcharged
with surfeiting and drunkenness and the cares of this world, and that day overtake
you unawares.’ To which add alms; for upon the wings of fasting and alms holy prayer
infallibly mounts up to heaven.
4. When fasting is intended to serve the duty or repentance, it is then best chosen when it is short, sharp, and afflictive; that is, either a total abstinence from all nourishment, according as we shall appoint or be appointed, during such a time as is separate for the solemnity and attendance upon the employment: or, if we shall extend our severity beyond the solemn days, and keep our anger against our sin, as we are to keep our sorrow, that is, always in a readiness, and often to be called upon; then, to refuse a pleasant morsel, to abstain from the bread of our desires, and only to take wholesome and less pleasing nourishment, vexing our appetite by refusing a lawful satisfaction, since, in its petulancy and luxury, it prayed upon an unlawful.
5. Fasting designed for repentance must be ever joined with an extreme care that we fast from sin; for there is no greater folly or indecency in the world than to commit that for which I am now judging and condemning myself. This is the best fast; and the other may serve to promote the interest of this, by increasing the disaffection to it, and multiplying arguments against it.
6. He that fasts for repentance must, during that solemnity, abstain from all bodily delights, and the sensuality of all his senses and his appetites; for a man must not, when he mourns in his fast, be merry in his sport; weep at dinner, and laugh all day after; have a silence in his kitchen, and music in his chamber; judge the stomach, and feast the other senses. I deny not but a man may, in a single instance, punish a particular sin with a propalate, he may choose to fast only; if he have sinned in softness and in his touch, he may choose to lie hard, or work hard, and use sharp inflictions; but although this discipline be proper and particular, yet because the sorrow is of the whole man, no sense must rejoice, or be with any study or purpose feasted and entertained softly. This rule is intended to relate to the solemn days appointed for repentance publicly or privately; besides which, in the whole course of our life, even in the midst of our most festival and freer joys, we may sprinkle some single instances and acts of self-condemning, or punishing; as to refuse a pleasant morsel or a delicious draught with a tacit remembrance of the sin that now returns to displease my spirit. And, though these actions be single, there is no indecency in them; because a man may abate of his ordinary liberty and hold freedom with great prudence, so he does it without singularity in himself or trouble to others; but he may not abate of his solemn sorrow: that may be caution; but this would be softness, effeminacy, and indecency.
7. When fasting is an act of mortification, that is, is intended
to subdue a bodily lust, as the spirit of fornication, or the fondness of strong
and impatient appetites, it must not be a sudden, sharp, and violent fast, but a
state of fasting, a diet of fasting, a daily lessening our portion of meat and drink,
and a choosing such a course diet,
8. Fasting alone will not cure this devil, though it helps much towards it; but it must not therefore be neglected, but assisted by all the proper instruments of remedy against this unclean spirit; and what it is unable to do alone, in company with other instruments, and God’s blessing upon them, it may effect.
9. All fasting, for whatever end it be undertaken, must be done without any opinion of the necessity of the thing itself, without censuring others, with all humility, in order to the proper end; and just as a man takes physic, of which no man hath reason to be proud, and no man things it necessary, but because he is in sickness, or in danger and disposition to it.
10. All fasts ordained by lawful authority are to be observed in order to the same purposes to which they are enjoined, and to be accompanied with actions of the same nature, just as it is in private fasts; for there is no other difference, but that in public our superiors choose for us what in private we do for ourselves.
11. Fasts ordained by lawful authority are not to be neglected; because alone they can do the thing in order to which they were enjoined. It may be, one day of humiliation will not obtain the blessing, or alone kill the lust; yet it must not be despised if it can do anything towards it. And act of fasting is an act of self-denial; and, though it do not produce the habit, yet it is a good act.
12. When the principal end why a fast is publicly prescribed is obtain by some other instrument, in a particular person — as if the spirit of fornication be cured by the rite of marriage, or by a gift of chastity — yet that person so eased is not freed from the fasts of the church by that alone, if those fasts can prudently serve any other end of religion, as that of prayer, or repentance, or mortification of some other appetite; for when it is instrumental to any end of the Spirit, it is freed from superstition, and then we must have some other reason to quit us from the obligation, or that alone will not do it.
13. When the fast publicly commanded by reason of some indisposition in the particular person cannot operate to the end of the commandment, yet the avoiding offence, and the complying with public order, is reason enough to make the obedience to be necessary. For he that is otherwise disobliged, as when the reason of the law ceases as to his particular, yet remains still obliged if he cannot do otherwise without scandal; but this is an obligation of charity, not of justice.
14. All fasting is to be used with prudence and charity; for there
is no end to which fasting serves but may be obtained by other instruments; and,
therefore, it must at no hand be made an instrument of scruple; or become an enemy
to our health; or be imposed upon persons that are sick or aged, or to whom it is,
in any sense, uncharitable, such as are wearied travellers; or to whom, in the whole
kind of it, it is useless such as are women with child, poor people, and little
children. But in these cases the church hath made provision and inserted caution
into her laws; and they are to be reduced to practice according to custom, and the
sentence of prudent persons, with great latitude, and without niceness and curiosity,
having this in our first care, that we secure our virtue; and, next, that we secure
our health, that we may the better exercise the labours of virtue, lest, out of
too much austerity, we bring ourselves to that condition that it be necessary to
be indulgent to softness, ease, and extreme tenderness.
15. Let not intemperance be the prologue or the epilogue to your
fast, lest the fast be so far from taking off anything of the sin, that it be an
occasion to increase it; and, therefore, when the fast is done, be careful that
no supervening act of gluttony or excessive drinking unhallow the religion of the
past day; but eat temperately, according to the proportion of other meals, lest
gluttony keep either of the gates to abstinence.
The Benefits of Fasting.
He that undertakes to enumerate the benefits of fasting
may, in the next page, also reckon all the benefits of physic, for fasting is not
to be commended as a duty, but as an instrument; and in that sense no man can reprove
it, or undervalue it, but he that knows neither spiritual arts nor spiritual necessities.
But by the doctors of the church it is called the nourishment of prayer, the restraint
of lust, the wings of the souls, the diet of angels, the instrument of humility
and self-denial, the purification of the spirit; and the paleness and meagerness
of visage, which is consequent to the daily fast of great mortifiers, is, by St.
Basil, said to be the mark in the forehead which the angel observed when he signed
the saints in the forehead to escape the wrath of God. “The soul that is greatly
vexed, which goeth stooping and feeble, and the eyes that fail, and the hungry soul,
shall give thee praise and righteousness, O Lord!”
SECTION VI.
Of keeping Festivals, and Days holy to the Lord; particularly the Lords Day.
True natural religion, that which was common to all nations and ages, did principally rely upon four great propositions; 1. That there is one God; 2. That God is nothing of those things which we see; 3. That God takes care of all things below, and governs all the world; 4. That he is the great Creator of all things, without himself: and according to these were framed the four first precepts of the decalogue. In the first, the unity of the Godhead is expressly affirmed; in the second, his invisibility and immateriality; in the third is affirmed God’s government and providence, by avenging them that swear falsely by his name, by which also his omniscience is declared; in the fourth commandment, he proclaims himself the maker of heaven and earth; for, in memory of God’s rest from the work of six days, the seventh was hallowed into a Sabbath, and the keeping it was confessing God to be the great maker of heaven and earth; and consequently to this, it also was a confession of his goodness, his omnipotence, and his wisdom, all which were written with a sunbeam in the great book of the creature.
So long as the law of the Sabbath was bound upon God’s people, so long God would have that to be the solemn manner of confessing these attributes; but when the priesthood being changed, there was a change also of the law, the great duty remained unalterable in changed circumstances. We are eternally bound to confess God Almighty to be the maker of heaven and earth; but the manner of confessing it is changed from a rest, or a doing nothing, to a speaking something, from a day to a symbol; from a ceremony to a substance; from a Jewish rite to a Christian duty; we profess it in our creed, we confess it in our lives; we describe it by every line of our life, by every action of duty, by faith and trust and obedience: and we do also, upon great reason, comply with the Jewish manner of confessing the creation, so far as it is instrumental to a real duty. We keep one day in seven, and so confess the manner and circumstance of the creation; and we rest also, that we may tend holy duties; so imitating God’s rest better than the Jew in Synesius, who lay upon his face from evening to evening, and could not, by stripes or wounds, be raised up to steer the ship in a great storm. God’s rest was not a natural cessation; he who could not labour could not be said to rest; but God’s rest is to be understood to be a beholding and a rejoicing in his work finished, and therefore we truly represent God’s rest when we confess and rejoice in God’s works and God’s glory.
This the Christian church does upon every day, but especially upon the Lord’s day, which she hath set apart for this and all other offices of religion, being determined to this day by the resurrection of her dearest Lord, it being the first day of joy the church ever had. And now, upon the Lord’s day, we are not tied to the rest of the Sabbath, but to all the work of the Sabbath; and we are to abstain from bodily labour, not because it is a direct duty to us, as it was to the Jews; but because it is necessary, in order to our duty, that we attend to the offices of religion.
The observation of the Lord’s day differs nothing from the observation of the Sabbath in the matter of religion, but in the manner. They differ in the ceremony and external rite: rest, with them, was the principal; with us, it is the accessory. They differ in the office or forms of worship; for they were then to worship God as a creator and a gentle father; we are to add to that, our Redeemer, and all his other excellences and mercies. And, though we have more natural and proper reason to keep the Lord’s day than the Sabbath, yet the Jews had a divine commandment for their day, which we have not for ours; but we have many commandments to do all that honour to God which was intended in the fourth commandment; and the apostles appointed the first day of the week for doing it in solemn assemblies. And the manner of worshipping God, and doing him solemn honour and service upon this day, we may best observe in the following measures:
Rules for keeping the Lords Day and other Christian Festivals.
1. When you go about to distinguish festival days from common, do it not by lessening the devotion of ordinary days, that the common devotion may seem bigger upon festivals; but, on every day, keep your ordinary devotions entire, and enlarge upon the holy day.
2. Upon the Lord’s day we must abstain from all servile and laborious works, except such which are matters of necessity, of common life, or of great charity; for these are permitted by that authority which hath separated the day for holy uses. The Sabbath of the Jews, though consisting principally in rest, and established by God, did yield to these. The labour of love and the labours of religion were not against the reason and the spirit of the commandment, for which the letter was decreed, and to which it ought to minister. And, therefore, much more is it so on the Lord’s day, where the letter is wholly turned into spirit, and there is no commandment of God but of spiritual and holy actions. The priests might kill their beasts, and dress them for sacrifice; and Christ, though born under the law, might heal a sick man; and the sick man might carry his bed to witness his recovery, and confess the mercy, and leap and dance to God for joy; and an ox might be led to water, and as ass be haled out of a ditch; and a man may take physic, and he may eat meat, and therefore there were of necessity some to prepare and minister it; and the performing these labours did not consist in minutes and just determining stages; but they had, even then, a reasonable latitude; so only as to exclude unnecessary labour, or such as did not minister to charity or religion. And, therefore, this is to be enlarged in the gospel, whose Sabbath or rest is but a circumstance, and accessory to the principal and spiritual duties. Upon the Christian Sabbath necessity is to be served first, then charity, and then religion; for this is to give place to charity, in great instances, and the second to the first, in all, and in all cases God is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth.
3. The Lord’s day, being the remembrance of a great blessing, must be a day of joy, festivity, spiritual rejoicing, and thanksgiving; and therefore it is a proper work of the day to let your devotions spend themselves in singing or reading psalms; in recounting the great works of God; in remembering his mercies; in worshipping his excellences; in celebrating his attributes; in admiring his person; in sending portions of pleasant meat to them for whom nothing is provided; and in all the arts and instruments of advancing God’s glory, and the reputation of religion: in which it were a great decency that a memorial of the resurrection should be inserted, that the particular religion of the day be not swallowed up in the general. And of this we may the more easily serve ourselves, by rising seasonably in the morning to private devotion, and by retiring at the leisures and spaces of the day not employed in public offices.
4.Fail not to be present at the public hours and places of prayer, entering early and cheerfully, attending reverently and devoutly, abiding patiently during the whole office, piously assisting at the prayers, and gladly also hearing the sermon: and at no hand omitting to receive the holy communion when it is offered, (unless some great reason excuse it,) this being the great solemnity of thanksgiving, and a proper work of the day.
5. After the solemnities are past, and in the intervals between the morning and evening devotion, (as you shall find opportunity,) visit sick persons, reconcile differences, do offices of neighbourhood, inquire into the needs of the poor, especially housekeepers, relieve them, as they shall need, and as you are able; for then we truly rejoice in God, when we make our neighbours, the poor members of Christ, rejoice together with us.
6. Whatsoever you are to do yourself, as necessary, you are to take care that others also, who are under your charge, do in their station and manner. Let your servants be called to church, and all your family that can be spared from necessary and great household ministries; those that cannot, let them go by turns, and be supplied otherwise, as well as they may; and provide, on these days especially, that they be instructed in the articles of faith and necessary parts of their duty.
7. Those who labour hard in the week must be eased upon the Lord’s day, such ease being a great charity and alms; but at no hand must they be permitted to use any unlawful games, anything forbidden by the laws, anything that is scandalous, or anything that is dangerous and apt to mingle sin with it; no games prompting to wantonness, to drunkenness, to quarrelling, to ridiculous and superstitions customs; but let their refreshments be innocent and charitable and of good report, and not exclusive of the duties of religion.
8. Beyond these bounds, because neither God nor man hath passed any obligation upon us, we must preserve our Christian liberty, and not suffer ourselves to be entangled with a yoke of bondage; for even a good action may become a snare to us, if we make it an occasion of scruple by a pretence of necessity, binding loads upon the conscience, not with the bands of God, but of men, and of fancy, or of opinion, or of tyranny. Whatsoever is laid upon us by the hands of man must be acted and accounted of by the measures of a man; but our best measure is this: he keeps the Lord’s day best, that keeps it with most religion and with most charity.
9. What the church hath done in the article of the resurrection, she hath in some measure done in the other articles of the nativity, of the ascension, and of the descent of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost — and so great blessings deserve an anniversary solemnity, since he is a very unthankful person that does not often record them in the whole year, and esteem them the ground of his hopes, the object of his faith, the comfort of his troubles, and the great effluxes of the divine mercy, greater than all the victories over our temporal enemies, for which all glad persons usually give thanks. And if, with great reason, the memory of the resurrection does return solemnly every week, it is but reason the other should return once a year. To which I add, that the commemoration of the articles of our Creed, in solemn days and offices, is a very excellent instrument to convey and imprint the sense and memory of it upon the spirits of the most ignorant person. For as a picture may with more fancy convey a story to a man than a plain narrative either in word or writing, so a real reprentment and an office of remembrance, and a day to declare it, is far more impressive than a picture, or any other art of making and fixing imagery.
10. The memories of the saints are precious to God, and therefore they ought also to be so to us; and such persons who serve God by holy living, industrious preaching, and religious dying, ought to have their names preserved in honour, and God be glorified in them, and their holy doctrines and lives published and imitated; and we, by so doing, give testimony to the article of the communion of saints. But in these cases, as every church is to be sparing in the number of days, so also should she be temperate in her injunctions, not imposing them but upon voluntary and unbusied persons, without snare or burden. But the holy day is best kept by giving God thanks for the excellent persons, apostles, or martyrs, we then remember, and by imitating their lives — this all may do; and they that can also keep the solemnity must do that too, when it is publicly enjoined.
The mixed Actions of Religion are, 1. Prayer; 2. Alms; 3. Repentance; 4. Receiving the blessed Sacrament.
SECTION VII.
Of Prayer.
There is no greater argument in the world of our spiritual danger and unwillingness to religion, than the backwardness which most men have always, and all men have sometimes, to say their prayers — so weary of their length, so glad when they are done, so witty to excuse and frustrate an opportunity: and yet all is nothing but a desiring of God to give us the greatest and the best things we can need, and which can make us happy — it is a work so easy, so honourable, and to so great purpose, that in all the instances of religion and providence (except only the incarnation of his Son) God hath not given us a greater argument of his willingness to have us saved, and of our unwillingness to accept it, his goodness and our gracelessness, his infinite condescension and our carelessness and folly, than by rewarding so easy a duty with so great blessings.
Motives to Prayer.
I cannot say anything beyond this very consideration and its appendages to invite Christian people to pray often. But we may consider that, 1. It is a duty commanded by God and his holy Son. 2. It is an act of grace and highest honour, that we, dust and ashes, are admitted to speak to the eternal God, to run to him as to a father, to lay open our wants, to complain of our burdens, to explicate our scruples, to beg remedy and ease, support and counsel, health and safety, deliverance and salvation: and, 3. God hath invited us to it by many gracious promises of hearing us. 4. He hath appointed his most glorious Son to be the precedent of prayer, and to make continual intercession for us to the throne of grace. 5. He hath appointed an angel to present the prayers of his servants: and, 6. Christ unites them to his own, and sanctifies them, and makes them effective and prevalent: and, 7. Hath put it into the hands of men to rescind, or alter, all the decrees of God, which are of one kind, (that is, conditional, and concerning ourselves and our final estate, and many instances of our intermedial or temporal,) by the power of prayers. 8. And the prayers of men have saved cities and kingdoms from ruin: prayer hath raised cities and kingdoms from ruin: prayer hath raised dead men to life, hath stopped the violence of fire and shut the mouths of wild beasts, hath altered the course of nature, caused rain in Egypt, and drought in the sea: it made the sun to go from west to east, and the moon to stand still, and rocks and mountains to wales; and it cures diseases without physic, and makes physic to do the work of nature, and nature to do the work of grace, and grace to do the work of God; and it does miracles of accident and event; and yet prayer, that does all this, is, of itself, nothing but an ascent of the mind to God, a desiring things fit to be desired, and an expression of this desire to God as we can, and as becomes us. And our unwillingness to pray is nothing else but a not desiring what we ought passionately to long for; or, if we do desire it, it is a choosing rather to miss our satisfaction and felicity than to ask for it.
There is no more to be said in this affair, but that we reduce it to practice, according to the following rules:
Rules for the Practice of Prayer.
1. We must be careful that we never ask anything of God that is sinful, or that directly ministers to sin; for that is to ask God to dishonour himself, and to undo us. We had need consider what we pray; for before it returns in blessing it must be joined with Christ’s intercession, and presented to God. Let us principally ask of God power and assistances to do our duty, to glorify God, to do good works, to live a good life, to die in the fear and favor of God and eternal life: these things God delights to give, and commands that we shall ask, and we may with confidence expect to be answered graciously; for these things are promised without any reservations of a secret condition: if we ask them, and do our duty towards the obtaining them, we are sure never to miss them
2. We may lawfully pray to God for the gifts of the Spirit that minister to holy ends; such as are the gift of preaching, the spirit of prayer, good expression, a ready and unloosed tongue, good understanding, learning, opportunities to publish them, etc., with these only restraints: 1. That we cannot be so confident of the event of those prayers as of the former. 2. That we must be curious to secure our intention in these desires, that we may not ask them to serve our own ends, but only for God’s glory; and then we shall have them, or a blessing for desiring them. In order to such purposes our intentions in the first desires cannot be amiss; because they are able to sanctify other things, and therefore cannot be unhallowed themselves. 3. We must submit to God’s will, desiring him to choose our employment, and to furnish our persons as he shall see expedient.
3. Whatsoever we may lawfully desire of temporal things, we may lawfully ask of God in prayer, and we may expect them, as they are promised. 1. Whatsoever is necessary to our life and being is promised to us; and therefore we may, with certainty, expect food and raiment, food to keep us alive, clothing to keep us from nakedness and shame; so long as our life is permitted to us, so long all things necessary to our life shall be ministered. We may be secure of maintenance, but not secure of our life — for that is promised, not this: only concerning food and raiment we are not to make accounts by the measure of our desires, but by the measure of our needs. 2. Whatsoever is convenient for us; pleasant, and modestly delectable, we may pray for, so we do it, 1. With submission to God’s will. 2. Without impatient desires. 3. That it be not a trifle and inconsiderable, but a matter so grave and concerning as to be a fit matter to be treated on between God and our souls. 4. That we ask not to spend upon our lusts, but for ends of justice, or charity, or religion, and that they be employed with sobriety.
4. He that would pray with effect must live with care and piety.
5. All prayer must be made with faith and hope, that is, we must
certainly believe
6. Our prayers must be fervent, intense, earnest, and importunate,
when we pray for things of high concernment and necessity. ‘Continuing instant in
prayer; striving in prayer; labouring fervently in prayer; night and day, praying
exceedingly; praying always with all prayer:’ so St. Paul calls it.
7. Our desires must be lasting, and our prayers frequent, assiduous,
and continual; not asking for a blessing once, and then leaving it, but daily renewing
our suits, and exercising our hope, and faith, and patience, and long-suffering,
and religion, and resignation, and self-denial, in all the degrees we shall be put
to. This circumstance of duty our blessed Saviour taught, saying, that ‘men ought
always to pray, and not to faint.’
8. Let the words of our prayers be pertinent, grave, material, not studiously many, but according to our need, sufficient to express our wants, and to signify our importunity. God hears us not the sooner for our many words, but much the sooner for an earnest desire; to which let apt and sufficient words minister, be they few or many, according as it happens. A long prayer and a short differ not in their capacities of being accepted, for both of them take their value according to the fervency of spirit, and the charity of the prayer. That prayer, which is short by reason of an impatient spirit, or dulness, or despite of holy things, or indifferency of desires, is very often criminal, always imperfect; and that prayer which is long out of ostentation, or superstition, or a trifling spirit, is as criminal and imperfect as the other in their several instances. This rule relates to private prayer. In public, our devotion is to be measured by the appointed office, and we are to support our spirit with spiritual arts, that our private spirit may be a part of the public spirit, and be adopted into the society and blessings of the communion of saints.
9. In all forms of prayer mingle petition with thanksgiving, that
you may endear the present prayer and the future blessing, by returning praise and
thanks for what we have already received. This is St. Paul’s advice — ‘Be careful
for nothing; but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let
your requests be made known unto God.
10. Whatever we beg of God, let us also work for it, if the thing
be matter of duty, or a consequent to industry; for God loves to bless labour and
to reward it, but not to support idleness.
11. To this purpose let every man study his prayers and read his duty in his petitions. For the body of our prayer is the sum of our duty; and as we must ask of God whatsoever we need, so we must labour for all that we ask. Because it is our duty, therefore we must pray for God’s grace; but because God’s grace is necessary, and without it we can do nothing, we are sufficiently taught, that in the proper matter or our religious prayers is the just matter of our duty; and if we shall turn our prayers into precepts, we shall the easier turn our hearty desires into effective practices.
12. In all our prayers we must be careful to attend our present
work,
13. Let your posture and gesture of body in prayers be reverend,
grave, and humble — according to public order, or the best examples, if it be in
public — if it be in private, either stand or kneel, or lie flat upon the ground
on your face, in your ordinary and more solemn prayers, but in extraordinary, casual,
and ejaculatory prayers, the reverence and devotion of the soul, and the lifting
up the eyes and hands to God with any other posture not indecent, is usual and commendable;
for we may pray in bed, on horseback, ‘everywhere,’
14. ‘Let prayers and supplications and giving of thanks be made
for all men; for kings, and all that are in authority; for this is good and acceptable
in the sight of God our Saviour.’
15. Rely not on a single prayer in matters of great concernment; but make it as public as you can, by obtaining of others to pray for you — this being the great blessing of the communion of saints, that a prayer united is strong, like a well-ordered army; and God loves to be tied fast with such cords of love, and constrained by a holy violence.
16. Every time that is not seized upon by some other duty is seasonable enough for prayer; but let it be performed as a solemn duty morning and evening, that God may begin and end all our business; that the outgoing of the morning and evening may praise him; for so we bless God, and God blesses us. And yet fail not to find or make opportunities to worship God at some other times of the day, at least by ejaculations and short addresses, more or less, longer or shorter, solemnly or without solemnity, privately or publicly, as you can, or are permitted, always remembering, that as every sin is a degree of danger and unsafety, so every pious prayer and well-employed opportunity is a degree of return to hope and pardon.
Caution for making Vows.
17. A vow to God is an act of prayer, and a great degree and instance of opportunity, and an increase of duty by some new uncommanded instance, or some more eminent degree of duty, or frequency of action, or earnestness of spirit in the same. And because it hath pleased God, in all ages of the world, to admit of intercourse with his servants in the matters of vows, it is not ill advice that we make vows to God in such cases in which we have great need or great danger. But let it be done according to these rules and by these cautions:
1. That the matter of the vow be lawful. 2. That it be useful
in order to religion or charity. 3. That it be grave, not trifling or impertinent;
but great in our proportion of duty towards the blessing. 4. That it be an uncommanded
instance, that is, that it be of something, or in some manner, or in some degree,
to which formerly we were not obliged, or which we might have omitted without sin.
5. That it be done with prudence; that is, that it be safe in all the circumstances
of person, lest we beg a blessing and fall into a snare. 6. That every vow of a
new action be also accompanied with a new degree and enforcement of our essential
and unalterable duty — such as was Jacob’s vow, that (besides the payment of the
tithe) God should be his God; that so he might strengthen his duty to him, first
in essentials and precepts, and then in additionals and accidentals. For it is but
an ill tree that spends more in leaves and suckers and gums than in fruit; and that
thankfulness and religion is best that first secures duty and then enlarges in counsels.
Therefore, let every great prayer and great need and great danger draw us nearer
to God by the approach of a pious purpose to live more strictly, and let every mercy
of God answering that prayer produce a real performance of it. 7. Let not young
beginners in religion enlarge their hearts and straighten their liberty by vows
of long continuance; nor, indeed, any one else, without a great experience of himself
and of all accidental dangers.
If we observe the former rules we shall pray piously and effectually; but because even this duty hath in it some special temptations, it is necessary that we are armed by special remedies against them. The dangers are, 1. Wandering thoughts; 2. Tediousness of spirit. Against the first these advices are profitable:
Remedies against Wandering Thoughts in Prayer.
If we feel our spirits apt to wander in our prayers, and to retire into the world, or to things unprofitable, or vain and impertinent:
1. Use prayer to be assisted in prayer; pray for the spirit of supplication, for a sober, fixed, and recollected spirit; and when to this you add a moral industry to be steady in your thoughts, whatsoever wanderings after this do return irremediably are a misery of nature and an imperfection, but no sin, while it is not cherished and indulged to.
2. In private it is not amiss to attempt the cure by reducing your prayers into collects and short forms of prayer, making voluntary interruptions, and beginning again, that the want of spirit and breath may be supplied by the short stages and periods.
3. When you have observed any considerable wanderings of your thoughts, bind yourself to repeat thy prayer again with actual attention, or else revolve the full sense of it in your spirit, and repeat it in all the effect and desires of it; and, possibly, the tempter may be driven away with his own art, and may cease to interpose his trifles when he perceives they do but vex the person into carefulness and piety; and yet he loses nothing of his devotion, but doubles the earnestness of his care.
4. If this be not seasonable or opportune, or apt to any man’s circumstances, yet be sure, with actual attention, to say a hearty Amen to the whole prayer with one united desire, earnestly begging the graces mentioned in the prayer; for that desire does the great work of the prayer, and secures the blessing, if the wandering thoughts were against our will, and disclaimed by contending against them.
5. Avoid multiplicity of businesses of the world, and in those that are unavoidable, labour for an evenness and tranquillity of spirit, that you may be untroubled and smooth in all tempests of fortune; for so we shall better tend religion when we are not torn in pieces with the cares of the world, and seized upon with low affections, passions, and interest.
6. It helps much to attention and actual advertisement in our prayers, if we say our prayers silently, without the voice, only by the spirit. For, in mental prayer, if our thoughts wander we only stand still; when our mind returns we go on again — there is none of the prayer lost, as it is if our mouths speak and our hearts wander.
7. To incite you to the use of these, or any other counsels you shall meet with, remember that it is a great indecency to desire of God to hear those prayers, a great part whereof we do not hear ourselves. If they be not worthy of our attention they are far more unworthy of God’s.
Signs of Tediousness of Spirit in our Prayers and all Actions of Religion.
The second temptation in our prayer is a tediousness of spirit or a weariness of the employment; like that of the Jews, who complained that they were weary of the new moons, and their souls loathed the frequent return of their Sabbaths: so do very many Christians, who first pray without fervour or earnestness of spirit; and, secondly, meditate but seldom, and that without fruit, or sense, or affection; or, thirdly, who seldom examine their consciences, and when they do it, they do it but sleepily, slightly, without compunction, or hearty purpose, or fruits of amendment. 4. They enlarge themselves in the thoughts and fruitation of temporal things, running for comfort to them only in any sadness and misfortune. 5. They love not to frequent the sacraments, nor any the instruments of religion, as sermons, confessions, prayers in public, fastings; but love ease and a loose undisciplined life. 6. They obey not their superiors, but follow their own judgment when their judgment follows their affections, and their affections follow sense and worldly pleasures. 7. They neglect, or dissemble, or defer, or do not attend to the motions and inclinations to virtue which the Spirit of God puts into their soul. 8. They repent them of their vows and holy purposes, not because they discover any indiscretion in them, or intolerable inconvenience, but because they have within them labour (as the case now stands) to them displeasure. 9. They content themselves with the first degrees and necessary parts of virtue; and when they are arrived thither, they sit down as if they were come to the mountain of the Lord, and care not to proceed on toward perfection. 10. They inquire into all cases in which it may be lawful to omit a duty; and, though they will not do less than they are bound to, yet they will do no more than needs must; for they do out of fear and self-love, not out of the love of God, or the spirit of holiness and zeal. The event of which will be this: he that will do no more than needs must, will soon be brought to omit something of his duty, and will be apt to believe less to be necessary than is.
Remedies against Tediousness of Spirit.
The remedies against this temptation are these:
1. Order your private devotions so that they become not arguments and causes of tediousness by their indiscreet length, but reduce your words into a narrow compass, still keeping all the matter; and what is cut off in the length of your prayers supply in the earnestness of your spirit; for so nothing is lost, while the words are changed into matter, and length of time into fervency of devotion. The forms are made not the less perfect, and the spirit is more, and the scruple is removed.
2. It is not imprudent, if we provide variety of forms of prayer to the same purposes, that the change, by consulting with the appetites of fancy, may better entertain the spirit; and, possibly, we may be pleased to recite a hymn when a collect seems flat to us and unpleasant; and we are willing to sing rather than to say, or to sing this rather than that: we are certain that variety is delightful; and whether that be natural to us, or an imperfection, yet if it be complied with, it any remove some part of the temptation.
3.Break your office and devotion into fragments, and make frequent returnings by ejaculations and abrupt intercourses with God; for so no length can oppress your tenderness and sickliness of spirit; and, by often praying in such manner and in all circumstances, we shall habituate our souls to prayer by making it the business of many lesser portions of our time; and by thrusting in between all our other employments, it will make everything relish of religion, and by degrees turn all into its nature.
4. Learn to abstract your thoughts and desires from pleasures and things of the world; for nothing is a direct cure to this evil but cutting off all other loves and adherences. Order your affairs so that religion may be propounded to you as a reward, and prayer as your defence, and holy actions as your security, and charity and good works as your treasure. Consider that all things else are satisfactions but to the brutish part of a man; and that these are the refreshments and relishes of that noble part of us by which we are better than beasts; and whatsoever other instrument, exercise, or consideration, is of use to take our loves from the world, the same is apt to place them upon God.
5. Do not seek for deliciousness and sensible consolations in the actions of religion, but only regard the duty and the conscience of it; for although in the beginning of religion most frequently, and at some other times irregularly, God complies with our infirmity, and encourages our duty with little overflowings of spiritual joy, and sensible pleasure, and delicacies in prayer, so as we seem to feel some little beam of heaven, and great refreshments from the spirit of consolation, yet this is not always safe for us to have, neither safe for us to expect and look for; and when we do, it is apt to make us cool in our inquires and waitings upon Christ when we want them: it is a running after him, not for the miracles but for the loaves; not for the wonderful things of God, and the desires of pleasing him, but for the pleasures of pleasing ourselves. And as we must not judge our devotion to be barren or unfruitful when we want the overflowings of joy running over, so neither must we cease for want of them. If our spirits can serve God choosingly and greedily out of pure conscience of our duty, it is better in itself and more safe for us.
6. Let him use to soften his spirit with frequent meditation upon sad and dolorous objects, as of death, the terrors of the day of judgment, fearful judgments upon sinners, strange horrorid accidents, fear of God’s wrath, the pains of hell, the unspeakable amazements of the damned, the intolerable load of a sad eternity: for whatsoever creates fear, or makes the spirit to dwell in a religious sadness, is apt to entender the spirit, and make it devout and pliant to any part of duty; for a great fear, when it is ill-managed, is the parent of superstition; but a discreet and well-guided fear produces religion.
7. Pray often, and you shall pray oftener; and when you are accustomed to a frequent devotion, it will so insensibly unite to your nature and affections, that it will become a trouble to omit your usual or appointed prayers; and what you obtain at first by doing violence to your inclinations, at last will not be left without as great unwillingness as that by which at first it entered. This rule relies not only upon reason derived from the nature, of habits, which turn into a second nature, and make their actions easy, frequent, and delightful’ but it relies upon a reason depending upon the nature and constitution of grace, whose productions are of the same nature with the parent, and increases itself, naturally growing from grains to huge trees, from minutes to vast proportions, and from moments to eternity. But be sure not to omit your usual prayers without great reason, though without sin it may be done; because after you have omitted something, in a little while you will be past the scruple of that, and begin to be tempted to leave out more. Keep yourself up to your usual forms — you may enlarge when you will; but do not contract or lesson them without a very probable reason.
8. Let a man frequently and seriously, by imagination, place himself upon his death-bed, and consider what great joys he shall have for the remembrance of every day well spent, and what then he would give that he had so spent all his days. He may guess at it by proportions; for it is certain he shall have a joyful and prosperous night who hath spent his day holily; and he resigns his soul with peace into the hands of God, who hath lived in the peace of God and the works of religion in his lifetime. This consideration is of a real event; it is of a thing that will certainly come to pass. ‘It is appointed for all men once to die;’ and after death comes judgment; the apprehension of which is dreadful, and the presence of it is intolerable; unless, by religion and sanctity, we are disposed for so venerable an appearance.
9. To this may be useful that we consider the easiness of Christ’s
yoke,
10. Consider this also, that tediousness of spirit is the beginning of the most dangerous condition and estate in the whole world. For it is a great disposition to the sin against the Holy Ghost: it is apt to bring a man to backsliding and the state of unregeneration; to make him return to his vomit and his sink; and either to make the man impatient, or his condition scrupulous, unsatisfied, irksome, and desperate: and it is better that he had never known the way of godliness, than, after the knowledge of it, that he should fall away. There is not in the world a greater sign that the spirit of reprobation is beginning upon a man than when he is habitually and constantly, or very frequently, weary, and slights or loathes holy offices.
11. The last remedy that preserves the hope of such a man, and can reduce him to the state of zeal and the love of God, is a pungent, sad, and a heavy affliction; not desperate, but recreated with some intervals of kindness, or little comforts, or entertained with hopes of deliverance; which condition if a man shall fall into, by the grace of God he is likely to recover; but if this help him not, it is infinite odds but he will quench the spirit.
SECTION VIII.
Of Alms.
Love is as communicative as fire, as busy and as active, and it hath four twin-daughters, extreme like each other; and but that the doctors of the school have done, as Thamar’s midwife did, who bound a scarlet thread, something to distinguish them, it would be very hard to call them asunder. Their names are, 1. Mercy; 2. Beneficence or well-doing; 3. Liberality; and, 4. Alms; which, by a special privilege, hath obtained to be called Charity. The first or eldest is seated in the affection; and it is that which all the others must attend, for mercy, without alms, is acceptable when the person is disabled to express outwardly what he heartily desires. But alms, without mercy, are like prayers without devotion, or religion without humility. 2. Beneficence or well-doing is a promptness and nobleness of mind, making us to do offices of courtesy and humanity to all sorts of persons, in their need or out of their need. 3. Liberality is a disposition of mind opposite to covetousness, and consists in the despite and neglect of money upon just occasions, and relates to our friends, children, kindred, servants, and other relatives. 4. But alms is a relieving of the poor and needy. The first and the last only are duties of Christianity. The second and third are circumstances and adjuncts of these duties; for liberality increases the degree of alms, making our gift greater; and beneficence extends it to more persons and orders of men, spreading it wider. The former makes us sometimes to give more than need by the necessity of beggars, and serves the needs and conveniences of persons and supplies circumstances; whereas properly alms are doles and largesses to the necessities of nature, and giving remedies to their miseries.
Mercy and alms are the body and soul of that charity which we must pay to our neighbour’s need; and it is a precept which God therefore enjoined to the world, that the great inequality which he was pleased to suffer in the possessions and accidents of men might be reduced to some temper and evenness; and the most miserable person might be reduced to some temper and evenness; and the most miserable person might be reconciled to some sense and participation of felicity.
Works of Mercy, or the several Kinds of corporal Alms.
The works of mercy are so many as the affections of mercy
have objects, or as the world hath kinds of misery. men want meat, or drink, or
clothes, or a house, or liberty, or attendance, or a grave. In proportion to these,
seven works are usually assigned to mercy, and there are seven kinds of corporal
alms reckoned: 1. To feed the hungry;
Works of Spiritual Alms and Mercy are,
1. To teach the ignorant; 2. To counsel doubting persons;
3. To admonish sinners diligently, prudently, seasonably, and charitably: to which
also may be reduced, provoking and encouraging to good works;
To both these kinds a third also may be added of a mixed nature,
partly corporal and partly spiritual; such are, 1. Reconciling enemies;
Rules for giving Alms.
1. Let no man do alms of that which is none of his own;
2. Of money unjustly taken, and yet voluntarily parted with, we
may, and are bound to give alms; such as is money given and taken for false witness,
bribes, and simoniacal contracts; because the receiver hath no right to keep it,
nor the giver any right to recall it; it is unjust money, and yet payable to none
but the supreme Lord, (who is the person injured,) and to his delegates, that is,
the poor. To which I insert these cautions: 1. If the person injured by the unjust
sentence of a bribed judge, or by false witness, be poor, he is the proper object
and bosom to whom the restitution is to be made; 2. In the case of simony
3. There is some sort of gain that hath in it no injustice, properly so called; but it is unlawful and filthy lucre; such as is money taken for work done unlawfully upon the Lord’s day; hire taken for disfiguring one’s-self, and for being professed jesters; the wages of such as make unjust bargains, and of harlots. Of this money there is some preparation to be made before it be given in alms, the money is infected with the plague, and must pass through the fire or the water before it be fit for alms; the person must repent and leave the crime, and then minister to the poor.
4. He that gives alms must do it in mercy; that is, out of a true
sense of the calamity of his brother, first feeling it in himself in some proportion,
and then endeavouring to ease himself and the other of their common calamity.
5. He that gives alms must do it with a single eye and heart;
6. To this also appertains that he who hath done a good turn should so forget it as not to speak of it; but he that boasts it, or upbraids it, hath paid himself and lost the nobleness of the charity.
7. Give alms with a cheerful heart and countenance; ‘not grudgingly
or of necessity, for God loveth a cheerful giver;’
8. According to thy ability give to all men that need;
9. Give no alms to vicious persons if such alms will support their
sin, as if they will continue in idleness; ‘if they will not work neither let them
eat;’
10. The best objects of charity are poor housekeepers that labour
hard, and are burdened with many children; or gentlemen fallen into poverty, especially
if by innocent misfortune, (and if their crimes brought them into it, yet they are
to be relieved according to the former rule,) persecuted persons, widows and fatherless
children, putting them to honest trades or school of learning. And search into the
needs of numerous and meaner families,
11. Give, looking for nothing again, that is, without consideration of future advantages; give to children, to old men, to the unthankful, and the dying, and to those you shall never see again; for else your alms or courtesy is not charity, but traffic and merchandise; and be sure that you omit not to relieve the needs of your enemy and the injurious; for so, possibly, you may win him to yourself; but do you intend the winning him to God.
12. Trust not your alms to intermedial, uncertain, and under-dispensers; by which rule is not only intended the securing your alms in the right channel, but the humility of your person, and that which the apostle calls ‘the labour of love.’ And if you converse in hospitals and alms-houses, and minister with your own hand what your heart hath first decreed, you will find your heart endeared and made familiar with the needs and with the persons of the poor, those excellent images of Christ.
13. Whatsoever is superfluous in thy estate is to be dispensed
in alms.
1. He that plays at any game must resolve beforehand to be indifferent to win or lose; but if he gives to the poor all that he wins, it is better than to keep it to himself; but it were better yet that he lay by so much as he is willing to lose, and let the game alone, and, by giving so much alms, traffic for eternity. That is one way.
2. Another is keeping the fasting-days of the church, which if our condition be such as to be able to cast our accounts, and make abatements for our wanting so many meals in the whole year, (which by the old appointment did amount to one hundred and fifty-three, and since most of them are fallen into desuetude, we may make up as many of them as we please by voluntary fasts,) we may, from hence, find a considerable relief for the poor. But if we be not willing sometimes to fast, that our brother may eat, we should ill die for him. St. Martin had given all that he had in the world to the poor save one coat; and that also he divided between two beggars. A father in the mount of Mitria was reduced at last to the inventory of one Testament, and that book also was tempted from him by the needs of one whom he thought poorer than himself. Greater yet: St. Paulinus sold himself to slavery to redeem a young man for whose captivity his mother wept sadly; and it is said that St. Katherine sucked the envenomed wounds of a villain who had injured her most impudently. And I shall tell you of a greater charity than all these put together; Christ gave himself to shame and death to redeem his enemies from bondage and death and hell.
3. Learn of the frugal man, and only avoid sordid actions, and turn good husband, and change your arts of getting, into providence for the poor, and we shall soon become rich in good works; and why should we not do as much for charity as for covetousness; for heaven as for the fading world; for God and the holy Jesus as for the needless superfluities of back and belly?
14. In giving alms to beggars and persons of that low rank it is better to give little to each, that we may give to the more, so extending our alms to many persons; but in charities of religion, as building hospitals, colleges, and houses for devotion, and supplying the accidental wants of decayed persons, fallen from great plenty to great necessity, it is better to unite our aims than to disperse them; to make a noble relief or maintenance to one, and to restore him to comfort, than to support only his natural needs, and keep him alive only, unrescued from sad discomforts.
15. The precept of alms or charity binds not indefinitely to all the instances and kinds of charity; for he that delights to feed the poor, and spends all his portion that way, is not bound to enter into prisons and redeem captives; but we are obliged by the presence of circumstances, and the special disposition of Providence, and the pitiableness of an object, to this or that particular act of charity. The eye is the sense of mercy, and the bowels are its organ; and that enkindles pity, and pity produces alms: when the eye sees what it never say, the heart will think what it never thought; but when we have an object present to our eye, then we must pity; for there the providence of God hath fitted our charity with circumstances. He that is in thy sight or in thy neighbourhood is fallen into the lot of thy charity.
16. If thou hast no money,
Motives to Charity.
The motives to this duty are such, as Holy Scripture hath
propounded to us by way of consideration and proposition of its excellences and
consequent reward. 1. There is no one duty which our blessed Saviour did recommend
to his disciples with so repeated an injunction as this of charity and alms.
But because giving alms is an act of the virtue of mercifulness, our endeavour must be, by proper arts, to mortify the parents of unmercifulness, which are — 1. Envy; 2. Anger; 3. Covetousness: in which we may be helped by the following rules or instruments:
Remedies against Unmercifulness and Uncharitableness.
1. Against Envy, by way of consideration.
Against envy I shall use the same argument we would use to persuade
a man from the fever or the dropsy. 1. Because it is a disease; it is so far from
having pleasure in it, or a temptation to it that it is full of pain, a great instrument
of vexation: it eats the flesh, and dries up the marrow, and makes hollow eyes and
lean cheeks and a pale face. 2. It is nothing but a direct resolution never to enter
into heaven by the way of noble pleasure taken in the good of others. 3. It is most
contrary to God. 4. And a just contrary state to the felicities and actions of heaven,
where every star increases the light of the other, and the multitude of guests at
the supper of the Lamb makes the eternal meal more festival. 5. It is perfectly
the state of hell and the passion of devils; for they do nothing but despair in
themselves,
2. Remedies against Anger, by way of exercise.
The next enemy to mercifulness and the grace of alms is anger, against which there are proper instruments both in prudence and religion.
1. Prayer is the great remedy against anger; for it must suppose it in some degree removed before we pray, and then it is the more likely it will be finished when the prayer is done. We must lay aside the act of anger as a preparatory to prayer; and the curing the habit will be the effect and blessing of prayer; so that if a man, to cure his anger, resolves to address himself to God by prayer, it is first necessary that, by his own observation and diligence, he lay the anger aside before his prayer can be fit to be presented; and when we so pray, and so endeavour, we have all the blessings of prayer which God hath promised to it to be our security for success.
2. If anger arises in thy breast, instantly seal up thy lips and
let it not go forth; Ira cum pectus rapida occupavit, Futiles
linguae jubeo cavere Vana latratus jaculantis.—Sappho. Turbatus sum, et non sum locutus.—
3. Humility is the most excellent natural cure for anger in the world; for he, that by daily considering his own infirmities and failings, makes the error of his neighbour or servant to be his won case, and remembers that he daily needs God’s pardon and his brother’s charity, will not be apt to rage at the levities, or misfortunes, or indiscretions, of another, greater than which he considers that he is very frequently and more inexcusably guilty of.
4. Consider the example of the ever-blessed Jesus, who suffered all the contradictions of sinners, and received all affronts and reproaches of malicious, rash, and foolish persons, and yet in all of them was as dispassionate and gentle as the morning sun in autumn; and in this also be propounded himself imitable by us. For if innocence itself did suffer so great injuries and disgraces, it is no great matter for us quietly to receive all the calamities of fortune and indiscretion of servants, and mistakes of friends, and unkindnesses of kindred, and rudeness of enemies, since we have deserved these and worse, even hell itself.
5. If we be tempted to anger in the actions of government and discipline to our inferiors, (in which case anger is permitted so far as it is prudently instrumental to government, and only is a sin when it is excessive and unreasonable, and apt to disturb our own discourse, or to express itself in imprudent words or violent actions,) let us propound to ourselves the example of God the Father, who, at the same time, and with the same tranquility, decreed heaven and hell, the joys of blessed angels and souls, and the torments of devils and accursed spirits; and, at the day of judgment, when all the world shall burn under his feet, God shall not be at all inflamed or shaken in his essential seat and centre of tranquility and joy. And if a first the cause seems reasonable, yet defer to execute they anger till thou mayst better judge. For, as Phoeion told the Athenians, who, upon the first news of the death of Alexander were ready to revolt, “Stay a while, for if the king be not dead, your stay cannot prejudice your affairs, for he will be dead tomorrow as well as to day;” so if thy servant or inferior deserves punishment, staying till to-morrow will not make him innocent; but it may, possibly, preserve thee so, by preventing thy striking a guiltless person, or being furious for a trifle.
6. Remove from thyself all provocations and incentives to anger;
especially, I. Games of chance and great wagers. Patroclus killed his friend,
7. Be not inquisitive into the affairs of other men, nor the faults of thy servants, nor the mistakes of thy friends; but what is offered to you, use according to the former rules; but do not thou go out to gather sticks to kindle a fire to burn thine own house. And add this: “If my friend said or did well in that for which I am angry, I am in the fault, not he; but if he did amiss, he is in the misery, not I; for either he was deceived, or he was malicious; and either of them both is all one with a miserable person; and that is an object of pity not of anger.”
8. Use all reasonable discourses to excuse the faults of others, considering that there are many circumstances of time, of person, of accident, of inadvertency, of infrequency, of aptness to amend, of sorrow for doing it; and it is well that we take any good in exchange for the evil done or suffered.
9. Upon the rising of anger, instantly enter into a deep consideration
of the joys of heaven, or the pains of hell; for “fear and joy naturally apt to
appease this violence.”
10. In contentions be always passive, never active; upon the defensive, not the assaulting part: and then also give a gentle answer, receiving the furies and indiscretions of the other, like a stone into a bed of moss and soft compliance, and you shall find it sit down quickly; whereas anger and violence, make the contention loud and long, and injurious to both the parties.
11. In the actions of religion, be careful to temper all thy instances with meekness, and the proper instruments of it; and if thou beest apt to be angry, neither fast violently, nor entertain the too forward heats of zeal, but secure thy duty with constant and regular actions, and a good temper of body, with convenient refreshments and recreations.
12. If anger rises suddenly and violently, first restrain it with consideration and then let it end in a hearty prayer for him that did the real or seeming injury. The former of the two stops its growth, and the latter quite kills it, and makes amends for its monstrous and involuntary birth.
Remedies against Anger, by way of consideration.
1. Consider that anger is a professed enemy to counsel;
it is a direct storm in which no man can be heard to speak or call from without;
for if you counsel gently, you are despised; if you urge it and be vehement, you
provoke it more. Be careful, therefore, to lay up beforehand a great stock of reason
and prudent consideration,
In the use of these arguments, and the former exercises, be diligent
to observe lest, in your desires to suppress anger, you be passionate and angry
at yourself for being angry; like physicians
Only observe that such an anger alone is criminal which is against
charity to myself or my neighbour; but anger against sin is a holy zeal, and an
effect of love to God and my brother, for whose interest I am passionate, like a
concerned person; and if I take care that my anger makes no reflection of scorn
or cruelty upon the offender, or of pride and violence, or transportation to myself,
anger becomes charity and duty. And when one commended Charilaus, the king of Sparta,
for a gentle, a good, and a meek prince, his colleague said well, “How can he be
good who is not an enemy even to vicious persons?”
3. Remedies against Covetousness, the third Enemy of Mercy.
Covetousness is also an enemy to alms, though not to all the effects of mercifulness; but this is to be cured by the proper motives to charity before mentioned, and by the proper rules of justice, which being secured, the arts of getting money are not easily made criminal. To which also we may add:
1. Covetousness makes a man miserable, because riches are not
means to make a man happy;
2. Riches are useless and unprofitable; for beyond our needs and conveniences nature knows no use of riches: and they say the princes of Italy, when they sup alone eat out of a single dish, and drink in a plain glass, and the wife eats without purple; for nothing is more frugal than the back and belly, if they be used as they should; but when they would entertain the eyes of strangers, when they are vain, and would make a noise, then riches come forth to set forth the spectacle, and furnish out the comedy of wealth, of vanity. No man can with all the wealth in the world, buy so much skill as to be a good lutenist; he must go the same way that poor people do, he must learn and take pains; much less can he buy constancy or chastity or courage; nay, not so much as the contempt of riches: and by possessing more than we need, we cannot obtain so much power over our souls as not to require more. And certainly riches must deliver me from no evil, if the possession of them cannot take away the longing for them. If any man be thirsty, drink cools him; if he be hungry, eating meat satisfies him; and when a man is cold, and calls for a warm cloak, he is pleased if you give it him; but you trouble him if you load him with six or eight cloaks. Nature rests and sits still when she hath her portion; but that which exceeds it is a trouble and a burden; and, therefore, in true philosophy, no man is rich but he that is poor according to the common account; for when God hath satisfied those needs which he made, that is, all that is natural, whatsoever is beyond it is thirst and a disease; and, unless it be sent back again in charity or religion, can serve no end but vice or vanity: it can increase the appetite to represent the man poorer, and full of a new and artificial, unnatural need; but it never satisfies the need it makes, or makes the man richer. No wealth can satisfy the covetous desire of wealth.
3. Riches are troublesome; but the satisfaction of those appetites
which God and nature hath made are cheap and easy; for who ever paid use-money for
bread and onions and water to keep him alive?
4. Contentedness is therefore health, because covetousness is a direct sickness: and it was well said of Aristippus, (as Plutarch reports him,) if any man, after much eating and drinking, be still unsatisfied, he hath no need of more meat or more drink, but of a physician; he more needs to be purged than to be filled: and therefore, since covetousness cannot be satisfied, it must be cured by emptiness and evacuation. The man is without remedy, unless he be reduced to the scantling of nature, and the measures of his personal necessity. Give to a poor man a house, and a few cows, pay his little debt, and set him on work, and he is provided for, and quiet; but when a man enlarges beyond a fair possession, and desires another lordship, you spite him if you let him have it; for by that he is one degree the further off from the rest in his desires and satisfaction; and now he sees himself in a bigger capacity to a larger fortune; and he shall never find his period, till you begin to take away something of what he hath; for then he will begin to be glad to keep that which is left; but reduce him to nature’s measures, and there he shall be sure to find rest; for there is no man can desire beyond his bellyful; and, when he wants that, any one friend or charitable man can cure his poverty, but all the world cannot satisfy his covetousness.
5. Covetousness is the most fantastical and contradictory disease in the whole world: it must, therefore, be incurable; because it strives against its own cure. No man, therefore, abstains from meat, because he is hungry; nor from wine, because he loves it and needs it; but the covetous man does so, for he desires it passionately, because he says he needs it, and when he hath it, he will need it still, because he dares not use it. He gets clothes, because he cannot be without them; but when he hath them, then he can; as if he needed corn for his granary, and clothes for his wardrobes, more than for his back and belly. For covetousness pretends to heap much together for fear of want; and yet, after all his pains and purchase, he suffers that really, which, at first, he feared vainly; and by not using what he gets, he makes that suffering to be actual, present, and necessary, which, in his lowest condition, was but future, contingent, and possible. It stirs up the desire, and takes away the pleasure of being satisfied. It increases the appetite, and will not content it: it swells the principal to no purpose, and lessens the use to all purposes; disturbing the order of nature, and the designs of God; making money not to be the instrument of exchange or charity, nor corn to feed himself or the poor, nor wool to clothe himself or his brother, nor wine to refresh the sadness of the afflicted, nor his oil to make his own countenance cheerful; but all these to look upon, and to tell over, and to take accounts by, and make himself considerable, and wondered at by fools; that while he lives he may be called rich, and when he dies may be accounted miserable; and, like the dish-makers of China, may leave a greater heap of dirt for his nephews, while he himself hath a new lot fallen to him in the portion of Dives. But thus the ass carried wood and sweet herbs to the baths, but was never washed or perfumed himself: he heaped up sweets for others, while himself was filthy with smoke and ashes. And yet it is considerable; if the man can be content to feed hardly, and labour extremely, and watch carefully, and suffer affronts and disgrace, that he may get money more than he uses in his temperate and just needs, with how much ease might this man be happy? and with how great uneasiness and trouble does he make himself miserable? For he takes pains to get content, and when he might have it he lets it go. He might better be content with a virtuous and quiet poverty, than with an artificial, troublesome, and vicious. The same diet and a less labour would, at first, make him happy, and for ever after rewardable.
6. The sum of all is that which the apostle says, “Covetousness is idolatry;” that is, it is an admiring money for itself, not for its use; it relies upon money, and loves it more than it loves God and religion: and it is ‘the root of all evil;’ it teaches men to be cruel and crafty, industrious in evil, full of care and malice; it devours young heirs, and grinds the face of the poor, and undoes those who specially belong to God’s protection, helpless, craftless, and innocent people; it inquires into our parent’s age, and longs for the death of our friends; it makes friendship an art of rapine, and changes a partner into a vulture, and a companion into a thief; and, after all this, it is for no good to itself; for it dares not spend those heaps of treasure which it snatched: and men hate serpents and basilisks worse than lions and bears; for these kill because they need the prey, but they sting to death and eat not. And if they pretend all this care and heap for their heirs, (like the mice of Africa, hiding the golden ore in their bowels, and refusing to give back the indigested gold, till their guts be out,) they may remember, that what was unnecessary for themselves in unnecessary for their sons; and why cannot they be without it, as well as their fathers, who did not use it? And it often happens that to the sons it becomes an instrument to serve some lust or other; that, as the gold was useless to their fathers, so may the sons be to the public, fools or prodigals, loads to their country, and the curse and punishment of their father’s avarice: and yet all that wealth is short of one blessing; but it is a load, coming with a curse, and descending from the family of a long-derived sin. However, the father transmits it to the son, and it may be the son to one more; till a tyrant, or an oppressor, or a war, or change of government, or the usurer, or folly, or an expensive vice, makes holes in the bottom of the bag, and the wealth runs out like water, and flies away like a bird from the hand of a child.
7. Add to these the consideration of the advantages of poverty;
SECTION IX.
Of Repentance.
Repentance, of all things in the world, makes the greatest change: it changes things in heaven and earth; for it changes the whole man from sin to grace, from vicious habits to holy customs, from unchaste bodies to angelical souls, from swine to philosophers, from drunkenness to sober counsels, and God himself, ‘with whom is no variableness or shadow of change,’ is pleased, by descending to our weak understandings, to say, that he changes also upon man’s repentance, that he alters his decrees, revokes his sentence, cancels the bills of accusation, throws the records of shame and sorrow from the court of heaven, and lifts up the sinner from the grave to life, from his prison to a throne, from hell and the guilt of eternal torture, to heaven and to a title, to never-ceasing felicities. If we be bound on earth, we shall be bound in heaven; if we be absolved here, we shall be loosed there; if we repent; God will repent, and not send the evil upon us which we had deserved.
But repentance is a conjugation and society of many duties; and it contains in it all the parts of a holy life, from the time of our return to the day of our death inclusively; and it hath in it some things specially relating to the sins of our former days, which we now to be abolished by special arts, and have obliged us to special labours, and brought in many new necessities, and put us into a very great deal of danger. And, because it is a duty consisting of so many parts and so much employment, it also requires much time, and leaves a man in the same degree of hope of pardon, as is his restitution to the state of righteousness and holy living, for which we covenanted in baptism. For we must know, that there is but one repentance in a man’s whole life, if repentance be taken in the proper and strict evangelical covenant sense, and not after the ordinary understanding of the world: that is, we are but once to change our whole state of life, from the power of the devil and his entire possession, from the state of sin and death, from the body of corruption, to the life of grace, to the possession of Jesus, to the kingdom of the gospel; and this is done in the baptism of water, or in the baptism of the Spirit, when the first rite comes to be verified by God’s grace coming upon us, and by our obedience to the heavenly calling, we working together with God. After this change, if ever we fall into the contrary state, and he wholly estranged from God and religion, and profess ourselves servants of unrighteousness, God hath made no more covenant of restitution to us; there is no place left for any more repentance, or entire change of condition, or new birth: a man can be regenerated but once; and such are voluntary malicious apostates, witches, obstinate impenitent persons, and the life. But if we be overtaken by infirmity, or enter into the marches or borders of this estate and commit a grievous sin, or ten, or twenty, so we be not in the entire possession of the devil, we are, for the present, in a damnable condition if we die; but if we live, we are in a recoverable condition; for so we may repent often. We repent or rise from death but once — from sickness many times; and by the grace of God we shall be pardoned if so we repent. But our hopes of pardon are just as is the repentance; which, if it be timely, hearty, industrious, and effective, God accepts; not by weighing grains or scruples but by estimating the great proportions of our life. A hearty endeavour, and an effectual general change shall get the pardon; the unavoidable infirmities and past evils and present imperfections and short interruptions, against which we watch and pray and strive, being put upon the accounts of the cross, and paid for by the holy Jesus. This is the state and condition of repentance: its parts and actions must be valued according to the following rules:
Acts and Parts of Repentance.
1. He that repents truly, is greatly sorrowful for his
past sins; not with a superficial sigh or tear, but a pungent, afflictive sorrow;
such a sorrow as hates the sin so much, that the man would choose to die rather
than act it any more. This sorrow is called in Scripture, ‘a weeping sorely; a weeping
with bitterness of heart; a weeping day and night; a sorrow of heart; a breaking
of the spirit; mourning like a dove, and chattering like a swallow;’
2. Our sorrow for sins must retain the proportion of our sins, though not the equality. We have no particular measures of sins; we know not which is greater, of sacrilege or superstition, idolatry or covetousness, rebellion or witchcraft; and therefore God ties us not to nice measures of sorrow, but only that we keep the general rules of proportion; that is, that a great sin have a great grief, a smaller crime being to be washed off with a lesser shower.
3. Our sorrow for sins is then best accounted of for its degree,
when it, together with all the penal and afflictive duties of repentance we had
in commission of the sin.
4. True repentance is a punishing duty, and acts its sorrow; and
judges and condemns the sin by voluntarily submitting to such sadnesses as God sends
on us, or (to prevent the judgment of God) by judging ourselves, and punishing our
bodies and our spirits by such instruments of piety as are troublesome to the body;
such as are fasting, watching, long prayers, troublesome postures in our prayers,
expensive alms, and all outward acts of humiliation. For he that must judge himself,
must condemn himself if he be guilty; and if he be condemned he must be punished;
and if he be so judged, it will help to prevent the judgment of the Lord, St. Paul
instructing us in this particular.
5. Every true penitent is obliged to confess his sins, and to
humble himself before God for ever. Confession of sins hath a special promise: ‘If
we confess our sins;
6. True repentance must reduce to act all its holy purposes, and
enter into and run through the state of holy living,
7. No man is to reckon his pardon immediately upon his returns from sin to the beginnings of good life, but it is to begin his hopes and degrees of confidence according as sin dies in him, and grace lives; as the habits of sin returns but seldom in smaller instances and without choice, and by surprise without deliberation; and is highly disrelished, and presently dashed against the rock Christ Jesus, by a holy sorrow and renewed care, and more strict watchfulness. For a holy life being the condition of the covenant on our part as we return to God, so God returns to us, and our state returns to the probabilities of pardon.
8. Every man is to work out his salvation with fear and trembling; and after the commission of sins his fears must multiply; because every new sin and every great declining from the ways of God is still a degree of new danger, and hath increased God’s anger, and hath made him more uneasy to grant pardon; and when he does grant it, it is upon harder terms both for doing and suffering; that is, we must do more for pardon, and, it may be, suffer much more. For we must know that God pardons our sins by parts; as our duty increases, and our care is more prudent and active, so God’s anger decreases: and yet, it may be, the last sin you committed made God unalterably resolve to send upon you some sad judgment. Of the particulars in all cases we are uncertain; and therefore we have reason always to mourn for our sins that have so provoked God, and made our condition so full of danger that, it may be, no prayers or tears of duty can alter his sentence concerning some sad judgment upon us. Thus God irrevocably decreed to punish the Israelites for idolatry, although Moses prayed for them, and God forgave them in some degree; that is, so that he would not cut them off from being a people; yet he would not forgive them so, but he would visit that their sin upon them; and he did so.
9. A true penitent must, all the days of his life
10. Defer not at all to repent; much less mayst thou put it off
to thy death-bed. It is not an easy thing to root out the habits of sin
11. After the beginnings of thy recovery, be infinitely fearful of a relapse; and therefore, upon the stock of thy sad experience, observe where thy failings were, and by especial arts fortify that faculty, and arm against that temptation. For if all those arguments which God uses to us to preserve our innocence, and thy late danger, and thy fears, and the goodness of God making thee once to escape, and the shame of thy fall, and the sense of thy own weaknesses, will not make thee watchful against a fall, especially knowing how much it costs a man to be restored, it will be infinitely more dangerous if ever thou fallest again; not only for fear God should no more accept thee to pardon, but even thy own hopes will be made more desperate and thy impatience greater, and thy shame turn to impudence, and thy own will be more estranged, violent, and refractory, and thy latter end will be worse than thy beginning. To which add this consideration, that thy sin, which was formerly in a good way of being pardoned, will not only return upon thee with all its own loads, but with the baseness of unthankfulness, and thou wilt be set as far back from heaven as ever; and all thy former labours and fears and watchings and agonies will be reckoned for nothing, but as arguments to upbraid thy folly, who, when thou hadst set one foot in heaven didst pull that back, and carry both to hell.
Motives to Repentance.
I shall use no other arguments to move a sinner to repentance, but to tell him, unless he does he shall certainly perish; and if he does repent timely and entirely, that is, live a holy life, he shall be forgiven and be saved. But yet I desire, that this consideration be enlarged with some great circumstances; and let us remember,
1. That to admit mankind to repentance and pardon was a favour greater than ever God gave to the angels and devils; for they were never admitted to the condition of second thoughts: Christ never groaned one groan for them; he never suffered one stripe, nor one affront, nor shed one drop of blood, to restore them to hopes of blessedness after their first failings. But this he did for us: he paid the score of our sins, only that this repentance might be effectual to the great purposes of felicity and salvation.
2. Consider, that as it cost Christ many millions of prayers and
groans and sighs, so he is now at this instant, and hath been for these sixteen
hundred years, night and day, incessantly praying for grace to us, that we may repent;
and for pardon when we do; and for degrees of pardon beyond the capacities of our
infirmities, and the merit of our sorrows and amendment;
3. That ever we should repent, was so costly a purchase, and so
great a concernment, and so high a favour, and the event is esteemed by God himself
so great an excellency, that our blessed Saviour tells us, ‘there shall be joy in
heaven over one sinner that repenteth;’
4. Add to this, that the rewards of heaven are so great and glorious, and Christ’s burden is so light, his yoke is so easy, that it is a shameless impudence to expect so great glories at a less rate than so little a service, at a lower rate than a holy life. It cost the heart-blood of the Son of God to obtain heaven for us upon that condition; and who shall die again to get heaven for us upon easier terms? What would you do, if God should command you to kill your eldest son, or to work in the mines for a thousand years together, or to fast all thy lifetime with bread and water? were not heaven a very great bargain even after all this? And when God requires nothing of us but to live soberly, justly, and godly, (which things themselves are to a man a very great felicity, and necessary to our present well-being,) shall we think this to be an intolerable burden, and that heaven is too little a purchase at that price; and that God, in mere justice, will take a death-bed sigh or groan, and a few unprofitable tears and promises in exchange for all our duty?
If these motives, joined together with our own interest, (even as much as felicity, and the sight of God, and the avoiding the intolerable pains of hell, and many intermedial judgments, come to,) will not move us to leave, 1. the filthiness, and, 2. the trouble, and, 3. the uneasiness, and, 4. the unreasonableness of sin, and turn to God, there is no more to be said: we must perish in our folly.
SECTION X.
Of Preparation to, and the Manner how to receive the holy Sacrament of the Lords Supper.
1. The celebration of the holy sacrament is the great mysteriousness of the Christian religion, and succeeds to the most solemn rite of natural and Judaical religion, the law of sacrificing. For God spared mankind, and took the sacrifice of beasts, together with our solemn prayers, for an instrument of expiation. But these could not purify the soul from sin, but were typical of the sacrifice of something that could. But nothing could do this, but either the offering of all that sinned, that every man should be the anathema or devoted thing: or else by some one of the same capacity, who by some superadded excellency might, in his own personal sufferings have a value great enough to satisfy for all the whole king of sinning persons. This the Son of God, Jesus Christ, God and man undertook, and finished by a sacrifice of himself upon the altar of the cross.
2. This sacrifice, because it was perfect, could be but one, and that once; but because the needs of the world should last as long as the world itself, it was necessary that there should be a perpetual ministry established, whereby this one sufficient sacrifice should be made eternally effectual to the several new-arising needs of all the world, who should desire it, or in any sense be capable of it.
3. To this end Christ was made a priest for ever: he was initiated or consecrated on the cross, and there began his priesthood, which was to last till his coming to judgment. It began on earth, but was to last and be officiated in heaven, where he sits perpetually representing and exhibiting to the Father that great effective sacrifice which he offered on the cross, to eternal and never-failing purposes.
4. As Christ is pleased to represent to his Father that great sacrifice as a means of atonement and expiation for all mankind, and with special purposes and intendment for all the elect, all that serve him in holiness; so he hath appointed that the same ministry shall be done upon earth too, in our manner, and according to our proportion; and of men who, by ‘shewing forth the Lord’s death,’ by sacramental representations, may pray unto God after the same manner that our Lord and high-priest does; that is, offer to God and represent in this solemn prayer and sacrament, Christ is already offered; so sending up a gracious instrument, whereby our prayers may, for his sake and in the same manner of intercession, be offered up to God in our behalf, and for all them for whom we pray, to all those purposes for which Christ died.
5. As the ministers of the sacrament do, in a sacramental manner,
present to God the sacrifice of the cross, by being imitators of Christ’s intercession;
so the people are sacrificers too in their manner; for besides that, by saying Amen,
they join in the act of him that ministers, and make it also to be their own; so,
when they eat and drink to consecrated and blessed elements worthily, they receive
Christ within them, and therefore may also offer him to God, while, in their sacrifice
of obedience and thanksgiving, they present themselves to God with Christ, whom
they have spiritually received, that is, themselves with that which will make them
gracious and acceptable. The offering their bodies and souls and services to God
in him, and by him, and with him, who is his Father’s well-beloved, and in whom
he is well pleased, cannot but be accepted to all the purposes of blessing, grace,
and glory.
6. This is the sum of the greatest mystery of our religion; it is the copy of the passion, and the ministration of the great mystery of our redemption; and therefore, whatsoever entitles us to the general privileges of Christ’s passion, all that is necessary by way of disposition to the celebration of the sacrament of his passion; because this celebration is our manner of applying or using it. The particulars of which preparation are represented in the following rules:
1. No man must dare to approach to the holy sacrament of the Lord’s
supper, if he be in a state of any one sin,
2. Every communicant must first have examined himself; that is, tried the condition and state of his soul, searched out the secret ulcers, inquired out its weaknesses and indiscretions, and all those aptnesses where it is exposed to temptation; that, by finding out its diseases he may find a cure, and by discovering its aptnesses he may secure his present purposes of future amendment, and may be armed against dangers and temptations.
3. This examination must be a man’s own act and inquisition into his life; but then also it should lead a man on to run to those whom the great Physician of our souls, Christ Jesus, hath appointed to minister physic to our diseases, that in all dangers and great accidents we may be assisted for comfort and remedy, for medicine and caution.
4. In this affair let no man deceive himself, and against such a time which public authority hath appointed for us to receive the sacrament, weep for his sins by way of solemnity and ceremony, and still retain the affection: but he that comes to this feast must have on the wedding-garment, that is, he must have put o Jesus Christ, and he must have put off the old man with his affections and lusts; and he must be wholly conformed to Christ in the image of his mind. For then we have put on Christ when our souls are clothed with is righteousness, when every faculty of our soul is proportioned and vested according to the pattern of Christ’s life. And therefore a man must not leap from his last night’s surfeit and bath, and then communicate; but when he hath begun the work of God effectually, and made some progress in repentance, and hath walked some stages and periods in the ways of godliness, then let him come to him that is to minister it, and having made known the state of his soul, he is to be admitted; but to receive into an unhallowed soul and body is to receive the dust of the tabernacle in the waters of jealousy; it will make the belly to swell, and the thigh to rot; it will not convey Christ to us, but the devil will enter and dwell there, till with it he returns to his dwelling of torment. Remember always, that after a great sin, or after a habit of sins, a man is not soon made clean; and no unclean thing must come to this feast. It is not the preparation of two or three days that can render a person capable of this banquet; for in this feast, all Christ, and Christ’s passion, and all his graces, the blessings and effects of his sufferings, are conveyed. Nothing can fit us for this but what can unite us to Christ, and obtain of him to present our needs to his heavenly Father: this sacrament can no otherwise be celebrated but upon the same terms on which we may hope for pardon and heaven itself.
5. When we have this general and indispensably necessary preparation, we are to make our souls more adorned and trimmed up with circumstances of pious actions and special devotions, setting apart some portion of our time immediately before the day of solemnity, according as our great occasions will permit: and this time is specially to be spent in actions of repentance, confession of our sins, renewing our purposes of holy living, praying for pardon of our failings and for those graces which may prevent the like sadnesses for the time to come, meditation upon the passion, upon the infinite love of God expressed in so great mysterious manners of redemption; and indefinitely in all acts of virtue which may build our souls up into a temple fit for the reception of Christ himself and the inhabitation of the Holy Spirit.
6. The celebration of the holy sacrament being the most solemn prayer, joined with the most effectual instrument of its acceptance, must suppose us in the love of God and in charity with all the world; and therefore we must, before every communion especially, remember what differences or jealousies are between us and any one else, and recompose all disunions, and cause right understandings between each other; offering to satisfy whom we have injured, and to forgive them who have injured us, without thoughts of resuming the quarrel when the solemnity is over; for that is but to rake the embers in light and fantastic ashes; it must be quenched, and a holy flame enkindled — no fires must be at all, but the fires of love and zeal; and the altar of incense will send up a sweet perfume, and make atonement for us.
7. When the day of the feast is come, lay aside all cares and impertinences of the world, and remember that this is thy soul’s day, a day of traffic and intercourse with heaven. Arise early in the morning. 1. Give God thanks for the approach of so great a blessing. 2. Confess thine own unworthiness to admit so divine a guest. 3. Then remember and deplore thy sins, which have made thee so unworthy. 4. Then confess God’s goodness, and take sanctuary there, and upon him place thy hopes; 5. And invite him to thee with renewed acts of love, of holy desire, of hatred of his enemy, sin. 6. Make oblation of thyself wholly to be disposed by him, to the obedience of him, to his providence and possession, and pray him to enter and dwell there for ever. And after this, with joy and holy fear, and the forwardness of love, address thyself to the receiving of him, to whom, and by whom, and for whom, all faith and all hope and all love, in the whole catholic church, both in heaven and earth, is designed; him, whom kings and queens and whole kingdoms are in love with, and count it the greatest honour in the world that their crowns and sceptres are laid at his holy feet.
8. When the holy man stands at the table of blessing and ministers the rite of consecration, then do as the angels do, who behold and love and wonder that the Son of God should become food to the souls of his servants; that he, who cannot suffer any change or lessening, should be broken into pieces, and enter into the body to support and nourish the spirit, and yet at the same time remain in heaven, while he descends to thee upon earth; that he who hath essential felicity should become miserable and die for thee, and then give himself to thee for ever to redeem thee from sin and misery; that by his wounds he should procure health to thee, by his affronts he should entitle thee to glory, by his death he should bring thee to life, and by becoming a man he should make thee partaker of the divine nature. These are such glories that, although they are made so obvious that each eye may behold them, yet they are also so deep that no thought can fathom them; but so it hath pleased him to make these mysteries to be sensible, because the excellency and depth of the mercy is not intelligible; that while we are ravished and comprehended within the infiniteness of so vast and mysterious a mercy, yet we may be as sure of it as of that thing we see and feel and smell and taste; but yet it is so great that we cannot understand it.
9. These holy mysteries are offered to our senses, but not to
be placed under our feet; they are sensible, but not common; and therefore as the
weakness of the elements adds wonder to the excellency of the sacrament, so let
our reverence and venerable usages of them add homour to the elements, and acknowledge
the glory of the mystery, and the divinity of the mercy. Let us receive the consecrated
elements with all devotion and humility of body and spirit; and do this honour to
it, that it be the first food we eat, and the first beverage we drink that day,
unless it be in case of sickness, or other great necessity; and that your body and
soul both be prepared to its reception with abstinence from secular pleasures, that
you may better have attended fastings and preparatory prayers. For if ever it be
seasonable to observe the counsel of St. Paul, that married persons by consent should
abstain for a time, that they may attend to solemn religion, it is now.
10. In the act of receiving, exercise acts of faith with much
confidence and resignation, believing it not to be common bread and wine, but holy
in their use, holy in their signification, holy in their change, and holy in their
effect; and believe, if thou art a worthy communicant, thou dost as verily receive
Christ’s body and blood to all effects and purposes of the Spirit as thou dost receive
the blessed elements into thy mouth — that thou puttest thy finger to his hand,
and thy hand into his side, and thy lips to his fontinel of blood, sucking life
from his heart;
11. Fail not at this solemnity, according to the custom of pious and devout people, to make an offering to God for the uses of religion and the poor, according to thy ability. For when Christ feasts us with his body, let us also feast our fellow- members, who have right to the same promises, and are partakers of the same sacrament, and partners of the same hope, and cared for under the same Providence, and descended from the same common parents, and whose Father God is, and Christ is their elder brother. If thou chancest to communicate where this holy custom is not observed publicly, supply that want by thy private charity; but offer it to God at his holy table, at least by thy private designing it there.
12. When you have received, pray and give thanks. Pray for all estates of men; for they also have an interest in the body of Christ, whereof they are members: and you, in conjunction with Christ, (whom then you have received,) are more fit to pray for them in that advantage, and in the celebration of that holy sacrifice, which then is sacramentally represented to God. Give thanks for the passion of our dearest Lord: remember all its parts, and all the instruments of your redemption; and beg of God, that by a holy perseverance in well-doing you may from shadows pass on to substances, from eating his body to seeing his face, from the typical, sacramental, and transient, to the real and eternal supper of the Lamb.
13. After the solemnity is done, let Christ dewll in your hearts by faith and love, and obedience and conformity to his life and death: as you have taken Christ into you, so put Christ on you, and conform every faculty of your soul and body to his holy image and perfection. Remember, that now Christ is all one with you; and, therefore, when you are to do an action consider how Christ did or would do the like; and do you imitate his example, and transcribe his copy, and understand all his commandments, and choose all that he propounded, and desire his promises, and fear his threatenings, and marry his loves and hatreds, and contract his friendships; for then you do every day communicate; especially when Christ thus dwells in you, and you in Christ, growing up towards a perfect man in Christ Jesus.
14. Do not instantly, upon your return from church, return also to the world and secular thoughts and employment; but let the remaining parts of that day be like a post-communion, or an after-office, entertaining your blessed Lord with all the caresses and sweetness of love and colloquies, and intercourses of duty and affection, acquainting him with all your needs, and revealing to him all your secrets, and opening all your infirmities; and as the affairs of your person or employment call you off, so retire again with often ejaculations and acts of entertainment to your beloved guest.
The Effects and Benefits of Worthy Communicating.
When I said that the sacrifice of the cross, which Christ offered for all the sins and all the needs of the world, is represented to God by the minister in the sacrament, and offered up in prayer and sacramental memory, after the manner that Christ himself intercedes for us in heaven, (so far as his glorious priesthood is imitable by his ministers on earth,) I must of necessity also mean, that all the benefits of that sacrifice are then conveyed to all that communicate worthily. But if we descend to particulars, then and there the church is nourished in her faith, strengthened in her hope, enlarged in her bowels with an increasing charity; there all the members of Christ are joined with each other, and all to Christ their head; and we again renew the covenant with God in Jesus Christ, and God seals his part, and we promise for ours, and Christ unites both, and the Holy Ghost signs both in the collation of those graces which we then pray for an exercise and receive all at once. There our bodies are nourished with the signs, and our souls with the mystery: our bodies receive into them the seed of an immortal nature, and our souls are joined with him who is the first-fruits of the resurrection and never can die. And if we desire anything else and need it, here it is to be prayed for, here to be hoped for, here to be received. Long life and health, and recovery from sickness, and competent support and maintenance, and peace and deliverance from our enemies, and content and patience, and joy, and sanctified riches, or a cheerful poverty, and liberty, and whatsoever else is a blessing was purchased for us by Christ in his death and resurrection, and in his intercession in heaven. And this sacrament being that to our particulars which the great mysteries are in themselves and by design to all the world, if we receive worthily, we shall receive any of these blessings, according as God shall choose for us; and he will not only choose with more wisdom, but also with more affection, than we can for ourselves.
After all this, it is advised by the guides of souls, wise men
and pious, that all persons should communicate very often, even as often as they
can, without excuses or delays; everything that puts us from so holy an employment,
when we are moved to it, being either a sin or an imperfection, an infirmity or
in devotion, and an inactiveness of spirit. All Christian people must come. They,
indeed, that are in the state of sin must not come so, but yet they must come. First
they must quit their state of death, and then partake of the bread of life. They
that are at enmity with their neighbours must come-that is no excuse for their not
coming; only they must not bring their enmity along with them, but leave it, and
then come. They that have variety of secular employment must come;
PRAYERS
FOR ALL SORTS OF MEN AND ALL NECESSITIES; RELATING TO THE SEVERAL PARTS OF THE VIRTUE OF RELIGION.
A Prayer for the Graces of Faith, Hope, Charity.
O Lord God of infinite mercy, of infinite excellency, who hast sent thy holy Son into the world to redeem us from an intolerable misery, and to teach us a holy religion, and to forgive us an infinite debt: give me thy Holy Spirit, that my understanding and all my facilities may be so resigned to the discipline and doctrine of my Lord, that I may be prepared in mind and will to die for the testimony of Jesus, and to suffer any affliction or calamity that shall offer to hinder my duty, or tempt me to shame or sin or apostasy; and let my faith be the parent of a good life, a strong shield to repel the fiery darts of the devil, and the author of a holy hope, of modest desires, of confidence in God, and of a never-failing charity to thee, my God, and to all the world; that I may never have my portion with the unbelievers or uncharitable and desperate persons; but may be supported by the strengths of faith in all temptations, and may be refreshed with the comforts of a holy hope in all my sorrows, and may bear the burden of the Lord, and the infirmities of my neighbour, by the support of charity; that the yoke of Jesus may become easy to me, and my love may do all the miracles of grace, till from grace it swell to glory, from earth to heaven, from duty to reward, from the imperfections of a beginning and still growing love, it may arrive to the consummation of an eternal and never-ceasing charity, through Jesus Christ the Son of thy love, the author of our hope, and the author and finisher of our faith: to whom with thee, O Lord God, Father of heaven and earth, and with thy Holy Spirit, be all glory and love and obedience and dominion, now and for ever. Amen.
Acts of Love by way of Prayer and Ejaculation; to be used in private.
O God, thou art my God, early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for
thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is, to
see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary. Because thy
loveing-kingness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee.
I am ready, not only to be bound, but to die for the name of the
Lord Jesus.
How amiable are thy tabernacles, thou Lord of Hosts! My soul longeth,
yes even fainteth for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh crieth out for
the living God. Blessed are they that dwell in thy house; they will still be praising
thee.
O blessed Jesus, thou art worthy of all adoration and all honour and all love: thou art the wonderful, the counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of peace; of thy government and peace there shall be no end: thou art the brightness of thy Father’s glory, the express image of his person, the appointed heir of all things. Thou upholdest all things by the word of thy power; thou didst by thyself purge our sins; thou art set on the right hand of the Majesty on high; thou art made better than the angels; thou hast by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. Thou, O dearest Jesus, art the head of the church, the beginning and the first born from the dead: in all things thou hast the pre-eminence, and it pleased the Father that in thee should all fulness dwell. Kingdoms are in love with thee; kings lay their crowns and sceptres at thy feet; and queens are thy handmaids, and wash the feet of thy servants.
A Prayer to be said in any Affliction, as Death of Children, of Husband or Wife, in great Poverty, in Imprisonment, in a sad and disconsolate Spirit, and in Temptations to despair.
O eternal God, Father of mercies, and God of all comfort, with much mercy look upon the sadnesses and sorrows of thy servant. My sins lie heavy upon me, and press me sore, and there is no health in my bones by reason of thy displeasure and my sin. The waters are gone over me, and I stick fast in the deep mire, and my miseries are without comfort, because they are punishments of my sin: and I am so evil and unworthy a person, that though I have great desires, yet I have no dispositions or worthiness toward receiving comfort. my sins have caused my sorrow, and my sorrow does not cure my sins; and unless for thine own sake, and merely because thou art good, thou shalt pity me and relieve me, I am as much without remedy as now I am without comfort. Lord, pity me! Lord, let thy grace refresh my spirit! Let thy comforts support me, thy mercy pardon me, and never let my portion be amongst hopeless and accursed spirits; for thou art good and gracious, and I throw myself upon thy mercy. Let me never let my hold go, and do thou with me what seems good in thine own eyes. I cannot suffer more than I have deserved; and yet I can need no relief so great as thy mercy is; for thou art infinitely more merciful than I can be miserable, and thy mercy, which is above all thy own works, must needs be far above all my sin and all my misery. Dearest Jesus, let me trust in thee for ever, and let me never be confounded. Amen.
Ejaculations and short Meditations to be used in time of Sickness and Sorrow, or Danger of Death.
Hear my prayer, O Lord, and let my cry come unto thee.
Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness, according
to the multitude of thy mercies do away mine offences.
O God, thou art my God for ever and ever: thou shalt be my guide
unto death.
An Act of Faith concerning the Resurrection and the Day of Judgment, to be said by Sick Persons, or meditated.
I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand
at the latter day upon the earth; and though after my skin worms destroy this body,
yet in my flesh shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall
behold, though my reins be consumed within me.
God shall come and shall not keep silence; there shall go before
him a consuming fire, and a mighty tempest shall be stirred up round about him:
he shall call the heaven from above, and the earth, that he may judge his people.
Short Prayers to be said by Sick Persons.
O holy Jesus, thou art a merciful high-priest, and touched with the sense of our infirmities; thou knowest the sharpness of my sickness and the weakness of my person. The clouds are gathered about me, and thou hast covered me with thy storm: my understanding hath not such apprehension of things as formerly. Lord, let thy mercy support me, thy Spirit guide me, and lead me through the valley of this death safely; that I may pass it patiently, holily, with perfect resignation; and let me rejoice in the lord, in the hopes of pardon, in the expectation of glory, in the sense of thy mercies, in the refreshments of thy Spirit, in a victory over all temptations.
Thou hast promised to be with us in tribulation. Lord, my soul is troubled, and my body is weak, and my hope is in thee, and my enemies are busy and mighty; now make good thy holy promise. Now, O holy Jesus, now let thy hand of grace be upon me: restrain my ghostly enemies and give me all sorts of spiritual assistance. Lord, remember thy servant in the day when thou bindest up thy jewels.
O take from me all tediousness of spirit, all impatience and unquietness: let me possess my soul in patience, and resign my soul and body into thy hands, as into the hands of a faithful Creator and a blessed Redeemer.
O holy Jesus, thou didst die for us; by thy sad, pungent, and intolerable pains, which thou enduredst for me, have pity on me, and ease my pains, which thou endurest for me, have pity on me, and ease my pain, or increase my patience. Lay on me no more than thou shalt enable me to bear. I have deserved it all and more, and infinitely more. Lord, I am weak and ignorant, timorous and inconstant; and I fear lest something should happen that may discompose the state of my soul, that may displease thee: do what thou wilt with me, so that thou dost but preserve me in thy fear and favour. Thou knowest that it is my great fear, but let thy Spirit secure that nothing may be able to separate me from the love of God in Jesus Christ: then smite me here that thou mayest spare me for ever; and yet, O Lord, smite me friendly, for thou knowest my infirmities. Into thy hands, I commend my spirit; for thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, thou God of truth. Come, Holy Spirit, help me in this conflict. Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly.
(Let the sick man often meditate upon these following promises and gracious words of God.)
My help cometh of the Lord, who preserveth them that are true
of heart.
And all they that knew thy name will put their trust in thee:
for thou, Lord, hast never failed them that seek thee.
O how plentiful is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them
that fear thee, and that thou hast prepared for them that put their trust in thee,
even before the sons of men!
Behold, the eye of the Lord is upon them that fear him, and upon
them that put their trust in his mercy, to deliver their souls from death.
The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a contrite heart; and will
save such as are of an humble spirit.
Thou, Lord, shalt save both man and beast: how excellent is thy
mercy, O God! and the children of men shall put their trust under the shadow of
thy wings.
They shall be satisfied with the plenteousness of thy house; and
thou shalt give them to drink of thy pleasures, as out of the rivers.
For with thee is the well of life; and in thy light we shall see
light.
Commit thy way unto the Lord, and put thy trust in him, and he
shall bring it to pass.
But in the salvation of the righteous cometh of the Lord, who
is also their strength in the time of trouble.
So that a man shall say, Verily there is a reward for the righteous:
doubtless there is a God that judgeth the earth.
Blessed is the man whom thou choosest and receivest unto thee:
he shall dwell in thy court, and shall be satisfied with the pleasures of thy house,
even of thy holy temple.
They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.
It is written, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.
The prayer of faith shall save the sick; and the Lord shall raise
him up: and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.
Come, and let us return unto the Lord; for he hath torn, and he
will heal us: he hath smitten, and he will bind us up.
If we sin we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the
righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive
us our sins, and to cleans us from all unrighteousness.
He that forgives shall be forgiven.
And this is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask
anything according to his will, he heareth us.
And ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins.
If ye, being evil, know how to give good things to your children,
how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that
ask him?
This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that
Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.
He that hath given us his Son, how should he not, with him, give
us all things else?
Acts of Hope, to be used by Sick Persons after a pious Life.
I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels,
nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height,
nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate me from the love of
God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
I have fought a good fight: I have finished my course: I have
kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which
the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but
unto all them also that love his appearing.
Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the
Father of mercies and the God of all comforts, who comforts us in all our tribulation.
A Prayer to be said in behalf of a Sick or Dying Person.
O Lord God, there is no number of thy days nor of thy mercies, and the sins and sorrows of thy servant are multiplied. Lord look upon him with much mercy and pity, forgive him all his sins, instruct his ignorances, strengthen his understanding, take from him all disorders of spirit, weakness and abuse of fancy. Restrain the malice and power of the spirits of darkness; and suffer him to be injured neither by his ghostly enemies nor his own infirmities; and let a holy and a just peace, the peace of God, be within his conscience.
Lord, preserve his senses till the last of his time, strengthen his faith, confirm his hope, and give him a never-ceasing charity to thee, our God, and to all the world: stir up in him a great and proportionable contrition for all the evils he hath done, and give him a just measure of patience for all he suffers; give him prudence, memory, and consideration, rightly to state the accounts of his soul; and do thou remind him of all his duty, that when it shall please thee that his soul goes out from the prison of his body, it may be received by angels, and preserved from the surprise of evil spirits, and from the horrors and amazements of new and strange regions, and be laid up in the bosom of our Lord, till, at the day of thy second coming, it shall be reunited to the body, which is now to be laid down in weakness and dishonour; but we humbly beg may then be raised up with glory and power for ever to live, and to behold the face of God in the glories of the Lord Jesus, who is our hope, our resurrection, and our life, the light of our eyes and the joy of our souls, our blessed and ever-glorious Redeemer. Amen.
(Hither the sick person may draw in, and use the acts of several virtues respersed in the several parts of this book, the several litanies, viz. of repentance, of the passion, and the single prayers, according to his present needs.)
A Prayer to be said in a Storm at Sea.
O my God, thou didst create the earth and the sea for thy glory and the use of man, and dost daily show wonders in the deep: look upon the danger and fear of thy servant. My sins have taken hold upon me, and without the supporting arm of thy mercy I cannot look up; but my trust is in thee. Do thou, O Lord, rebuke the sea, and make it calm, for to thee the winds and the sea obey; let not the waters swallow me up, but let thy Spirit, the spirit of gentleness and mercy, move upon the waters. Be thou reconciled unto thy servants, and then the face of the waters will be smooth. I fear that my sins make me, like Jonas, the cause of the tempest. Cast out all my sins, and throw not thy servants away from thy presence and from the land of the living, into the depths where all things are forgotten. But if it be thy will that we should go down into the waters, Lord, receive my soul into thy holy hands, and preserve it in mercy and safety till the day of restitution of all things; and be pleased to unite my death to the death of thy Son, and to accept of it so united as a punishment for all my sins, that thou mayest forget all thine anger, and blot my sins out of thy book, and write my soul there, for Jesus Christ’s sake, our dearest Lord and most mighty Redeemer. Amen.
Then make an Act of Resignation thus:
To God pertain the issues of life and death. It is the
Lord, let him do what seemeth good in his own eyes. Thy will be done in earth as
it is in heaven. Recite
A Form of a Vow to be made in this or the like Danger.
If the Lord will be gracious and hear the prayer of his servant, and bring me safe to shore, then I will praise him secretly and publicly, and pay unto the use of charity (or religion) (then name the sum you design for holy use). O my God, my goods are nothing unto thee: I will also be thy servant all the days of my life, and remember this mercy and my present purposes, and live more to God’s glory, and with a stricter duty. And do thou please to accept this vow as an instance of my importunity, and the greatness of my needs; and be thou graciously moved to pity and deliver me. Amen.
(This form also may be used in praying for a blessing on an enterprise, and may be instanced in actions of devotions as well as of charity.)
A Prayer before a Journey.
O almighty God who fillest all things with thy presence, and art a God afar off as well as near at hand; thou didst send thy angel to bless Jacob in his journey, and didst lead the children of Israel through the Red Sea, making it a wall on the right hand and on the left; be pleased to let thy angel go our before me and guide me in my journey, preserving me from dangers of robbers, from violence of enemies, and sudden and sad accidents, from falls and errors. And prosper my journey to thy glory, and to all my innocent purposes; and preserve me from all sin, that I may return in peace and holiness, with thy favour and thy blessings, and may serve thee in thankfulness and obedience all the days of my pilgrimage; and at last bring me to thy country, to the celestial Jerusalem, there to dwell in thy house, and to sing praises to thee for ever. Amen.
Ad. Sect. 4.
A Prayer to be said before the hearing or reading the Word of God.
O holy and eternal Jesus, who hast begotten us by thy word, renewed us by thy Spirit, fed us by thy sacraments, and by the daily ministry of thy word, still go on to build us up to life eternal. Let thy most Holy Spirit be present with me and rest upon me in the reading or hearing thy sacred word, that I may do it humbly, reverently, without prejudice, with a mind ready and desirous to learn and to obey; that I may be readily furnished and instructed to every good work, and may practice all thy holy laws and commandments to the glory of thy holy name, O holy and eternal Jesus. Amen.
Ad. Sect. 5, 9, 10.
A Form of Confession of Sins and Repentance, to be used upon Fasting Days, or Days of Humiliation, especially in Lent, and before the Holy Sacrament.
“Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness; according to the multitude of thy mercies do away mine offences: for I will confess my wickedness, and be sorry for my sin.” O my dearest Lord, I am not worthy to be accounted amongst the meanest of thy servants, not worthy to be sustained by the least fragments of thy mercy, but to be shut out of thy presence for ever with dogs and unbelievers. But for thy name’s sake, O Lord, be merciful unto my sin, for it is great.
I am the vilest of sinners, and the worst of men; proud, and vain-glorious, impatient of scorn or of just reproof; not enduring to be slighted, and yet extremely deserving it; I have been cozened by the colours of humility and when I have truly been called myself vicious I could not endure any man else should say so or think so. I have been disobedient, unchristian, and unmanly. But for thy name’s sake, etc.
O just and dear God, how can I expect pity or pardon, who am so angry and peevish, with and without cause, envious at good, rejoicing in the evil of my neighbours negligent of my charge, idle and useless, timorous and base, jealous and impudent, ambitious and hard-hearted, soft, unmortified, and effeminate in my life, undevout in my prayers, without fancy or affection, without attendance to them or perseverance in them; but passionate and curious in pleasing my appetite of meat, and drink, and pleasures, making matter both for sin and sickness; and I have reaped the cursed fruits of such improvidence, entertaining indecent and impure thoughts, and I have brought them forth in indecent and impure actions, and the spirit of uncleanness hath entered in and unhallowed the temple which thou didst consecrate for the habitation of thy Spirit of love and holiness. But for thy name’s sake, O Lord, be merciful unto my sin, for it is great.
Thou hast given me a whole life to serve thee in, and to advance my hopes of heaven; and this precious time I have thrown away upon my sins and vanities, being improvident of my time and of my talent, and of thy grace and my own advantages, resisting thy Spirit and quenching him. I have been a great lover of myself, and yet used many ways to destroy myself. I have pursued my temporal ends with greediness and indirect means. I am revengeful and unthankful, forgetting benefits, but not so soon forgetting injuries, curious and murmuring, a great breaker of promises. I have not loved my neighbour’s good, nor advanced it in all things, where I could. I have been unlike thee in all things. I am unmerciful and unjust: a sottish admirer of things below, and careless of heaven and the ways that lead thither.
But for thy name’s sake, O Lord, be merciful unto my sin, for it is great.
All my senses have been windows to let sin in, and death by sin. Mine eyes have been adulterous and covetous; mine ears open to slander and detraction; my tongue and palate loose and wanton, intemperate, and of foul language, talkative and lying, rash and malicious, false and flattering, irreligious and irreverent, detracting and censorious; my hands have been injurious and unclean, my passions violent and rebellious, my desires impatient and unreasonable; all my members and all my facilities have been servants of sin; and my very best actions have more matter of pity than of confidence, being imperfect in my best, and intolerable in most.-But for thy name’s sake, O Lord, etc.
Unto this and a far bigger heap of sin I have added also the faults of others to my own score, by neglecting to hinder them to sin in all that I could and ought; but I also have encouraged them in sin, have taken off their fears, and hardened their conscience, and tempted them directly, and prevailed in it to my own ruin and theirs, unless thy glorious and unspeakable mercy hath prevented so intolerable a calamity.
Lord, I have abused thy mercy, despised thy judgments, turned thy grace into wantonness. I have been unthankful for thy infinite loving-kindness. I have sinned and repented, and then sinned again and resolved against it, and presently broke it; and then I tied myself up with vows, and then was tempted, and then I yielded by little and little, till I was willingly lost again, and my vows fell off like cords of vanity.
Miserable man that I am! who shall deliver me from this body of sin?
And yet, O Lord, I have another heap of sins to be unloaded. My secret sins, O Lord, are innumerable; sins I noted not; sins that I willingly neglected; sins that I acted upon wilful ignorance and voluntary mispersuasion; sins that I have forgot; and sins which a diligent and a watchful spirit might have prevented, but I would not. Lord, I am confounded with the multitude of them, and the horror of their remembrance though I consider them nakedly in their direct appearance, without the deformity of their unhandsome and aggravating circumstances; but, so dressed, they are a sight too ugly, an instance of amazement, infinite in degrees, and insufferable in their load.
And yet thou hast spared me all this while, and hast not thrown me into hell, where I have deserved to have been long since, and even now to have been shut up to an eternity of torments, with insupportable amazement, fearing the revelation of thy day.
Miserable man that I am! who shall deliver me from this body of sin?
Thou shalt answer for me, O Lord my God. Thou that prayest for me shalt be my judge.
The Prayer.
Thou hast prepared for me a more healthful sorrow; O deny not thy servant when he begs sorrow of thee. Give me a deep contrition for my sins, a hearty detestation and loathing of them, hating them worse than death with torments. Give me grace entirely, presently, and for ever, to forsake them; to walk with care and prudence with fear and watchfulness, all my days; to do all my duty with diligence and charity, with zeal and a never fainting spirit; to redeem the time, to trust upon thy mercies, to make use of all the instruments of grace, to work out my salvation with fear and trembling; that thou mayest have the glory of pardoning all my sins, and I may reap the fruit of all thy mercies and all thy graces, of thy patience and long-suffering, even to live a holy life here, and to reign with thee for ever, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Ad. Sect. 6.
Special Devotions to be used upon the Lords Day, and the great Festivals of Christians.
In the morning recite the following form of thanksgiving, upon the special festivals, adding the commemoration of the special blessings according to the following prayers; adding such prayers as you shall choose out of the foregoing devotions.
Besides the ordinary and public duties of the day, if you retire into your closet to read and meditate, after you have performed that duty, say the Song of St. Ambrose, (commonly called the Te Deum,) or, We praise thee, etc.; then add the prayers for particular graces, which are at the end of the former chapter, such and as many of them as shall fit your present needs and affections, ending with the Lord’s Prayer. This form of devotion may, for variety, be indifferently used at other times.
A form of thanksgiving with a recital of public and private blessings, to be used upon Easter-day, Whit-sunday, Ascention-day, and all Sundays of the year; but the middle part of it may be reserved for the more solemn festivals, and the other used upon the ordinary, as every man’s affections or leisure shall determine.
1. Ex Liturgia S. Basilii magna ex parte.
Oh eternal essence, Lord God, Father Almighty, maker of all things in heaven and earth; it is a good thing to give thanks to thee, O Lord, and to pay to thee all reverence, worship and devotion, from a clean and prepared heart, and with an humble spirit to present a live in and reasonable sacrifice to thy holiness and majesty; for thou hast given unto us the knowledge of thy truth; and who is able to declare thy greatness, and to recount all thy marvelous works which thou hast done in all the generations of the world?
O great Lord and Governor of all things, Lord and Creator of all things, Lord and Creator of all things visible and invisible, who sittest upon the throne of thy glory, and beholdest the secrets of the lowest abyss and darkness, thou art without beginning, uncircumscribed, incomprehensible, unalterable, and seated for ever unmovable in thy own essential happiness and tranquility; thou art the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is,
Our dearest and most gracious Saviour, our hope, the wisdom of the Father, the image of thy goodness, the word eternal, and the brightness of thy person, the power of God from eternal ages, the true light that lighteneth every man that cometh into the world, the redemption of man, and the sanctification of our spirits.
By whom the Holy Ghost descended upon the church; the Holy Spirit of truth, the seal of adoption; the earnest of the inheritance of the saints; the first fruits of everlasting felicity; the life-giving power; the fountain of sanctification; the comfort of the church, the ease of the afflicted, the support of the weak, the wealth of the poor, the teacher of the doubtful, scrupulous, and ignorant; the anchor of the fearful; the infinite reward of all faithful souls, by whom all reasonable and understanding creatures serve thee, and send up a never-ceasing and a never-rejected sacrifice of prayer, and praise, and adoration.
All angels and archangels, all thrones and dominions, all principalities and powers, the cherubim with many eyes, and the seraphim covered with wings from the terror and amazement of thy brightest glory; these, and all the powers of heaven, do perpetually sing praise and never-ceasing hymns and eternal anthems to the glory of the eternal God, the Almighty Father of men and angels.
Holy is our God; holy is the Almighty; holy is the Immortal; holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth, heaven and earth are full of the majesty of thy glory. Amen. With these holy and blessed spirits I also, thy servant O thou great lover of souls, though I be unworthy to offer praise to such a majesty; yet, out of my bounden duty, humbly offer up my heart and voice to join in this blessed choir, and confess the glories of the Lord. For thou art holy, and of thy greatness there is no end; and in thy justice and goodness thou hast measured out to us all thy works.
Thou madest man out of the earth, and didst form him after thine own image; thou didst place him in a garden of pleasure, and gavest him laws of righteousness to be to him a seed of immortality.
“O that men would therefore praise the Lord for his goodness, and declare the wonders that he hath done for the children of men.”
For when man sinned and listened to the whispers of a tempting spirit, and refused to hear the voice of God, thou didst throw him out from paradise, and sentest him to till the earth; but yet leftest not his condition without remedy, but didst provide for him the salvation of a new birth, and by the blood of thy Son didst redeem and pay the price to thine own justice for thine own creature, lest the work of thine own hands should perish.
“O that men would therefore praise the Lord,” etc.
For thou, O Lord, in every age didst send testimonies from heaven, blessings, and prophets, and fruitful seasons, and preachers of righteousness, and miracles of power and mercy; thou spakest by thy prophets and saidst, ‘I will help by one that is mighty; and, in the fulness of time, spakest to us by thy Son, by whom thou didst make both the worlds, who, by the word of his power, sustains all things in heaven and earth; who thought it no robbery to be equal to the Father; who, being before all time, was pleased to be born in time to converse with men, to be incarnate of a holy virgin; he emptied himself of all his glories, took on him the form of a servant, in all things being made like unto us, in a soul of passions and discourse, in a body of humility and sorrow, but in all things innocent, and in all things afflicted; and suffered death for us, that we by him might live, and be partakers of his nature and his glories, of his body and of his Spirit, of the blessings of earth, and of immortal felicities in heaven.
“O that men would therefore praise the Lord,” etc.
For thou, O holy and immortal God, O sweetest Saviour Jesus, wert made under the law to condemn sin in the flesh; thou, who knewest no sin, wert made sin for us; thou gavest to us righteous commandments, and madest known to us all thy Father’s will; thou didst redeem us from our vain conversation, and from the vanity of idols, false principles, and foolish confidences, and broughtest us to the knowledge of the true and only God and our Father, and hast made us to thyself a peculiar people of thy own purchase, a royal priesthood, a holy nation; thou hast washed our souls in the laver of regeneration, the sacrament of baptism; thou hast reconciled us by thy death, justified us by thy resurrection, sanctified us by thy Spirit, sending him upon thy church in visible forms, and giving him in powers and miracles and mighty signs, and continuing this incomparable favour in gifts and sanctifying graces, and promising that he shall abide with us for ever; thou hast fed us with thine own broken body, and given drink to our souls out of thine own heart, and hast ascended up on high, and hast overcome all the powers of death and hell, and redeemed us from the miseries of a sad eternity; and sittest at the right-hand of God, making intercession for us with a never-ceasing charity.
“O that men would therefore praise the Lord,” etc.
The grave could not hold thee long, O holy and eternal Jesus; thy body could not see corruption, neither could thy soul be left in hell; thou wert free among the dead, and thou breakest the iron gates of death, and the bars and chains of the lower prisons. Thou broughtest comfort to the souls of the patriarchs, who waited for thy coming, who longed for the redemption of man, and the revelation of thy day. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob saw thy day and rejoiced; and when thou didst arise from thy bed of darkness, and leftest the graveclothes behind thee, and didst put on a robe of glory, (over which for forty days thou didst wear a veil) and then enterdst into a cloud, and then into glory, then the powers of hell were confounded, then death lost its power and was swallowed up into victory; and though death is not quite destroyed, yet it is made harmless and without a sting, and the condition of human nature is made an entrance to eternal glory; and art become the Prince of life, the first-fruits of the resurrection, the first-born from the dead, having made the way plain before our faces, that we may also arise again in the resurrection of the last day, when thou shalt come again unto us, to render to every man according to his works.
“O that men would therefore praise the Lord,” etc.
O give thanks unto the Lord, praise ye the Lord; praise him and magnify him for ever.
O ye spirits and souls of the righteous, praise ye the Lord; praise him and magnify him for ever.
And now, O Lord God, what shall I render to thy Divine Majesty for all the benefits thou hast done unto thy servant in my personal capacity?
Thou art my creator and my Father, my Protector and my Guardian; thou hast brought me from my mother’s womb; thou hast told all my joints, and in thy book were all my members written; thou hast given me a comely body, Christian and careful parents, holy education; thou hast been my guide and my teacher all my days; thou hast given me ready faculties, an unloosed tongue, a cheerful spirit, straight limbs, a good reputation, and liberty of person, a quiet life, and a tender conscience. Thou wert my hope from my youth, through thee have I been holden up ever since I was born. Thou hast sent thy angel to snatch me from the violence of fire and water, to prevent precipices, fracture of bones, to rescue me from thunder and lightning, plague and pestilential diseases, murder and robbery, violence of chance and enemies, and all the spirits of darkness; and in the days of sorrow thou hast refreshed me; in the destitution of provisions thou are taken are of me, and thou hast said unto me, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.”
“I will give thanks unto the Lord with my whole heart, secretly among the faithful, and in the congregation.”
Thou, O my dearest Lord and Father, hast taken care of my soul, hast pitied my miseries, sustained my infirmities, relieved and instructed my ignorances; and though I have broken thy righteous laws and commandments, run passionately after vanities, and was in love with death, and was dead in sin, and was exposed to thousands of temptations, and fell foully, and continued in it, and loved to have it so, and hated to be reformed; yet thou didst call me with the checks of conscience, with daily sermons and precepts of holiness, with fear and shame, with benefits and the admonitions of thy most Holy Spirit, by the counsel of my friends, by the example of good persons, with holy books and thousands of excellent arts, and would not suffer me to perish in my folly but didst force me to to attend to thy gracious calling, and hast put me into a state of repentance, and possibilities of pardon, being infinitely desirous I should live, and recover, and make use of thy grace, and partake of thy glories.
“I will give thanks unto the Lord with my whole heart, secretly among the faithful and in the congregation. For salvation belongeth unto the Lord, and thy blessing is upon thy servant. But as for me, I will come into thy house in the multitude of thy mercies, and in thy fear will I worship toward thy holy temple. For of thee, and in thee, and through and for thee, are all things. Blessed be the name of God, from generation to generation.” Amen.
A Prayer to be said on the Feast of Christmas, or the Birth of our blessed Saviour Jesus; the same also may be said upon the Feast of the Annunciation and Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
O holy and almighty God, Father of mercies, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of thy love and eternal mercies, I adore and praise and glorify thy infinite and unspeakable love and wisdom, who hast sent thy Son from the bosom of felicities to take upon him our nature and our misery and our guilt, and hast made the Son of God to become the Son of man, that we might become the Sons of God, and partakers of the Divine nature; since thou hast so exalted human nature, be pleased also to sanctify my person, that by a conformity to the humility and laws, and sufferings of my dearest Saviour, I may be united to his Spirit, and be made all one with the most holy Jesus. Amen.
O holy and eternal Jesus, who didst pity mankind lying in his blood, and sin, and misery, and didst choose our sadnesses and sorrows that thou mightest make us to partake of thy felicities; let thine eyes pity me, thy hands support me, thy holy feet tread down all the difficulties in my way to heaven; let me dwell in thy heart, be instructed with thy wisdom, moved by thy affections, choose with thy will, and be clothed with thy righteousness; that, in the day of judgment, I may be found having on thy garments, sealed with thy impression; and that hearing upon every faculty and member the character of my elder brother, I may not be cast out with strangers and unbelievers. Amen.
O holy and ever-blessed Spirit, who didst overshadow the holy Virgin-mother of our Lord, and caused her to conceive by a miraculous and mysterious manner, be pleased to overshadow my soul, and enlighten my spirit, that I may conceive the holy Jesus in my heart, and may bear him in my mind, and may grow up to the fulness of the stature of Christ, to be a perfect man in Christ Jesus. Amen.
To God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to the eternal Son that was incarnate and born of a virgin, to the Spirit of the Father and the Son be all honour and glory, worship and adoration, now and for ever. Amen.
(The same form of prayer may be used upon our own birthday, or day of our baptism; adding the following prayer.)
A Prayer to be said upon our Birth-day, or Day of Baptism.
O blesses and eternal God, I give thee praise and glory for thy great mercy to me in causing me to be born of Christian parents and didst not allot to me a portion with misbelievers and heathen that have not known thee. Thou didst not suffer me to be strangled at the gate of the womb, but thy hand sustained and brought me to the light of the world, and the illumination of baptism, with thy grace preventing my election, and by an artificial necessity and holy prevention engaging me to the profession and practices of Christianity. Lord, since that, I have broken the promises made in my behalf, and which I confirmed by my after-act; I went back from them by an evil life; and yet thou hast still continued to me life and time of repentance; and didst not cut me off in the beginning of my days, and the progress of my sins. O dearest God, pardon the errors and ignorances, the vices and vanities, of my youth, and the faults of my more forward years, and let me never more stain the whiteness of my baptismal robe; and now that by thy grace I still persist in the purpose of obedience, and do give up my name to Christ, and glory to be a disciple of thy institution, and a servant of Jesus, let me never fail of thy grace; let no root or bitterness spring up and disorder my purposes, nor defile my spirit. O let my years be so many degrees of nearer approach to thee; and forsake me not, O God, in my old age, when I am grey-headed; and when my strength faileth me, be thou my strength and my guide unto death; that I may reckon my years, and apply my heart unto wisdom; and at last, after the spending a holy and a blessed life, I may be brought unto a glorious eternity, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
(Then add the form of thanksgiving formerly described.)
A Prayer to be said upon the Days of the Memory of Apostles, Martyrs, etc.
O eternal God, to whom do live the spirits of them that depart hence in the Lord, and I whom the souls of them that be elected, after they be delivered from the burden of the flesh, be in peace and rest from their labours, and their works follow them, and their memory is blessed; I bless and magnify thy holy and ever-glorious name, for the great grace and blessing manifested to thy apostles and martyrs, and other holy persons, who have glorified thy name in the days of their flesh, and have served the interest of religions and of thy service; and this day we have thy servant (name the apostle, or martyr, etc.) in remembrance whom thou hast led through the troubles and temptations of this world, and now hast lodged in the bosom of a certain hope and great beatitude, until the day of restitution of all things. Blessed be the mercy and eternal goodness of God; and the memory of all thy saints is blessed. Teach me to practise their doctrine, to imitate their lives, following their example, and being united as a part of the same mystical body by the band of the same faith, and a holy hope, and a never-ceasing charity. And may it please thee, of thy gracious goodness, shortly to accomplish the number of thine elect, and to hasten thy kingdom, that we with thy servant and all others departed in the true faith and fear of thy holy name, may have our perfect consummation and bliss, in body and soul, in thy eternal and everlasting kingdom. Amen.
A Form of Prayer recording all the parts and mysteries of Christs Passion, being a short history of it: to be used especially in the week of the Passions, and before the receiving the blessed Sacrament.
All praise, honour, and glory be to the holy and eternal Jesus. I adore thee, O blessed Redeemer, eternal God, the light of the Gentiles, and the glory of Israel; for thou hast done and suffered for me more than I could wish; more than I could thing of; even all that a lost and a miserable perishing sinner could possibly need.
Thou wert afflicted with thirst and hunger, with heat and cold, with labours and sorrows, with hard journeys and restless nights; and when thou wert contriving all the mysterious and admirable ways of paying our scores, thou didst suffer thyself to he designed to slaughter by those for whom in love thou wert ready to die.
“What is man, that thou art mindful of him; and the Son of man, that thou visited him?”
Blessed be thy name, O holy Jesus; for thou wentest about doing good, working miracles of mercy, healing the sick, comforting the distressed, instructing the ignorant, raising the dead, enlightening the blind, strengthening the lame, straightening the crooked, relieving the poor, preaching the gospel, and reconciling sinners by the mightiness of thy power, by the wisdom of thy Spirit, by the word of God, and the merits of thy passion, thy healthful and bitter passion.
“Lord, what is man that thou art mindful of him,” etc.
Blessed by thy name, O holy Jesus, who wert content to be conspired against by the Jews, to be sold by thy servant for a vile price, and to wash the feet of him that took money for thy life, and to give to him and to all thy apostles thy most holy body and blood, to become a sacrifice for their sins, even for their betraying and denying thee; and for all my sins, even for my crucifying thee afresh, and for such sins, which I am ashamed to think, but that the greatest of my sins magnify the infiniteness of thy mercies, who didst so great things for so vile a person.
“Lord, what is man,”etc.
Blessed be thy name, O holy Jesus, who, being to depart the world, didst comfort thy apostles, pouring out into their ears and hearts treasures of admirable discourses; who didst recommend them to thy Father with a mighty charity, and then didst enter into the garden set with nothing but briars and sorrows, where thou didst suffer a most unspeakable agony, until the sweat didst sigh and groan, and fall flat upon the earth, and pray, and I had deserved, and thou sufferest.
“Lord, what is man,” etc.
Blessed be thy name, O holy Jesus, who hast sanctified to us all our natural infirmities and passions, by vouchsafing to be in fear and in trembling and sore amazement, by being bound and imprisoned, by being harassed and dragged with cords of violence and rude hands, by being drenched in the brook in the way, by being sought after like a thief, and used like a sinner who wert the most holy and the most innocent, cleaner than an angel and brighter than the morning star.
“Lord, what is man,” etc.
Blessed by thy name, O holy Jesus, and blessed by thy loving kindness and pity, by which thou didst neglect thine own sorrows, and go to comfort the sadness of thy disciples, quickening their dulness, encouraging their duty, arming their weakness with excellent precepts against the day of trial. Blessed be that humility, encouraging their duty, arming their weakness with excellent precepts against the day of trial. Blessed be that humility and sorrow of thine, who, being Lord of the angels, yet wouldest need and receive comfort from thy servant, the angel; who didst offer thyself to thy persecutors, and madest them able to seize thee; and didst receive the traitor’s kiss, and sufferedst a veil to be thrown over thy holy face, that thy enemies might not presently be confounded by so bright a lustre; and wouldst do a miracle to cure a wound of one of thy spiteful enemies; and didst reprove a zealous servant in behalf of a malicious adversary; and then didst go like a lamb to the slaughter, without noise or violence or resistance, when thou couldst have commanded millions of angels for thy guard and rescue.
“Lord, what is man,” etc.
Blessed be thy name, O holy Jesus, and blessed be that holy sorrow thou didst suffer, when thy disciples fled, and thou wert left alone in the hands of cruel men, who, like evening wolves, thirsted for a draught of thy best blood, and thou wert led to the house of Annas, and there asked ensnaring questions, and smitten on the face by him whose ear thou hadst but lately healed; and from thence wert fragged to the house of Caiaphas; and there all night didst endure spittings, affronts, scorn, contumelies, blows, and intolerable insolences; and all this for man, who was thy enemy, and the cause of all thy sorrows.
“Lord, what is man,” etc.
Blessed be thy name, O holy Jesus, and blessed be thy mercy, who, when thy servant Peter denied thee and forsook thee and forswore thee, didst look back upon him, and by that gracious and chiding look didst call him back to himself and thee; who wert accused before the high-priest and railed upon, and examined to evil purposes, and with designs of blood; who wert declared guilty of death for speaking a most necessary and most probable truth; who wert sent to Pilate and found innocent, and sent to Herod and still found innocent, and wert arrayed in white, both to declare thy innocence and yet to deride thy person, and wert sent back to Pilate, and examined again, and yet nothing but innocence found in thee, and malice round about thee to devour faith, which yet thou wert more desirous to lay down for them than they were to take it from thee.
“Lord, what is man,” etc.
Blessed be thy name, O holy Jesus, and blessed be that patience and charity, by which for our sakes thou wert content to be smitten with canes, and have that holy face, which angels with joy and wonder do behold, be spit upon, and be despised, when compared with Barabbas, and scourged most rudely with unhallowed hands, till the pavement was purpled with that holy blood, and condemned to a sad and shameful, a public and painful death, and arrayed in scarlet, and crowned with thorns, and stripped naked and then clothed, and loaden with the cross, and tormented with a tablet stuck with nails at the fringes of thy garment, and bound hard with cords, and dragged most vilely and most piteously, till the load was too great, and did sink thy tender and virginal body to the earth; and yet didst comfort the weeping women, and didst more pity thy persecutors than thyself, and wert grieved for the miseries of Jerusalem to come forty years after, more than for thy present passion.
“Lord, what is man,” etc.
Blessed be thy name, O holy Jesus, and blessed be that incomparable sweetness and holy sorrow which thou sufferedst, when thy holy hands and feet were nailed upon the cross, and the cross, being set in a hollowness of the earth, did in the fall rend the wounds wider, and there, naked and bleeding, sick and faint, wounded and despised, didst hang upon the weight of thy wounds three long hours, praying for thy persecutors, satisfying thy Father’s wrath, reconciling the penitent thief, providing for thy holy and afflicted mother, tasting vinegar and gall; and when the fulness of thy suffering was accomplished, didst give thy soul into the hands of God, and didst descent to the regions of longing souls, who waited for the revelation of this thy day in their prisons of hope: and then thy body was transfixed with a spear, and issued forth two sacraments, water and blood, and thy body was composed to burial, and dwelt in darkness three days, and three nights.
“Lord, what is man, that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man, that thou thus visited him?”
The Prayer.
Thus, O blessed Jesus, thou didst finish thy holy passion with pain and anguish so great, that nothing could be greater than it, except thyself and thine own infinite mercy: and all this for man, even for me, than whom nothing could be more miserable, thyself only excepted, who becamest so by undertaking our guilt and our punishment. And now, Lord, who hast done so much for me, be pleased only to make it effectual to me, that it may not be useless and lost as to my particular, lest I become eternally miserable, and lost to all hopes and possibilities of comfort. All this deserves more love than I have to give; but, Lord do thou turn me all into love, and all my love into obedience , and let my obedience be without interruption, and there I hope thou wilt accept such a return as I can make. Make me to be something that thou delightest in, and thou shalt have all that I am or have from thee, even whatsoever thou makest fit for thyself. Teach me to live wholly for my Saviour Jesus, and to be ready to die for Jesus, and to be conformable to his life and sufferings, and to be united to him by inseparable unions, and to own no passions but what may be servants to Jesus and disciples of his institution. O sweetest Saviour, clothe my soul with thy holy robe; hide my sins in thy wounds, and bury them in thy grave; and let me rise in the life of grace, and abide and grow in it, till I arrive at the kingdom of glory. Amen.
“Our Father,” etc.
Ad. Sect. 7,8,10.
A Form of Prayer or Intercession for all Estates of People in the Christian church. The parts of which may be added to any other forms; and the whole office, entirely as it lies, is proper to be said in our preparation to the Holy Sacrament, or on the day of celebration.
1. For Ourselves.
O thou gracious Father of mercy, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon thy servants, who bow our heads and our knees and our hearts to thee; pardon and forgive us all our sins; give us the grace of holy repentance, and a strict obedience to thy holy word; strengthen us in the inner man with the power of thy Holy Ghost for all the parts and duties of our calling and holy living; preserve us for ever in the unity of the holy catholic church, and in the integrity of the Christian faith, and in the love of God and of our neighbours, and in hope of life eternal. Amen.
2. For the whole Catholic Church.
O holy Jesus, King of the saints, and Prince of the catholic church, preserve thy spouse, whom thou hast purchased with thy right hand, and redeemed and cleansed with thy blood; the whole catholic church from one end of the earth to the other; she is founded upon a rock, but planted in the sea. O, preserve her safe from schim, heresy, and sacrilege. Unite all her members with the bands of faith, hope, and charity, and an external communion, when it shall seem good in thine eyes. Let the daily sacrifice of prayer and sacramental thanksgiving never cease, but be for ever presented to thee, and for ever prevail for the obtaining for every of its members grace and blessing, pardon and salvation. Amen.
3. For all Christian Kings, Princes, and Governors.
O King of kings and Prince of all the rulers of the earth, give thy grace and Spirit to all Christian princes, the spirit of wisdom nor counsel, the spirit of government and godly fear. Grant unto them to live in peace and honour, that their people may love and fear them, and they may love and fear God. Speak good unto their hearts concerning the church, that they may be nursing fathers to it, fathers to the fatherless, judges and avengers of the cause of widows; that they may be compassionate to the wants of the poor, and the groans of the oppressed; that they may not vex or kill the Lord’s people with unjust or ambitious wars; but may feed the flock of God, and may inquire after and do all things which may promote peace, public honesty, and holy religion; so administering things present that they may not fail of the ever-lasting glories of the world to come, where all thy faithful people shall reign kings for ever. Amen.
4. For all the Orders of them that minister about Holy Things.
O thou great Shepherd and Bishop of our souls, holy and eternal Jesus, give unto thy servants the ministers of the mysteries of Christian religion, the spirit of prudence and sanctity, faith and charity, confidence and zeal, diligence and watchfulness, that they may declare thy will unto the people faithfully, and dispense thy sacraments rightly, and intercede with thee graciously and acceptably for thy servants. Grant, O Lord, that by a holy life and a true belief, by well-doing and patient suffering, (when thou shalt call them to it,) they may glorify thee, the great lover of souls, and, after a plentiful conversion of sinners from the errors of their ways, they may shine like the stars in glory. Amen.
Give unto thy servants, the bishops, a discerning spirit, that they may lay hands suddenly on no man, but may depute such persons to the ministries of religion who may adorn the gospel of God, and whose lips may preserve knowledge and such who by their good preaching and holy living may advance the service of the Lord Jesus. Amen.
5. For our nearest Relatives, as Husband, Wife, Children, Family, etc.
O God of infinite mercy, let thy loving mercy and compassion descent upon the head of thy servants: (my wife, or husband, children, and family) be pleased to give them health of body and of spirit, a competent portion of temporals, so as may with comfort support them in their journey to heaven: preserve them from all evil and sad accidents, defend them in all assaults of their enemies, direct their persons and their actions, sanctify their hearts and words and purposes; that we all may, by the bands of obedience and charity, be united to our Lord Jesus, and, always feeling thee our merciful and gracious Father; may become a holy family discharging our whole duty in all our relations; that we in this life being thy children by adoption and grace, may be admitted into thy holy family hereafter, for ever to sing praises to thee in the church of the first-born, in the family of thy redeemed ones. Amen.
6. For our Parents, our Kindred in the Flesh, our Friends and Benefactors.
O God, merciful and gracious, who hast made (my parents) my friends and my benefactors ministers of thy mercy, and instruments of Providence to thy servant, I humbly beg a blessing to descend upon the heads of (name the persons or the relations). Depute thy holy angels to guard their persons, thy Holy Spirit to guide their souls, thy providence to minister to their necessities; and let thy grace and mercy preserve them from the bitter pains of eternal death, and bring them to everlasting life, through Jesus Christ. Amen.
7. For all that lie under toe Rof of War, Famine, Pestilence; to be said in the Time of Plague, or War, etc.
O Lord God Almighty, thou art our Father, we are thy children; thou art our Redeemer, we thy people, purchased with the price of thy most precious blood; let not thy whole displeasure arise, lest we be consumed and brought to nothing. Let health and peace lie within our dwellings; let righteousness and holiness dwell for ever in our hearts, and be expressed in all our actions, and the light of thy countenance be upon us in all our sufferings, that we may delight in the service and in the mercies of God for ever. Amen.
O gracious Father and merciful God, if it be thy will, say unto the destroying angel, “It is enough;” and though we are not better than our brethren, who are smitten with the rod of God, but much worse, yet may it please thee, even because thou art good, and because we are timorous and sinful, not yet fitted for our appearance, to set thy mark upon our foreheads, that thy angel, the minister of thy justice, may pass over us and hurt us not; let thy hand cover thy servants and hide us in the clefts of the rock, in the wounds of the holy Jesus, from the present anger that is gone out against us; that though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we may fear no evil, and suffer none; and those whom thou hast smitten with thy rod support with thy staff, and visit them with thy mercies and salvation, through Jesus Christ.
8. For all Women with Child, and for unborn Children.
O Lord God, who art the Father of them that trust in thee, and showest mercy to a thousand generations of them that fear thee; have mercy upon all women great with child; be pleased to give them a joyful and a safe deliverance; and let thy grace preserve the fruit of their wombs, and conduct them to the holy sacrament of baptism; that they, being regenerated by thy Spirit, and adopted into thy family, and the portion and duty of sons, may live to the glory of God, to the comfort of their parents and friends, to the edification of the Christian commonwealth, and the salvation of their own souls, through Jesus Christ. Amen.
9. For all Estates of Men and Women in the Christian Church.
O holy God, King eternal, out of the infinite storehouses of thy grace and mercy, give unto all virgins chastity and a religious spirit; to all persons dedicated to thee and to religion, continence and meekness and active zeal and an unwearied spirit; to all married pairs, faith and holiness; to widows and fatherless, and all that are oppressed, thy patronage, comfort, and defence; to all Christian women, simplicity and modesty, humility and chastity, patience and charity; give unto the poor, to all that are robbed and spoiled of their goods, a competent support, and a contented spirit, and a treasure in heaven hereafter; give unto prisoners and captives, to them that toil in the mines, and row in the gullies, strength of body and of spirit, liberty and redemption, comfort and restitution; to all that travel by land, thy angel for their guide, and a holy and prosperous return: to all that travel by sea, freedom from pirates and shipwreck, and bring them to the haven where they would be; to distressed and scrupulous consciences, to melancholy and disconsolate persons, to all that are afflicted with evil and unclean spirits, give a light from heaven, great grace, and proportionable comforts and timely deliverance; give them patience and resignation; let their sorrows be changed into grace and comfort, and let the storm waft them certainly to the regions of rest and glory.
Lord God of mercy, give to thy martyrs, confessors, and all thy persecuted, constancy and prudence, boldness and hope, a full faith and a never-failing charity. To all who are condemned to death, do thou minister comfort, a strong, a quiet, and a resigned spirit; take from them the fear of death, and all remaining affections to sin, and all imperfections of duty, and cause them to die full of grace, full of hope. And give to all faithful, and particularly to them who have recommended themselves to the prayers of thy unworthy servant, a supply of all their needs temporal and spiritual, and, according to their several states and necessities, rest and peace, pardon and refreshment, and show us all a mercy in the day of judgment. Amen.
Give, O Lord, to the magistrates equity, sincerity, courage, and prudence, that they may protect the good, defend religion, and punish the wrong-doers. Give to the nobility wisdom, valour, and loyalty; to merchants, justice and faithfulness, to all artificers and labours, truth and honesty; to our enemies, forgiveness and brotherly kindness.
Preserve to us the heavens and the air in healthful influence and disposition, the earth in plenty, the kingdom in peace and good governments, our marriages in peace, and sweetness, and innocence of society, thy people from famine and pestilence, our houses from burning and robbery, our persons from being burnt alive, from banishment and prison, from widowhood and destitution, from violence of pains and passions, from tempests and earthquakes, from inundation of waters, from rebellion or invasion, from impatience and inordinate cares, from tediousness of spirit and despair, from murder, and all violent, accursed, and unusual deaths, from the surprise of sudden and violent accidents, from passionate and unreasonable fears, from all thy wrath, and from all our sins, good Lord, deliver and preserve thy servants for ever. Amen.
Repress the violence of all implacable, warring, and tyrant nations; bring home unto thy fold all that are gone astray; call into the church all strangers; increase the number and holiness of thine own people; bring infants to ripeness of age and reason; confirm all baptized people with thy grace and with thy Spirit; instruct the novices and new Christians; let a great grace and merciful providence bring youthful persons safely and holily through the indiscretions, and passions, and temptations of their younger years; and to those whom thou hast or shalt permit to live to the age of a man, give competent strength and wisdom, take from them covetousness and churlishness, pride and impatience; fill them full of devotion and charity, repentance and sobriety, holy thoughts and longing desires after heaven and heavenly things; give them a holy and a blessed death, and to us all a joyful resurrection, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Ad. Sect. 10.
The Manner of using these Devotions by way of Preparation to the receiving of the blessed Sacrament of the Lords Supper.
The just preparation to this holy feast consisting principally in a holy life, and consequently in the repetition of the acts or all virtues, and especially of faith, repentance, charity, and thanksgiving; to the exercise of these four graces, let the person that intends to communicate, in the times set apart for his preparation and devotion, for the exercise of his faith recite the prayer or litany of the passion; for the exercise of repentance, the form of confession of sins with the prayer annexed; and for the graces of thanksgiving and charity, let him use the special forms of prayer above described. Or if a less time can be allotted for preparatory devotion, the two first will be the more proper, as containing in them all the personal duty of the communicant. To which, upon the morning of that holy solemnity, let him add
A Prayer of Preparation or Address to the Holy Sacrament.
An Act of Love.
O most gracious and eternal God, the helper of the helpless, the comforter of the comfortless, the hope of the afflicted, the bread of the hungry, the drink of the thirsty, and the Saviour of all them that wait upon thee; I bless and glorify thy name, and adore thy goodness, and delight in thy love, that thou hast once more given me the opportunity of receiving the greatest favour which I can receive in this world, even the body and blood of my dearest Saviour. O take from me all affection to sin or vanity; let not my affections dwell below, but soar upwards to the element of love, to the seat of God, to the regions of glory, and the inheritance of Jesus; that I may hunger and thirst for the bread of life, and the wine of elect souls, and may know no loves but the love of God, and the most merciful Jesus. Amen.
An Act of Desire.
O blessed Jesus, thou hast used many arts to save me, thou hast given thy life to redeem me, thy Holy Spirit to sanctify me, thyself for my example, thy word for my rule, thy grace for my guide, the fruit of thy body hanging on the tree of the cross for the sin of my soul; and, after all this, thou hast sent thy apostles and ministers of salvation to call me, to importune me, to constrain me to holiness, and peace, and felicity. O now come, Lord Jesus, come quickly: my heart is desirous of thy presence and thirsty of thy grace, and would entertain thee, not as a guest, but as an inhabitant, as the Lord of all my faculties. Enter in and take possession, and dwell with me for ever; that I also may dwell in the heart of my dearest Lord, which was opened for me with a spear and love.
An Act of Contrition.
Lord, thou shalt find my heart full of cares and worldly desires, cheated with love of riches, and neglect of holy things, proud and unmortified, false and crafty to deceive itself, intricated and entangled with difficult cases of conscience, with knots which my own wildness and inconsideration and impatience have tied and shuffled together. O my dearest Lord, if thou canst behold such an impure seat, behold the place to which thou art invited is full of passion and prejudice, evil principles and evil habits, peevish and disobedient, lustful and intemperate, and full of sad remembrances, that I have often provoked to jealousy and to anger thee my God, my dearest Saviour, him that died for me, him that suffered torments for me, that is infinitely good to me, and infinitely good and perfect in himself. This, O dearest Saviour, is a sad truth, and I am heartily ashamed, and truly sorrowful for it, and do deeply hate all my sins, and am full of indignation against myself for so unworthy, so careless, so continued, so great a folly: and humbly beg of thee to increase my sorrow, and my care, and my hatred against sin; and make my love to thee swell up to a great grace, and then to glory and immensity.
An Act of Faith.
This indeed is my condition; but I know, O blessed Jesus, that thou didst take upon thee my nature, that thou mightest suffer for my sins, and thou didst suffer to deliver me from them and from thy Father’s wrath; and I was delivered from this wrath, that I might serve thee in holiness and righteousness all my days. Lord, I am as sure thou didst the great work of redemption for me and all mankind, as that I am alive. This is my hope, the strength of my spirit, my joy and my confidence; and do thou never let the spirit, my joy and my confidence; and do thou never let the spirit of unbelief enter into me and take me from this rock. Here I will dwell, for I have a delight therein; here I will live, and here I desire to die.
The Petition.
Therefore, O blessed Jesus, who art my Saviour and my God, whose body is my food, and thy righteousness is my robe, thou art the priest and the sacrifice, the master of the feast and the feast itself, the physician of my soul, the light of my eyes, the purifier of my stains; enter into my heart and cast out from thence all impurities, all the remains of the old man; and grant I may partake of this holy sacrament with much reverence, and holy relish, and great effect, receiving hence the communication of thy holy body and blood, for the establishment of an unreprovable faith, of an unfeigned love, for the fulness of wisdom, for the healing my soul, for the blessing and preservation of my body, for the taking out the sting of temporal death, and for the assurance of a holy resurrection; for the ejection of all evil from within me, and the fulfilling all thy righteous commandments; and to procure for me a mercy and a fair reception at the day of judgment, through thy mercies, O holy and ever-blessed Saviour Jesus.
(Here also may be added the prayer after receiving the cup.)
Ejaculations to be said before or at the receiving the Holy Sacrament.
Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks, so longeth
my soul after thee, O God. My soul is athirst for God, yea, even for the living
God; when shall I come before the presence of God?
O Lord my God, great are thy wondrous works which thou hast done;
like as be also thy thoughts, which are to us ward: and yet there is no man that
ordereth them unto thee.
O send out thy light and thy truth, that they may lead me, and
bring me unto thy holy hill and to thy dwelling; and that I may go unto the altar
of God, even unto the God of my joy and gladness; and with my heart will I give
thanks to thee, O God my God.
I will wash my hands in innocence, O Lord, and so will I go to
thine altar: that I may show the voice of thanksgiving, and tell of all thy wondrous
works.
Examine me, O Lord, and prove me, try thou my reins and my heart.
For thy loving-kindness is now and ever before my eyes; and I will walk in thy truth.
Thou shalt prepare a table before me against them that trouble
me: thou hast anointed my head with oil, and my cup shall be full. But thy loving-kindness
and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house
of the Lord for ever.
This is the bread that cometh down from heaven, that a man may
eat thereof and not die.
Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me and
I in him, and hath eternal life abiding in him; and I will raise him up at the last
day.
Lord, whither shall we go but to thee? thou hast the words of
eternal life.
If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.
The bread which we break, is it not the communication of the body
of Christ? and the cup which we drink, is it not the communication of the blood
of Christ?
What are those wounds in thy hands? They are those with which
I was wounded in the house of my friends.
Immediately before the receiving, say,
Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest enter under my
roof. But do thou speak the word only, and thy servant shall be healed.
Lord, open thou my lips, and my mouth shall show thy praise. O God, make speed to save me: O Lord, make haste to help me.
Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly.
After receiving the consecrated and blessed Bread, say,
O taste and see how gracious the Lord is: blessed is the man that trusteth in him. The beasts do lack and suffer hunger; but they which seek the Lord shall want no manner of thing that is good. Lord, what am I, that my Saviour should become my food; that the Son of God should be the meat of worms, of dust and ashes, of a sinner, of him that was his enemy? But this thou hast done to me, because thou art infinitely good and wonderfully gracious, and lovest to bless every one of us, in turning us from the evil of our ways. Enter into me, blessed Jesus, let no root of bitterness spring up in my heart; but be thou Lord of all my faculties. O let me feed on thee by faith, and grow up by the increase of God to a perfect man in Christ Jesus. Amen. Lord, I believe: help mine unbelief.
Glory be to God the Father, Son, etc.
After receiving the Cup of Blessing.
It is finished. Blessed be the mercies of God revealed to us in Jesus Christ. O blessed and eternal High-priest, at the sacrifice of the cross, which thou didst once offer for the sins of the whole world, and which thou dost now and always represent in heaven to thy Father by thy never-ceasing intercession, and which this day hath been exhibited on thy holy table sacramentally, obtain mercy and peace, faith and charity, safety and establishment to thy holy church, which thou hast founded upon a rock, the rock of a holy faith; and let not the gates of hell prevail against her, nor the enemy of mankind take any soul out of thy hand, whom thou hast purchased with thy blood, and sanctified by thy spirit. Preserve all thy people from heresy and division of spirit, from scandal and the spirit of delusion, from sacrilege and hurtful persecutions. Thou, O blessed Jesus, didst die for us; keep me for ever in holy living, from sin and sinful shame, in the communion of thy church, and thy church is safety and grace, in truth and peace, unto thy second coming. Amen.
Dearest Jesus, since thou art pleased to enter into me, O be jealous of thy house and the place where thine honour dwelleth: suffer no unclean spirit or unholy thought to come near thy dwelling, lest it defile the ground where thy holy feet have trod. O teach me so to walk, that I may never disrepute the honour of my religion, nor stain the holy robe which thou hast now put upon my soul, nor break my holy vows which I have made, and thou hast sealed, nor lose my right of inheritance, my privilege of being co-heir with Jesus, into the hope of which I have no further entered: but be thou pleased to love me with the love of a father, and of a brother, and a husband, and a lord; and make me to serve thee in the communion of saints, in receiving the sacrament, in the practice of all holy virtues, in the imitation of thy life, and conformity to thy sufferings: that I, having now put on the Lord Jesus may marry his loves and his enmities, may desire his glory, and may obey his laws, and be united to his Spirit, and in the day of the Lord I may be found having on the wedding-garment, and bearing in my body and soul the marks of the Lord Jesus, that I may enter into the joy of my Lord, and partake of his glories for ever and ever. Amen.
Ejaculations to be used any time that Day, after the Solemnity is ended.
Lord, if I had lived innocently, I could not have deserved to receive the crumbs that fall from thy table. How great is thy mercy, who hast feasted me with the bread of virgins, with the wine of angels, with manna from heaven!
O when shall I pass from this dark glass, from this veil of sacraments, to the vision of thy eternal clarity? from eating thy body, to beholding thy face in thy eternal kingdom?
Let not my sins crucify the Lord of life again: let it never he said concerning me, ‘The hand of him that betrayeth me is with me on this table.’
O that I might love thee as well as ever any creature loved thee! Let me drink nothing but thee, desire nothing but thee, enjoy nothing but thee.
O Jesus, be a Jesus unto me. Thou art all things unto me. Let nothing ever please me but what savours of thee and thy miraculous sweetness.
Blessed be the mercies of our Lord, who of God is made unto me wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.
‘He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.’ Amen.
THE END
Indexes
Index of Scripture References
Genesis
Leviticus
Numbers
Deuteronomy
2 Samuel
Job
Psalms
1 1 1 1 1 1 1:3 1:4 4:4 4:6 4:9 6:1 7:11 8 9:10 10:11 11:6 13:1 13:1-2 13:4 13:6 13:7-8 15:5-6 15:6 17:13 21:5-6 23:5-6 25:5 25:6 26:2-3 26:6-7 29:3-4 30:6 31:21 33:18-19 34:18 36:7 36:8 36:8-9 36:9 37:5 37:40 38:2-4 38:18 39 39:6 39:9 41:3 41:4 43:3-4 49:15 51:1 51:2 51:10 51:11 55:4 57:10 63:1 65:4 65:5 66:8 84:1-2 84:4 96:3 102:1-4 102:10 116:3 119:25 121:1 124:8 125:4 126:6 138:1-2 156
Proverbs
Isaiah
Jeremiah
6:5 11:15 13:17 17:10 23:23-24
Ezekiel
Daniel
Hosea
Joel
Zechariah
Malachi
Matthew
6:4 6:25 7:11 8:8 10:19 11:25 13:12 13:33 18:20 22:29 25:15 25:35 26:12
Mark
Luke
6:17 6:30 11:41 12:2 15:7 16:29 16:31 18:1 19:9 21:34 21:36 24:45
John
5:28 6:50 6:54 6:56 6:68 7:37 9:31 13:15
Acts
3:6 4 10:4 15:21 17:28 19:18 21:13 28:2
Romans
6:3-4 6:7 8:10 8:10 8:32 8:38-39 10:2 11:22 11:27 12:12 13:1 13:4 13:7 13:13-14 15:30
1 Corinthians
3:16 3:17 6:8 6:18 6:19 7:5 7:19 10:16 10:31 11:31 13
2 Corinthians
1:3-4 5:20 6:16 7:11 7:11 8:12 9:7 13:5 13:5
Galatians
Ephesians
Philippians
Colossians
1 Thessalonians
2 Thessalonians
1 Timothy
2 Timothy
Titus
Hebrews
2:18 4:13 7:15 10:16 10:22 10:24 10:25 12:1 12:9 12:14 12:16 13:5 13:5 13:5-6 13:16 13:17
James
1 Peter
1:15 1:22 1:22 2:13 2:14 4:7 4:10
2 Peter
1 John
1:6 1:9 1:9 1:14 2:1-2 3:5 3:8-9 3:22 5:16
Revelation
1:3 2:17 3:16 4:10 5:10 5:13 11:17 14:4 15:3 21:23 22:5
Sirach
Index of Greek Words and Phrases
- Αισχυνμ.: 1
- Αμυνομενοι τμν ηνεραν.: 1
- Ατιρια παξμ.: 1
- Δι αλλοροιον εργον πταιει ονξεις: 1
- Ελπις και σν Τυχμ, ρεγα Χαιρετε την υυυν ενρν.: 1
- Ελτα λεαγομεν Κυρτε σ ζεος, πως μλαγωνω; μωοε, Χειρας ουκ εχεις: ουκ εποιμσε σοι αυτας σ χεος; ευχου νυν καζμμενος οπως αι μυεατ σου μη ρεωσιν απομνεαι μαλλον.: 1
- Ενροιτ υν νυεντας οπερ ξευις εστι νομσαι: 1
- Εοι υε δεου τοσα δοτεν —: 1
- Ηνατι τω υτε παιυα κατεκτανον Ανφιξανατος, Ννπιος ουκ ζξελων, ανφ αστραγελοισι χολωφεις: 1
- Και μανφανειν μεν, οια οραν μελλω κακα φνμος οε κρεισσων των ενων βονλενματων.: 1
- Καλον ξε ζμλονσφαι εν τψ καλψτ παντοτε.: 1
- Κλεψασα καλα κλερρατα ανευ ανορος τας ευποιαδ ζποιμσε: 1
- Κραιπαλμ απο πφοτεραιας αυτ απο χδιζμς οινο ποσιας.: 1
- Μερτρναν εξζι, κουδ ευον δονειν τασε: 1
- Μικροψυχοι ρακρολνποι.: 1
- Μουου σκιψσυ ποσου πωλεις τλυ σεαυτου πραιρεαιυ, αμφρωπε ει ρηοτυ αλλο, ρη ολιγου αυτπυ πωλπαδς.: 1
- Νυκτιποριαν και ολιγαρισταν.: 1
- Νυρφενφατων υεν των ερων πατμφ ερος.: 1
- Ονδεις οε πενμς τραγψοιαν σνμπλμσοι ει ργ χορευτις.: 1
- Ονκ ετι γαρ σφετειροις ιπιτερποραι ερρετε αρφω: 1
- Οσσα γαρ ατρεκεως ουκ εσσεται, νμμες ιν μριν: 1
- Ουνεκεν ιν ρεροπεσσι πυλυπλανεες ραλα εστε.: 1
- Πλεονεκτει ονσεν ο ου βοηζησας χρηβασι οι ανελενξεριαν.: 1
- Τι ουν προς εστιν ευρισκειυ βονφηα; τυ εναντιονεφοζ: 1
- Ψ: 1
- αιζοιτε, στροφεοιτε, οσονς εμεν νστερον οντας: 1
- αξψα τε και νεγα νεικος επισταμενες κατεπαυσε.: 1
- μυκτιποριαυ και ολιγαριστιαν.: 1
- υφομεγου τιγος, πως εστιν εσφτειν αρτως φεοτς; ειδικαιως εστν, εφη, και ευγωροως, και ισωε, και εγεοατως, και κοσμιως, ομκ εστι και αρεσως τοις φεοις.: 1
- φασματα, ως εν νπνω, ερξαλλετε, νια τ εοντα: 1
- φδ δν αυτοτς ευοκιγλομτες, οτς ηυσρτομ, ευπρεπδπδσερμ δηυ απογιαμ εισαει φερομται.: 1
- φεος περιεχει τγ ζουληδεε το ταγ, ρετξωγν του τομτοζ ωσπεγ ουαιβ, ουτως χσιξιγ.: 1
- φιλεες ολυγπια υεκηασι: Δει σε ευτακτειυ, αυαγκοτροφειυ απεχεσφαυ περατων, γερμαζεσξατ πμαγκημ, : 1
- φξαρτικαι των αρχων.: 1
Index of Latin Words and Phrases
- “Quique sacerdotes casti, dum vita mancbat,: 1
- (Edipum curiositas in extremas conjecit calamitates.: 1
- Alexandrum intemperantia bibendi, et ille Herculanus ac fatalis scyphus perdidit.: 1
- Alter alteri satis amplum theatrum sumus; satis unus, satismullus.: 1
- Ama nesciri et pro nihilo reputari.: 1
- Angustum annulum non gesta, disit Pythag, id est, vitae genus liberum sectare, nec vinculo temetipsum obstringe.: 1
- Animusque menus sursum usque evectus ad polum: 1
- Appetitus fornicationis anxietas est, satietas vero poenitentia.: 1
- Arbuteos foetus, montanaque fraga legebant.: 1
- At meretrix abigit testem veloque seraque; Raraque Summaeni fornice rima patet.: 1
- Atticus eximie si coenat, lautus, habetur; Si Rutilus, demens —: 1
- Beatitudo pendet a recis consilliis in affectionem animi constantern desinentibus.: 1
- Beatus qui intelligt super egenum et pauperem.: 1
- Benedictus in spinis se volutavit; S. Martinianus faciem et manus. S. Johanes, cognomento Bonus, calamos acutos inter ungues et carnem digitorum intrusit. S. Theoctistus in silvia more ferarum vixit, ne inter Arabes pollueretur.: 1
- Berecynthia arva.: 1
- Bis sex dierum mensura consero ego agros,: 1
- Casso saltem delectamine amare quot potiri non licest.: 1
- Cicero vocat Temperantiam ornatum vitae, in quo decorum illud et honestum situm est.: 1
- Contra libidinis impetum apprehende fugam, si vis obtinere victoriam.: 1
- Convictio est quasi quaedam intensio benevolentiae. Inferior matrona suo sit, sexte marito: Non aliter flunt foemina, virque pares.: 1
- Corpus onustum Hesternis vitiis animum quoque praegravat.: 1
- Cruei haeremus, sanguinem sugimus, et inter ipsa Redemporis nostri vulnera, figimus linguam.: 1
- Danda est opera at matrimonio devincianur, quod est tutissimum juventutis vinculum.: 1
- Dandum interstitium paeniteniae: 1
- De mendico male meretur, qui ei dat quod edat aut quod bibat: Nam et illud quod dat perdit, et illi prodcit vitam ad miseriam.: 1
- Decidit humi, et me sic videtur alloqui;: 1
- Demus, Deum aliquid posse, quod nos fateamur investigare ion posse.: 1
- Desideria tua parvo redime; hoe enim tantum curare debes, ut desinant.: 1
- Dieere quid coena possis ingratius ista?: 1
- Discedite ab aris, Queis tulit hesterna gaudia nocte Venus: 1
- Disea haud nimis magnifacere mortalia.: 1
- Donum nudum est, nisi consensu vestiatur: 1
- Ebrietas est voluntaria insania.: 1
- Eosdem quos maritus nosse deos et colere s olos uxor debet; supervacaneis autem religionibus et alienis superstitionibus fores occludere. Nulli enim deum grata sunt sacra, quae mulier clanculum et furtim facit—Plutarch. Conjug. Praecept. Gen. 24: 1
- Ergo solicitae tu causa, pecunia, vitae es: Per te immaturum mortis adimus iter.: 1
- Etiamsi partem damni dare noluisti, in totum quasi prudens dederis, tenendus es. Fx toto enim nolaisse debet qui imprudentia defenditur. Sen. Contr. Involuntarium ortum ex voluntario censetur pro voluntario.: 1
- Fabis abstine, dixit Pythagoras. Olim nam Magistratus per suffragia fabis lata creabantur.: 1
- Facilius est initia affectuum prohibere, quam impetum regere.: 1
- Felix initium, prior aetas contenia dulcibus arvis; Facileque sera solebat jejunia solvere glande.: 1
- Hie in foro beatus esse creditur, Cum foribus apertis sit suis miserrimus: Imperat mulier, jubet omnia, semper litigat. Multra adferunt ilt dolorem, nihil mihi — Ferre, quam sortem patiuntur omnes, Nemo recusat.: 1
- Homerus, Thersitis maloa mores describens, makitim summam apposuit, Pelidae inprimis erat atque inimicus Ulyssi.: 1
- I1villan nobilitado non cognosce partentado.: 1
- Idem fere apud Plutarch. Vinolentia animi quandam remissiem et levitatem, ebrietas futilitatem significat.: 1
- In colloquiis pueri invisi aliis non fient, si non omnino in disputationibus victoriam sempetr obtinere laborent. Non tantum egregium est scire vincere, sed etiam posse vinci pulchrum est, ubi victoria est damnosa.: 1
- In rebus miris summa credendi ratio est omnipotentia Creatoris.: 1
- Insaniae comes est ira, contubernalis ebrietas.: 1
- Inter sacra et vota, verbis etiam profanis abstinere.: 1
- Ira cum pectus rapida occupavit, Futiles linguae jubeo cavere Vana latratus jaculantis.: 1
- Itidem si puer parvulus occidat, aequo animo ferendum putant; si vero in cunis, ne querendum quidem; atqui hoc acerbius exegit natura quod dederat. At id quidem in caeteris rebus melius putatur, aliquam partem quaim nummam attingere.: 1
- Jejunium sine eleemosyna, lampas sine oleo.: 1
- Juvenis relinquit vitam, quem Dii diligunt.: 1
- Laete venire Venus, trists abire solet.: 1
- Laetum esse debet et officiosum mariti imperium.-Plut. Namque es ei pater et frater, venerandaque mater; nec minus facit ad dignitatem viri, si mulier eum suum praeceptorem, philosophum, magistrumque appellet.: 1
- Laudatur Augustus Caesar apud Lucanum, — media inter praelia semper Stellarum coelique plagis, superisque vacabat.: 1
- Laudi ductum apud vet. : 1
- Liberi sine consensu parentum contrahere non debeut. Andromache, apud Eurpiden, cum petita fuit ad nuptias, responidit, patris sui esse sponsalium suorum curam habere; et Achilles, apud Homerum, regis filiam sine patris sui consensu noluit ducere. II.9, 393. Et Justinanus Imp. alt. naturali simul et civili rationi congruere, ne filii ducant uxores citra parentum authoritatem. Simo Terentianus parat abdictionem, quia Pamphilus clam ipso duxisset uxorem. Istitsmodi sponalia frunt irrita, nisi velint parentes: at si subsequuta est copula, ne temere rescindantur connubia, toulue suadent cautiones et pericula. Liberi, autem, quamdiu secundum leges patrias sui juris non sunt, clandestinas nuptias si ineant, peccant contra quintum praeceptum, et jus naturale secundarium. Proprie enim loquendo parentes non habent sive potestatem, sed authoritatem; hebent jus jubendi aut prohibendi, sed non irritum faciendi. Atque etiam ista authoritas exercenda est sccudnum aequm et bonum; scil, nt ne morosus et difficilis sit pater. Mater enim vix habet aliquod juris praeter suasionis et amoris et gratitudinis. Si autem pater filiam non collocasset ante 25 annos, filia nubere poterat cui voluerat, ex jure Romanorum. Patrum enim authoritas major aut minor est ex legibus patriis, et solet extendi ad certam aetatem, et tum exspirat quoad matrimonium; et est major in filias quam filios.: 1
- Mortem venientem nemo hilaris excipit, nisi qui ad eam se diu composuerat.: 1
- Multa faciunt ebrii quibus sobrii erubescunt.: 1
- Nalla lex (civilis) sibi soli conscientiam justitiaw suae debet, sed cis a quibus obsequim expectat: 1
- Nemo alienae viruti invidet, qui confidit suae.: 1
- Nequam illud verbum, Bene vult, nisi qui bene facit.: 1
- Nihil ita dignum est odio, ut eorum mores, qui compellantibus se difficiles, praebent.: 1
- Nil interest, faveas sceleri, an illud facias.: 1
- Nisi fundamenta stirpis jacta sint probe, Miseros necesse est esse deinceps posteros.: 1
- Nobilis haec esset pietatis rixa duobus; Quod pro fratre mori vellet uterque prior.: 1
- Non facta tibi est, si dissimules, injuris.: 1
- Non licet suffurari mentem vel Samaritani.: 1
- Non te ad omnia laeta genuit, O Agamemnon, Atreus, Opus est te gaugere et maercre: mortalis enim natus es, et ut haud veilis; superi sic constucrunt.: 1
- Nosti tempora tu Jovis sereni, Cum fulget placidus, suoque vultn, Quo nil supplicibus solet negare.: 1
- Nunquam memini me legisse mala morte mortuum, qui libenter opera charitatis exercuit.: 1
- Omittenda potius praevalida ct adulta vitia, quam hoe adsequi, ut palam fiat, quibus flagitiis impares simus.: 1
- Patellas luxuriae oculos, dixit Isidorus.: 1
- Plutarchus citans carmen de suo Apolline, adjicit ex Herodoto quasi de suo, De eo os meum continens esto.: 1
- Potior mihi ratio vivendi honeste, quam et opime dicendividetur.: 1
- Praebeant misericordia ut conservetur justitia.: 1
- Praemonstro tibi Ut ita te aliorum miserescat, ne tui alios misereat.: 1
- Prodigio par est in nobilitate senectus. Hortulus hic, puteusque brevis, nec rest movendus, In tenues plantas facili diffunditur haustu. Vive bidentis amans, et culti villicus hortl: Unde epululum possis centum dare Pythagoreis. Est aliquid, quocunque loco, quocunque recessu, Unius dominum sese fecisse lacertae.: 1
- Provocet ut segnes animos, rerumque remotas Ingeniosa vias paulatim exploret egestas.: 1
- Pulla prosternit se ad pedes: Miserere virginitatis meae, ne prostituas hoc corpus sub tam turpi titulo.: 1
- Quanto preaestantius esset Numen aquae, viridi si margine claugeret undas Herba, nec ingenuum violarent marmora tophum.: 1
- Quem Deus tegit vercundiae pallio, hujus maculas hominibus non ostendit.: 1
- Qui animum vincunt, quam quos animus, semper prokiores cluent.: 1
- Qui dedit beneficium, taceat; narret, qui accepti: 1
- Qui laudat servum fugitivum, tenetur. Non enim oportet laudando augeri maium.: 1
- Qui pauca requirunt, non multis excidunt.: 1
- Qui turatur ut maechetur, maechus est magis quam fur.: 1
- Quid refert igitur quantis jumenta fatiget Porticibus, quanta nemorum vectetur in umbra, Jugera quot vicina foro, quas emerit aedes? Nemo malus felix.: 1
- Quisquis in primo obsitit Repulitqua amorem, tutus ac victor fuit: Qui blandiendo dulce nutrivit malum, Sero recusat ferre, quod subiit, jugum.: 1
- Si tua culpa datum est damnum, jure super his satisfacere te oportet.: 1
- Sic Jesus dixit. S. Carpo apud Dionysium epist. ad Demophilum.: 1
- Sic Novatus novitios suos compulit ad jurandum, ne unquarm ad Catholicos episcopos redirent.: 1
- Sic Vivianus resipuit de injusta accusatione: apud Cassiodo.: 1
- Sp. Minucius Pontifex Posthumium monuit, ne verbis vitae eastimoniam non aequantibus uteretur.: 1
- Spiritu principali me confirma.: 1
- Surgam ad sponsalia, quia promisi, quamvis non concoxerim: sed non, si febricitavero: subest enim tacita exceptio, sipotero, si debebo. Effice ut idem status sit, cum exigitur, qui futi, cum promitterem. Desitiuere levitas non erit, si aliquid intervenit novi. Eadem mihi omnia praesta: et idem sum: 1
- Time videre unde possis cadere, et noli fieri perversa simplicitate securus.: 1
- Tu sia nimum vicisi potius quam animus te, est quod gaudeas.: 1
- Turbatus sum, et non sum locutus.: 1
- Vasa pura ad rem divinam.: 1
- Venter mero awstuanus cito despumatur in libidines.: 1
- Venus rosam amat propter fabellam, quam recitat.: 1
- Verum humilem patientia ostendit.: 1
- Virginitas est, in arne corruptibili, incorruptionis perpetua meditatio: 1
- Voluptates abeuntes fessas et poenitentia plenas, animis nostris natura subjecit, quo minus cupide repetantur.: 1
- amaram amaro bilem pharmaco qui elunt.: 1
- amoris ut morsum qui vere senserit.: 1
- res an gusta domi: 1
- super totam materiam: 1