CHAPTER IV: OF CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
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. [191] But, in a more restrained sense, it is taken for that part of duty which particularly relates to God in our worshippings and adoration of him, in confessing his excellencies, loving his person, admiring his goodness, believing his word, and doing all that which may, in a proper and direct manner, do him honour. It contains the duties of the first table only, and so it is called godliness, [192] and is by St. Paul distinguished from justice and sobriety. In this sense I am now to explicate the parts of it. __________________________________________________________________
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: [193] and, when once we are convinced that God hath spoken it, to make no further inquiry, but humbly to submit; ever remembering that there are some things which our understanding cannot fathom, nor search out their depth.
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. [194] __________________________________________________________________
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,' [195]
and makes us diligently to do, and cheerfully to suffer, whatsoever God hath placed in our way to heaven. __________________________________________________________________
[195] 2 Cor. xiii 5; Rom. viii. 10. __________________________________________________________________
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. [196]
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. __________________________________________________________________
[196] In rebus miris summa credendi ratio est omnipotentia Creatoris.--St. Aug. __________________________________________________________________
[193] Demus, Deum aliquid posse, quod nos fateamur investigare ion posse.--St. Aug. 1. xxi. c.7. de Civital.
[194] Dial. adver. Lucif. __________________________________________________________________
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: [197] Faith is of all things revealed, good and bad, rewards and punishments, of things past, present, and to come, of things that concern us, of things that concern us not; but hope hath for its object things only that are good, and fit to be hoped for, future, and concerning ourselves; and because these things are offered to us upon conditions of which we may so fail as we may change our will, therefore our certainty is less than the adherences of faith; which (because faith relies only upon one proposition, that is, the truth of the word of God,) cannot be made uncertain in themselves, though the object of our hope may become uncertain to us, and to our possession. For it is infallibly certain that there is heaven for all the godly, and for me amongst them all, if I do my duty. But that I shall enter into heaven is the object of my hope, not of my faith; and is so sure as it is certain I shall persevere in the ways of God. __________________________________________________________________
[197] Enchirid. c. 8. __________________________________________________________________
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. [198]
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. [199]
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. __________________________________________________________________
[198] Jer. ivii. 5.
[199] Di cosi fuoro di credenza, Non vuoler far speranza. __________________________________________________________________
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. [200]
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: [201] but he that creates to himself thousands of little hopes, uncertain in the promise, fallible in the event, and depending upon ten thousand circumstances, (as are all the things of this world,) shall often ail in his expectations, and be used to arguments of distrust in such hopes.
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 [202] Let us rest there a while -- he can if he please: and he is infinitely loving, willing enough; and he is infinitely wise, choosing better for us than we can do for ourselves. This, in all ages and chances, hath supported the afflicted people of God, and carried them on dry ground through a Red Sea. God invites and cherishes the hopes of men by all the variety of his providence.
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." [203]
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. __________________________________________________________________
[200] Mikropsuchoi rakrolnpoi.
[201] Elpis kai sn Tuchm, rega Chairete ten uuun enrn. Onk eti gar spheteirois ipiterporai errete arpho Ouneken in reropessi puluplanees rala este. Ossa gar atrekeos ouk essetai, nmmes in mrin phasmata, os en npno, erxallete, nia t eonta aizoite, stropheoite, osons emen nsteron ontas Enroit un nuentas oper xeuis esti nomsai. Pallad. Brunk. Anthol. t. ii. p.437.
[202] Heb. ii. 18.
[203] V. Bede. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
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. [204] __________________________________________________________________
[204] St. Aug. I. ii Cenfes. c.6. __________________________________________________________________
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.' [205] Love is patient and content with anything, so it be together with its beloved.
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: [206] and nothing can supply the presence, or make recompense for the absence of God, or of the effects of his favour and the light of his countenance.
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.
[207] And this is the curiosity and niceness of divine love: this is the fear of God, and is the daughter and production of Love. __________________________________________________________________
[205] 1 Cor. xiii.
[206] amoris ut morsum qui vere senserit.
[207] Plutarchus citans carmen de suo Apolline, adjicit ex Herodoto quasi de suo, De eo os meum continens esto. __________________________________________________________________
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. [208]
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. __________________________________________________________________
[208] Sic Jesus dixit. S. Carpo apud Dionysium epist. ad Demophilum. __________________________________________________________________
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. [209]
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 [210] to our neighbour; and therefore no pretence of zeal for God's glory must make us uncharitable to our brother; for that is just so pleasing to God as hatred is an act of 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. [211]
8. Let zeal be seated in the will and choice, and regulated with prudence and a sober understanding, not in the fancies and affections;
[212] for those that will make it deep and smooth, material and devout.
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. [213] That zeal is only safe, only acceptable, which increases charity directly; and because love to our neighbour and obedience to God are the two great portions of charity, we must never account our zeal to be good but as it advances both these, if it be in a matter that relates to both; or severally if it relates severally. St. Paul's zeal was expressed in preaching without any offerings or stipend, in travelling, in spending and being spent for his flock, in suffering, in being willing to be accursed for love of the people of God and his countrymen. Let our zeal be as great as his was, so it be in affections to others, but not al all in angers against them: in the first there is no danger -- in the second there is no safety. In brief, let your zeal (if it must be expressed in anger) be always more severe against thyself than against others. [214]
*The other part of love to God is love to our neighbour, for which I have reserved the paragraph of alms. __________________________________________________________________
[209] Kalon xe zmlonsphai en tps kalpst pantote.--Gal. iv. 18.
[210] Phil. iii. 6.
[211] Lavora, come se tu avessi a compar ogni hora; Adora, me se tu avessi a morir allora.
[212] Rom. x. 2.
[213] Tit. ii. 14; Rev. iii. 16.
[214] 2 Cor. vii. 11. __________________________________________________________________
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. [215]
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. __________________________________________________________________
[215] 2 Cor. vii. 11. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
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.'
[216]
5. Reading the holy Scriptures is a duty expressly commanded us, [217] and is called in Scripture preaching:' all other preaching is the effect of human skill and industry; and although of great benefit, yet it is but an ecclesiastical ordinance; the law of God concerning preaching being expressed in the matter of reading the Scriptures, and hearing that word of God which is, and as it is, there described.
But this duty is reduced to practice in the following rules: __________________________________________________________________
[216] Luke, xvi. 29, 31.
[217] Deut. xxxi. 13; Luke, xxiv. 45; Matt. xxii. 29; Acts. xv. 21; 2 Tim. iii. 16; Rev. i. 3. __________________________________________________________________
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. [218]
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, [219] which may make the least preparation for the lusts of the body. He that fasts three days without food will weaken other parts more than the ministers of fornication; and when the meals return as usually, they also will be served as soon as any. In the meantime, they will be supplied and made active by the accidental heat that comes with such violent fastings: for this is a kind of aerial devil the prince that rules in the air is the devil of fornication; and he will be as tempting with the windiness of a violent fast as with the flesh of an ordinary meal. [220] But a daily subtraction of the nourishment will introduce a less busy habit of body; and that will prove the more effectual remedy.
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.
[221]
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. [222] __________________________________________________________________
[218] Jejunium sine eleemosyna, lampas sine oleo.--St. Aug.
[219] Digiuna assai chi mal mangia.
[220] Chi digiuna, et altro ben non fa.
[221] S. Basil. Monast. Constit. cap. 5. Cassian. Col 21. cap. 22. Ne per causam necessitatis eo impingamus, ut voluptatibus scrviamus.
[222] Amunomenoi tmn eneran.--Naz. __________________________________________________________________
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!" [223] __________________________________________________________________
[223] Baruch, ii. v. 18. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
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. [224] For although God gives to sinners and evil persons the common blessings of life and chance, yet either they want the comfort and blessing of those blessings, or they become occasions of sadder accidents to them, or serve to upbraid them in their ingratitude or irreligion: and in all cases, they are not the effects of prayer, or the fruits of promise, or instances of a father's love; for they cannot be expected with confidence, or received without danger, or used without without a curse and mischief in their company. But as all sin is an impediment to prayer, so some have a special indisposition towards acceptation; such are uncharitableness and wrath, hypocrisy in the present action, pride and lust; because these, by defiling the body or the spirit, or by contradicting some necessary ingredient in prayer, (such as are mercy, humility, purity, and sincerity,) do defile the prayer, and make it a direct sin, in the circumstances or formality of the action.
5. All prayer must be made with faith and hope, that is, we must certainly believe [225] we shall receive the grace which God hath commanded us to ask; and we must hope for such things which he hath permitted us to ask, and our hope shall not be vain, though we miss what is not absolutely promised; because we shall at least have an equal blessing in the denial as in the grant. And, therefore, the former conditions must first be secured; that is, that we ask things necessary, or at least good and innocent and profitable, and that our persons be gracious in the eyes of God: or else, what God hath promised to our natural needs he may, in many degrees, deny to our personal incapacity; but the thing being secured, and the person disposed, there can be no fault at all; for whatsoever else remains is on God's part, and that cannot possibly fail. But because the things which are not commanded cannot possibly be secured, (for we are not sure they are good in all circumstances,) we can but hope for such things, even after we have secured our good intentions. We are sure of a blessing, but in what instance we are not yet assured.
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. [226] Watching unto prayer:' so St. Peter. [227] Praying earnestly:' so St. James. [228] And this is not at all to be abated in matters spiritual and of duty: for, according as our desires are, so are our prayers; and as our prayers are, so shall be the grace; and as that is, so shall be the measure of glory. But this admits of degrees according to the perfection or imperfection of our state of life; but it hath no other measures, but ought to be as great as it can, the bigger the better: we must make no positive restraints upon ourselves. In other things they are to use a bridle; and as we must limit our desires with submission to God's will, so also we must limit the importunity of our prayers by the moderation and term of our desires. Pray for it as earnestly as you may desire 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.' [229] Always to pray, signifies the frequent doing of the duty in general; but because we cannot always ask several things, and those are such as concern our great interest, the precept comes home to this very circumstance; and St. Paul calls it praying without ceasing;' [230] and himself in his own case gave a precedent--For this cause I besought the Lord thrice.' And so did our blessed Lord; he went thrice to God on the same errand, with the same words, in a short space-about half a night; for his time to solicit his suit was but short. And the Philippians were remembered by the apostle, their spiritual father, always pray for the pardon of our sins, for the assistance of God's grace, for charity, for life eternal, never giving over till we die; and thus also we pray for supply of great temporal needs in their several proportions; in all cases being curious we do not give over out of weariness or impatience; for God God oftentimes defers to grant our suit, because he loves to hear us beg it, and hath a design to give us more than we ask, even a satisfaction of our desires, and a blessing for the very importunity.
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. [231]
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. [232] And therefore our blessed Saviour in his sermons joins watchfulness with prayer, for God's graces are but assistances, not new creations of the whole habit, in every instant or period of our life. Read Scriptures, and then pray to God for understanding. Pray against temptation; but you must also resist the devil, and then he will flee from you. Ask of God competency of living; but you must also work with your hands the things that are honest, that ye may have to supply in time of need. We can but do our endeavor, and pray for blessing, and then leave the success with God; and beyond this we cannot deliberate, we cannot take care -- but, so far, we must.
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,
[233] having a present mind, not wandering upon impertinent things, not distant from our words, much less contrary to them; and if our thoughts do at any time wander, and divert upon other objects, bring them back again with prudent and severe arts -- by all means striving to obtain a diligent, a sober, an untroubled, and a composed spirit.
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,' [234] ^and at all times, and in all circumstances; and it is well if we do so; and some servants have not opportunity to pray so often as they would, unless they supply the appetites of religion by such accidental devotions.
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.' [235] We, who must love our neighbours as ourselves, must also pray for them as for ourselves, with this only difference, that we may enlarge in our temporal desires for kings, and pray for secular prosperity to them with more importunity than for ourselves; because they need more to enable their duty and government, and for the interests of religion and justice. This part of prayer is by the apostle called intercession; in which, with special care, we are to remember our relatives, our family, our charge, our benefactors, our creditors, not forgetting to beg pardon and charity for our enemies, and protection against them.
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. __________________________________________________________________
[224] 1 John, iii. 22; John, ix. 31; Isa. iv. 15, lviii. 5; Mal. iii. 10; 2 Tim. ii. 8; Psalm iv. 6, lxvi. 8.
[225] Mark, xi. 24; Jam. i. 6, 7.
[226] Rom. xii. 12, xv. 30; Col. iv. 12; 1 Thess. iii. 10; Eph. vi. 18.
[227] 1 Pet. iv. 7.
[228] 1 James, v. 16.
[229] Luke, xviii. 1; xxi. 36.
[230] 1 Thess. v. 17.
[231] Phil. iv. 6.
[232] Elta leagomen Kurte s zeos, pos mlagono; mooe, Cheiras ouk echeis: ouk epoimse soi autas s cheos; euchou nun kazmmenos opos ai mueat sou me reosin apomneai mallon. Arrian, 1.c.16.
[233] Inter sacra et vota, verbis etiam profanis abstinere.--Tacit.
[234] 1 Tim. ii. 8.
[235] 1 Tim. ii. 2. __________________________________________________________________
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. [236] Vows of single actions are safest, and proportionable to those single blessings ever begged in such cases of sudden and transient importunities. 8. Let no action which is matter of question and dispute in religion ever become the matter of a vow. He vows foolishly that promises to God to live and die in such an opinion in an article not necessary nor certain; or that, upon confidence of his present guide, binds himself for ever to the profession of what he may afterwards more reasonably contradict, or may find not to be useful, or not profitable, but of some danger or of no necessity.
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: __________________________________________________________________
[236] Angustum annulum non gesta, disit Pythag, id est, vitae genus liberum sectare, nec vinculo temetipsum obstringe.--Plutarch. Sic Novatus novitios suos compulit ad jurandum, ne unquarm ad Catholicos episcopos redirent.--Euseb. 1. ii. Eccl. Hist. __________________________________________________________________
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, [237] the excellences and sweetnesses that are in religion, the peace of conscience, the joy of the Holy Ghost, the rejoicing in God, the simplicity and pleasure of virtue, the intricacy, trouble, and business of sin; the blessings and health and reward of that; the curses the sicknesses and sad consequences of this; and that, if we are weary of the labours of religion, we must sit still and do nothing; for whatsoever we do contrary to it is infinitely more full of labour, care, difficulty, and vexation.
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. __________________________________________________________________
[237] See the Great Exemplar, Part iii. Disc. xiv. of the Easiness of Christian religion. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
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;
[238] 2. To give drink to the thirsty; 3. Or clothes to the naked; 4. To redeem captives; 5. To visit the sick; 6. To entertain strangers; 7. To bury the dead. [239] But many more may be added. Such as are, 8. To give physic to sick persons; 9. To bring cold and starved people to warmth and to the fire -- for sometimes clothing will not do it, or this may be done when we cannot do the other; 10. To lead the blind in right ways; 11. To lend money; 12. To forgive debts; 13. To remit forfeitures; 14. To mend highways and bridges; 15. To reduce or guide wandering travellers; 16. To ease their labours by accommodating their work with apt instruments, or their journey with beasts of carriage;
17. To deliver the poor from their oppressors; 18. To die for my brother; [240] 19. To pay maidens dowries, and to procure for them honest and chast marriages. __________________________________________________________________
[238] Matt. xxv. 35.
[239] Matt. xxvi. 12; 2 Sam. ii. 5.
[240] Nobilis haec esset pietatis rixa duobus; Quod pro fratre mori vellet uterque prior.--Mart. __________________________________________________________________
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;
[241] 4. To comfort the afflicted; 5. To pardon offenders; 6. To succour and support the weak; [242] To pray for all estates of men, and for relief to all their necessities. To which may be added, 8. To punish or correct refractoriness; 9. To be gentle and charitable in censuring the actions of others; 10. To establish the scrupulous, wavering, and inconstant spirits; 11. To confirm the strong; 12. Not to give scandal; 13. To quit a man of his fear; 14. To redeem maidens from prostitution and publication of their bodies. [243]
To both these kinds a third also may be added of a mixed nature, partly corporal and partly spiritual; such are, 1. Reconciling enemies; [244]
2. Erecting public schools of learning; 3. Maintaining lectures of divinity; 4. Erecting colleges of religion and retirement from the noises and more frequent temptations of the world; 5. Finding employment for unbusied persons and putting children to honest trades: for the particulars of mercy or alms cannot be narrower than men's needs are, and the old method of alms is too narrow to comprise them all, and yet the kinds are too many to be discoursed of particularly; only our blessed Saviour, in the precept of alms, uses the instances of relieving the poor and forgiveness of injuries; and by proportion to these, the rest, whose duty is plain, simple, easy, and necessary, may be determined. But alms in general are to be disposed of according to the following rules: __________________________________________________________________
[241] Heb. x. 24.
[242] 1 Thess. v. 14.
[243] Pulla prosternit se ad pedes: Miserere virginitatis meae, ne prostituas hoc corpus sub tam turpi titulo.--Hist. Apol. Tya.
[244] Laudi ductum apud vet. axpsa te kai nega neikos epistamenes katepause. __________________________________________________________________
Rules for giving Alms.
1. Let no man do alms of that which is none of his own; [245] for of that he is to make restitution that is due to the owners, not to the poor; for every man hath need of his own, and that is first to be provided for; and then you must think of the needs of the poor. He that gives the poor what is not his own, makes himself a thief, and the poor to be the receivers. This is not to be understood as if it were unlawful for a man that is not able to pay his debts to give smaller alms to the poor. He may not give such portions as can in any sense more disable him to do justice; [246] but such which, if they were saved, could not advance the other duty may retire to this, and do here what they may, since, in the other duty, they cannot do what they should. But, generally, cheaters and robbers cannot give alms of what they have cheated and robbed, unless they cannot tell the persons whom they have injured, or the proportions; and, in such cases, they are to give those unknown portions to the poor by way of restitution, for it is no alms; only God is the supreme Lord to whom those escheats devolve, and the poor are his receivers.
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
[247] the church, to whom the simony was injurious, is the lap into which the restitution is to be poured; and if it be poor and out of repair, the alms or restitution (shall I call it?) are to be paid to it.
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. [248] Against this rule they offend who give alms out of custom, or to upbraid the poverty of the other, or to make him mercenary and obliged, or with any unhandsome circumstances.
5. He that gives alms must do it with a single eye and heart; [249] that is, without designs to get the praise of men; and if he secures that, he may either give them publicly or privately; for Christ intended only to provide against pride and hypocrisy when he bade arms to be given in secret, it being otherwise one of his commandments, that our light should shine before men:' this is more excellent; that is more safe.
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;' [250] and therefore give quickly when the power is in thy hand, and the need is in thy neighbour, and thy neighbour at the door. He gives twice that relieves speedily.
8. According to thy ability give to all men that need; [251] and, in equal needs, give first to good men rather than to bad men; and if the needs be unequal, do so too, provided that the need of the poorest be not violent or extreme; but, if an evil man be in extreme necessity he is to be relieved rather than a good man who can tarry longer, and may subsist without it; and if he be a good man he will desire it should be so, because himself is bound to save the life of his brother with doing some inconvenience to himself; and no differences of virtue or vice can make the ease of one beggar equal with the life of another.
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;' [252] or if they will spend it in drunkenness, [253] or wantonness, such persons, when they are reduced to very great want, must be relieved in such proportions as may not relieve their dying lust, but may refresh their faint or dying bodies.
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, [254] for there are many persons that have nothing left them but misery and modesty; and towards such we must add two circumstances of charity: 1. To inquire them out; 2. To convey our relief unto them so as we do not make them ashamed.
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.
[255] He that hath two coats must give to him that hath none;' that is, he that hath beyond his need must give that which is beyond it. Only among needs, we are to reckon not only what will support our life, but also what will maintain the decency of our estate and person, not only in present needs, but in all future necessities, and very probable contingencies, but no further: we are not obliged beyond this, unless we see very great, public, and calamitous necessities. But yet if we do extend beyond our measures, and give more than we are able, we have he Philippians and many holy persons for our precedent; we have St. Paul for our encouragement; we have Christ for our counsellor; we have God for our rewarder; and a great treasure in heaven for our recompense and restitution. But I propound it to the consideration of all Christian people that they be not nice and curious, fond and indulgent to themselves in taking accounts of their personal conveniences; and that they make their proportions moderate and easy, according to the order and manner of Christianity; and the consequent will be this, that the poor will more plentifully be relieved, themselves will be more able to do it, and the duty will be less chargeable, and the owners of estates charged with fewer accounts in the spending them. It cannot be denied but, in the expenses of all liberal and great personages, many things might be spared; some superfluous servants, some idle meetings, some unnecessary and imprudent feasts, some garments too costly, some unnecessary lawsuits, some vain journeys; and when we are tempted to such needless expenses, if we shall descend to moderation, and lay aside the surplusage, we shall find it with more profit to be laid out upon the poor members of Christ than upon our own with vanity. But this is only intended to be an advice in the matter of doing alms; for I am not ignorant that great variety of clothes always have been permitted to princes and nobility and others in their proportion; and they usually give those clothes as rewards to servants, and other persons needful enough, and then they may serve their own fancy and their duty too; but it is but reason and religion to be careful that they be given to such only where duty, or prudent liberality, or alms, determine them; but in no sense let them do it so as to minister to vanity, to luxury, to prodigality. The like also is to be observed in other instances; and if we once give our minds to the study and arts of alms, we shall find ways enough to make this duty easy, profitable, and useful.
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, [256] yet thou must have mercy, and art bound to pity the poor, and pray for them, and throw thy holy desires and devotions into the treasure of the church; and if thou dost what thou art able, be it little or great, corporal or spiritual, the charity of alms or the charity of prayers, a cup of wine or a cup of water, if it be but love to the brethren, [257] or a desire to help all or any of Christ's poor, it shall be accepted according to that a man hath, not according to that he hath not. [258] For love is all this, and all the other commandments; and where it cannot, yet it is love still; and it is also sorrow that it cannot. __________________________________________________________________
[245] S. Greg. vii. 1. 110. Epist.
[246] Praebeant misericordia ut conservetur justitia.--St. Aug. Prov. iii. 9.
[247] Decret. ep. tit. de Simonia.
[248] Donum nudum est, nisi consensu vestiatur, 1. iii. C. de Pactis.
[249] Qui dedit beneficium, taceat; narret, qui accepti--Sinec.
[250] 2 Cor. ix. 7.
[251] Luke, vi. 30; Gal. vi. 10.
[252] 2 Thess. iii. 10. A cavallo, chi non porta sella, biada non si crivella.
[253] De mendico male meretur, qui ei dat quod edat aut quod bibat: Nam et illud quod dat perdit, et illi prodcit vitam ad miseriam.--Trin.
[254] Beatus qui intelligt super egenum et pauperem.-Psal. A donare e tenere ingegno bisogna avere.
[255] Praemonstro tibi Ut ita te aliorum miserescat, ne tui alios misereat.--Tri nummus.
[256] Luke, xii. 2; Acts, iii. 6. Chi ti da un ossa, non ti verrebbe morto.
[257] 1Pet. i. 22.
[258] 2 Cor. viii. 12. __________________________________________________________________
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. [259] To which add the words spoken by our Lord, It is better to give than to receive.' And when we consider how great a blessing it is that we beg not from door to door, it is a ready instance of our thankfulness to God, for his sake, to relieve them that do. 2. This duty is that alone whereby the future day of judgment shall be transacted. For nothing but charity and alms is that whereby Christ shall declare the justice and mercy of the eternal sentence. Martyrdom itself is not there expressed, and no otherwise involved, but as it is the greatest charity. 3. Christ made himself the greatest and daily example of alms or charity. He went up and down doing good, preaching the gospel, and healing all diseases; and God the Father is imitable by us in nothing but in purity and mercy. 4. Alms given to the poor rebound to the emolument of the giver both temporal and eternal. [260]
5. They are instrumental to the remission of sins; our forgiveness and mercy to others being made the very rule and proportion of our confidence and hope, and our prayer to be forgiven ourselves. [261] 6. It is a treasure in heaven; it procures friends when we die. It is reckoned as done to Christ, whatsoever we do to our poor brother; and, therefore, when a poor man begs for Christ's sake, if he have reason to ask for Christ's sake, give it him if thou canst. Now every man hath title to ask for Christ's sake whose need is great, and himself unable to cure it, and if the man be a Christian. Whatsoever charity Christ will reward, all that is given for Christ's sake, and therefore it may be asked in his name; but every man that uses that sacred name for an endearment hath not a title to it, neither he nor his need. 7. It is one of the wings of prayer by which it flies to the throne of grace. 8. It crowns all the works of piety. [262] 9. It causes thanksgiving to God on our behalf; 10. And the bowels of the poor bless us and pray for us; 11. And that portion of our estate out of which a tenth, or a fifth, or a twentieth, or some offering to God for religion and the poor goes forth, certainly returns with a great blessing upon all the rest. It is like the effusion of oil by the Sidonian woman; as long as she pours into empty vessels it could never cease running; or like the widow's barrel of meal, it consumed not as long as she fed the profit.
12. The sum of all it contained in the words of our blesses Saviour: Give alms of such things as you have, and behold all things are clean unto you.' 13. To which may be added, that charity or mercy is the peculiar character of God's elect, and a sign of predestination, which advantage we are taught by St. Paul: Put on, therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercy, kindness, etc. Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any.' [263] The result of all which we may read in the words of St. Chrysostom: "To know the art of alms is greater than to be crowned with the diadem of kings. And yet to convert one soul is greater than to pour out ten thousand talents into the baskets of the poor."
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: __________________________________________________________________
[259] Matt. vi. 4; xiii.12, 33; xxv. 15. Luke, xi. 41.
[260] Phil. iv. 17.
[261] Acts, x. 4; Heb. xiii. 16; Dan. iv. 27.
[262] Nunquam memini me legisse mala morte mortuum, qui libenter opera charitatis exercuit.--S. Hieron. Ep. ad Nepot.
[263] Coloss. iii. 12. __________________________________________________________________
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, [264] and envy other's quiet or safety, and yet cannot rejoice either in their good or in their evil, although they endeavour to hinder that and procure this with all the devices and arts of malice and of a great understanding. 6. Envy can serve no end in the world: it cannot please anything, nor do anything, nor hinder anything, but the content and felicity of him that hath. 7. Envy can never pretend to justice as hatred and uncharitableness sometimes may; for there may be causes of hatred and I may have wrong done me, and then hatred hath some pretence, though no just argument. But no man is unjust or injurious for being prosperous or wise. And therefore many men profess to hate another, but no man owns envy as being an enmity and displeasure for no cause, but goodness or felicity: envious men, being like cantharides and caterpillars, that delight most to devour ripe and most excellent fruits. [265] It is of all crimes the bassist: for malice and anger are appeased with benefits, but envy is exasperated, as envying to fortunate persons both their power and their will to do good, and never leaves murmuring till the envied person be levelled, and then only the vulture leaves to eat the liver. For if his neighbour be made miserable, the envious man is apt to be troubled: like him that is so long unbuilding the turrets, till all the roof is low or flat, or that the stones fall upon the lower buildings and do a mischief that the man repents of.
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; [266] for, like fire when it wants vent, it will suppress itself. It is good, in a fever, to have a tender and a smooth tongue; but it is better that it be so in anger; for if it be rough and distempered, there it is an ill sign, but here it is an ill cause. Angry passion is a fire, and angry words are like breath to fan it; together they are like steel and flint sending out fire by mutual collision. Some men will discourse themselves into passion; and if their neighbour be enkindled too, together they flame with rage and violence.
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, [267] the son of Amphidamas, in his rage and sudden fury, rising upon a cross-game at table. Such also are petty curiosities, and worldly business and carefulness about it; but manage thyself with indifferency or contempt of those external things, and do not spend a passion upon them, for it is more than they are worth. But they that desire but few things can be crossed but in a few. [268] In not heaping up, with an ambitious or curious prodigality, any very curious or choice utensils, seals, jewels, glasses, precious stones; because those very many accidents which happen in the spoiling or loss of these rarities, are, in event, an irresistible cause of violent anger. 3. Do not entertain nor suffer tale-bearers; for they abuse our ears first, and then our credulity, and then steal our patience, and, it may be, for a lie; and, if it be true, the matter is not considerable; or if it be, yet it is pardonable. And we may always escape with patience at one of these outlets; either, 1. By not hearing slanders; or, 2. By not believing them; or, 3. By not regarding the thing; or, 4. By forgiving the person. 4. To this purpose also it may serve well, if we choose (as much as we can) to live with peaceable persons, for that prevents the occasions of confusion; and if we live with prudent persons, they will not easily occasion our disturbance. But because these things are not in many men's power, therefore I propound this rather as a felicity than a remedy or a duty, and an act of prevention than of cure.
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." [269]
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. __________________________________________________________________
[264] Nemo alienae viruti invidet, qui confidit suae.--Cic. contra M Anton.
[265] Homerus, Thersitis maloa mores describens, makitim summam apposuit, Pelidae inprimis erat atque inimicus Ulyssi.
[266] Ira cum pectus rapida occupavit, Futiles linguae jubeo cavere Vana latratus jaculantis.--Sappho. Turbatus sum, et non sum locutus.--Psalm, xxxix.
[267] Enati to ute paiua katektanon Anphixanatos, Nnpios ouk zxelon, anph astrageloisi cholopheis.--Iliad.Ps 87.
[268] Qui pauca requirunt, non multis excidunt.--Plut.
[269] Homer. __________________________________________________________________
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, [270] that, like a besieged town, you may be provided for, and be defensible from within, since you are not likely to be relieved from without. Anger is not to be suppressed but by something that is as inward as itself, and more habitual. To which purpose add, that, 2. Of all passions it endeavours most to make reason useless. 3. That it is a universal poison of an infinite object; for no man was ever so amorous as to love a toad, none so envious as to repine at the condition of the miserable, no man so timorous as to fear a dead bee; but anger is troubled at everything, and every man, and every accident, and, therefore, unless it be suppressed it will make a man's condition restless. 4. If it proceeds from a great cause it turns to fury; if from a small cause it is peevishness; and so is always either terrible or ridiculous. 5. It makes a man's body monstrous, deformed, and contemptible, the voice horrid, the eyes cruel, the face pale or fiery, the gait fierce, the speech clamorous and loud. 6. It is neither manly nor ingenuous. It proceeds from softness of spirit and pusillanimity, which makes that women are more angry than men, sick persons more than the healthful, old men more than young, unprosperous and calamitous people than the blessed and fortunate. 8. It is a passion fitter for flies and insects than for persons professing nobleness and bounty. 9. It is troublesome not only to those that suffer it, but to them that behold it; there being no greater ineivility of entertainment than for the cook's fault, [271] or the negligence of the servants, to be cruel or outrageous, or unpleasant in the presence of the guests. 10. It makes marriage to be a necessary and unavoidable trouble; friendships and societies and familiarities to be intolerable. 11. It multiplies the evils of drunkenness, and makes the levities of wine to run into madness. 12. It makes innocent jesting to be the beginning of tragedies. 13. It turns friendship into hatred; it makes a man lose himself and his reason and his argument, in disputation. It turns the desires of knowledge into an itch of wrangling. It adds insolency to power. It turns justice into cruelty, and judgment into oppression. It changes discipline into tediousness and hatred of liberal institution. It makes a prosperous man to be envied and the unfortunate to be unpitied. It is a confluence of all the irregular passions; there is in it envy and sorrow, fear and scorn, pride and prejudice, rashness and inconsideration, rejoicing in evil and a desire to inflict it, self-love, impatience, and curiosity. And, lastly, though it be very troublesome to others, yet it is most troublesome to him that hath it.
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 [272] who give a bitter potion when they intend to eject the bitterness of the choler, for this will provoke the person and increase the passion. But placidly and quietly set upon the mortification of it, and attempt it first for a day, resolving that day not at all to be angry, and to be watchful and observant, for a day is no great trouble; but, then, after one day's watchfulness it will be as easy to watch two days as at first it was to watch one day, and so you may increase till it becomes easy and habitual.
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?" [273]
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; [274] and unless felicity were to be bought with money, he is a vain person who admires heaps of gold and rich possessions. For what Hippomachus said to some persons who commended a tall man as fit to be a champion in the Olympic games, "It is true," said he, "if the crown hang so high that the longest arm could reach it;" the same we may say concerning riches; they were excellent things, if the richest man were certainly the wisest and the best; but as they are they are nothing to be wondered at, because they contribute nothing towards felicity; which appears, because some men choose to be miserable, that they may be rich, rather than be happy with the expense of money and doing noble things.
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? [275] but when we covet after houses of the frame and design of Italy, or long for jewels, or for our next neighbour's field, or horses from Barbary, or the richest perfumes of Ababia, or Galatian mules, or fat eunuchs for our slaves from Tunis, or rich coaches from Naples, then we can never be satisfied till we have the best things that are fancied, and all that can be had, and all that can be desired, and that we can lust no more; but before we come to the one-half of our first wild desires, we are the bondmen of usurers, and of our worse-tyrant appetites, and the tortures of envy and impatience. But I consider that those who drink on still when their thirst is quenched, or eat not only their superfluity, but even that which at first was necessary: so those that covet more than they can temperately use, are oftentimes forced to part even with that patrimony which would have supported their persons in freedom and honour, and have satisfied all their reasonable desires.
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; [276] that it is a state freer from temptation, secure in dangers, but of one trouble, safe under the Divine Providence, cared for in heaven by a daily ministration, and for whose support God makes every day a new decree; a state, of which Christ was pleased to make open profession, and many wise men daily make vows; that a rich man is but like a pool, to whom the poor run, and first trouble it, and then draw it dry: that he enjoys no more of it than according to the few and limited needs of a man; he cannot eat like a wolf or an elephant; that variety of dainty fare ministers but to sin and sicknesses; that the poor man, feasts oftener than the rich, [277] because every little enlargement is a feast to the poor, but he that feasts every day feasts no day, there being nothing left to which he may, beyond his ordinary, extend his appetite; that the rich man sleeps not so soundly as the poor labourer; that his fears are more, and his needs are greater, (for who is poorer, he that needs 5/. or he that needs 5000/.?) the poor man hath enough to fill his belly, and the rich hath not enough to fill his eye; that the poor man's wants are easy to be relieved by a common charity, but the needs of rich men cannot be supplied but by princes; and they are left to the temptation of great vices to make reparation of their needs; and the ambitious labours of men to get great estates are but like the selling of a fountain to buy a fever, a parting with content to buy necessity, a purchase of an unhandsome condition at the price of infelicity; that princes, and they that enjoy most of the world, have most of it but in title, and supreme rights, and reserved privileges, peppercorns, homages, trifling services, and acknowledgments, the real use descending to others, to more substantial purposes. These considerations may be useful to the curing of covetousness; that, the grace of mercifulness enlarging the heart of a man, his hand may not be contracted, but reached out to the poor in alms. __________________________________________________________________
[270] Kai manphanein men, oia oran mello kaka phnmos oe kreisson ton enon bonlenmaton.--Medea, Porson. 1074.
[271] Dieere quid coena possis ingratius ista?
[272] amaram amaro bilem pharmaco qui elunt.
[273] Plutar. de Odie et Invidia.
[274] Quid refert igitur quantis jumenta fatiget Porticibus, quanta nemorum vectetur in umbra, Jugera quot vicina foro, quas emerit aedes? Nemo malus felix.--Juv. Sat.4.
[275] Ergo solicitae tu causa, pecunia, vitae es: Per te immaturum mortis adimus iter.--Propert.
[276] Provocet ut segnes animos, rerumque remotas Ingeniosa vias paulatim exploret egestas.--Claudian.
[277] 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.--Juven. Sat. iii. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
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;' [278] and we may read the degree and manner of it by the lamentations and sad accents of the prophet Jeremy, when he wept for the sins of the nation; by the heart-breaking of David, when he mourned for his murder and adultery; and the bitter weeping of St. Peter, after the shameful denying of his master. The expression of this sorrow differs according to the temper of the body, the sex, the age, and circumstances of action, and the motive of sorrow, and by many accidental tendernesses, or masculine hardnesses; and the repentance is not to be estimated by the tears, but by the grief; and the grief is to be valued not by the sensitive trouble, but by the cordial hatred of the sin, and ready actual dereliction of it, and a resolution and real resisting its consequent temptations. Some people can shed tears for nothing, some for anything; but the proper and true effects of a godly sorrow are, fear of the Divine judgments, apprehension of God's displeasure, watchings and strivings against sin, patiently enduring the cross of sorrow (which God sends as their punishment) in accusation of ourselves, in perpetually begging pardon, in mean and base opinions of ourselves, and in all the natural productions from these, according to our temper and constitution. For if we be apt to weep in other accidents, it is ill if we weep not also in the sorrows of repentance; not that weeping is of itself a duty, but that the sorrow, if it be as great, will be still expressed in as great a manner.
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. [279]
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. [280] But I before intimated that the punishing actions of repentance are only actions of sorrow, and therefore are to make up the proportions of it. For our grief may be so full of trouble as to outweigh all the burdens of fasts and bodily afflictions, and then the other are the less necessary; and when they are used, the benefit of them is to obtain of God a remission or a lessening of such temporal judgments which God hath decreed against the sins, as it was in the case of Ahab; but the sinner is not, by anything of this, reconciled to the eternal favour of God; for, as yet, this is but the introduction to repentance.
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; [281] he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins;' meaning, that God hath bound himself to forgive us if we duly confess our sins, and do all that for which confession was appointed; that is, be ashamed of them, and own them no more. For confession of our sins to God can signify nothing of itself in its direct nature: he sees us when we act them, and keeps a record of them; and we forget them, unless he reminds us of them by his grace. So that to confess them to God does not punish us, or make us ashames; but confession to him, if it proceeds from shame and sorrow, and is an act of humility and self-condemnation,' and is a laying open our wounds for cure, then it is a duty God delights in. In all which circumstances, because we may very much be helped if we take in the assistance of a spiritual guide, therefore the church of God, in all ages, hath commended, and, in most ages, enjoined, that we confess our sins, and discover the state and condition of our souls, to such a person whom we or our superiors judge fit to help us in such needs. For so if we confess our sins one to another,' as St. James advises, we shall obtain the prayers of the holy man whom God and the church have appointed solemnly to pray for us; and when he knows our needs, he can best minister comfort or reproof, oil or caustics; he can more opportunely recommend your particular state to God; he can determine your cases of conscience, and judge better for you than you do for yourself; and the shame of opening such ulcers may restrain your forwardness to contract them; and all these circumstances of advantage will do very much towards the forgiveness. And this course was taken by the new converts in the days of the apostles; For many that believed came and confessed and showed their deeds. [282] And it were well if this duty were practised prudently and innocently in order to public discipline, or private comfort and instruction; but that it be done to God is a duty not directly for itself, but for its adjuncts and the duties that go with it, or before it, or after it: which duties, because they are all to be helped and guided by our pastors and curates of souls, he is careful of his eternal interest, that will not lose the advantage of using a private guide and judge. He that bideth his sins shall not prosper;' Non dirigetur, saith the vulgar Latin, "he shall want a guide;" but who confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy. [283] And to this purpose Climacus reports that divers holy persons in that age did use to carry table-books with them, and in them described an account of all their determinate thoughts, purposes, words, and actions, in which they had suffered infirmity; that by communicating the estate of their souls they might be instructed and guided, or corrected or encouraged.
6. True repentance must reduce to act all its holy purposes, and enter into and run through the state of holy living, [284] which is contrary to that state of darkness in which in times past we walked. [285] For to resolve to do it, and yet not to do it, is to break our resolution and our faith, to mock God, to falsify and evacuate all the preceding acts of repentance, and to make our pardon hopeless and our hope fruitless. He that resolves to live well when a danger is upon him, or a violent fear, or when the appetites of lust are newly satisfied, or newly served, and yet when the temptation comes again, sins again, and then is sorrowful, and resolves once more against it, and yet falls when the temptation returns, is a vain man, but no true penitent, nor in the state of grace; and if he chance to die in one of these good moods is very far from salvation; for if it be necessary that we resolve to live well, it is necessary we should do so. For resolution is an imperfect act, a term of relation, and signifies nothing but in order to the actions; it is as a faculty is to the act, as spring is to the harvest, as eggs are to birds, as a relative to its correspondent, nothing without it. No man therefore can be in the state of grace and actual favour by resolutions and holy purposes; these are but the gate and portal towards pardon; a holy life is the only perfection of repentance, and the firm ground upon which we can cast the anchor of hope in the mercies of God, through Jesus Christ.
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 [286] pray for pardon, and never thing the work completed till he dies; not by any act of his own, by no act of the church, by no forgiveness by the party injured, by no restitution. These are all instruments of great use and efficacy, and the means by which it is to be done at length; but still the sin lies at the door, ready to return upon us in judgment and damnation, if we return to it in choice or action. And whether God hath forgiven us or no, we know not, [287] and how far we know not; and all that we have done is not of sufficient worth to obtain pardon: therefore still pray, and still be sorrowful for ever having done it, and for ever watch against it; and then those beginnings of pardon, which are working all the way, will at last be perfected in the day of the Lord.
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 [288] which a man's whole life hath gathered and confirmed. We find work enough to mortify one beloved lust, in our very best advantage of strength and time, and before it is so deeply rooted, as it must needs be supposed to be at the end of a wicked life: and therefore it will prove impossible, when the work is so great and the strength so little, when sin is so strong and grace so weak; for they always keep the same proportion of increase and decrease, and as sin grows grace decays: so that the more need we have of grace, the less at that time we shall have; because the greatness of our sins, which makes the need, hath lessened the grace of God, which should help up, into nothing. To which add this consideration, that on a man's death-bed the day of repentance is past; for repentance being the renewing of a holy life, a living the life of grace, it is a contradiction to say that a man can live a holy life upon his death-bed, especially if we consider, that for a sinner to live a holy life must first suppose him to have overcome all his evil habits, and then to have made a purchase of the contrary graces, by the labours of great prudence, watchfulness, self-denial and severity. [289] "Nothing that is excellent can be wrought suddenly."
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. __________________________________________________________________
[278] Jer. xiii. 17; Joel, ii. 13; Ezek. xxvii. 31; James, iv. 9.
[279] Hugo de St. Victor.
[280] 1 Cor. xi. 31.
[281] 1 John, i. 9.
[282] Acts. xix. 18.
[283] Prov. xxviii. 13.
[284] Rom. vi. 3, 4, 7; viii.10; xi.22, 27; xiii. 13, 14. Gal. v. 6, 24; vi. 15. 1 Cor vii. 19. 2 Cor. xiii. 5. Colos. i. 21-23. Heb. xii. 1, 14, 16; x. 16, 22. 1 Pet. i. 15. 2 Pet. i. 3, 9, 10; iii. 11. 1 John i. 6; iii. 8, 9; v. 16.
[285] Nequam illud verbum, Bene vult, nisi qui bene facit. Trinummus act. ii. scen. iii. 38.
[286] Dandum interstitium paeniteniae--Tacit.
[287] I peccati et i debiti son sempre piu di quel che si crede.
[288] Ti oun pros estin euriskeiu bonphea; tu enantionephoz--Arrian.
[289] Mortem venientem nemo hilaris excipit, nisi qui ad eam se diu composuerat. __________________________________________________________________
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; [290] for he ever liveth to make intercession for us.' And that we may know what it is in behalf of which he intercedes, St. Paul tells us his design; We are ambassadors for Christ, as though he did beseech you by us, we pray you in Christ's stead to be reconciled to God. [291] And what Christ prays us to do, he prays to God that we may do; that which he desires of us as his servants, he desires of God, who is the fountain of the grace and powers unto us, and without whose assistance we can do nothing.
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;' [292] meaning, that when Christ shall be glorified, and the right hand of his Father make intercession for us, praying for our repentance, the conversion and repentance of every sinner is part of Christ's glorification, it is the answering of his prayers, it is a portion of his reward, in which he does essentially glory by the joys of his glorified humanity. This is the joy of our Lord himself directly, not of the angels, save only by reflection: the joy (said our blessed Saviour) shall be in the presence of the angels; they shall see the glory of the Lord, the answering of his prayers, the satisfaction of his desires, and the reward of his sufferings, in the repentance and consequent pardon of a sinner. For therefore be once suffered, and for that reason he rejoices for ever. And therefore, when a penitent sinner comes to receive the effect and full consummation of his pardon, it is called an entering into the joy of our Lord;' that is, a partaking of that joy which Christ received at our conversion and enjoyed ever since.
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. __________________________________________________________________
[290] Heb. vii. 15.
[291] 2 Cor. v. 20.
[292] Luke, xv. 7. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
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. [293]
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, [294] that is, unless he have entered into the state of repentance, that is, of sorrow and amendment; lest it be said concerning him, as it was concerning Judas, the hand of him that betrayeth me is with me on the table: and he that receiveth Christ into an impure soul or body, first turns his most excellent nourishment into poison, and then feeds upon it.
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.
[295] It was not by St. Paul, nor the after-ages of the church, called a duty so to do, but it is most reasonable that the more solemn actions of religion should be attended to, without the mixture of anything that may discompose the mind and make it more secular or less religious.
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; [296] and yet, if thou dost communicate unworthily, thou eatest and drinkest Christ to thy danger and death and destruction. Dispute not concerning the secret of the mystery, and the nicety of the manner of Christ's presence; it is sufficient to thee that Christ shall be present to thy soul as an instrument of grace, as a pledge of the resurrection, as the earnest of glory and immortality, and a means of many intermedial blessings, even all such as are necessary for thee, and are in order to thy salvation. And to make all this good to thee, there is nothing necessary on thy part but a holy life, and a true belief of all the sayings of Christ; amongst which, indefinitely assent to the words of institution, and believe that Christ in the holy sacrament, gives thee his body and his blood. He that believes so much needs not to inquire further, nor to entangle his faith by disbelieving his sense.
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. __________________________________________________________________
[293] Nosti tempora tu Jovis sereni, Cum fulget placidus, suoque vultn, Quo nil supplicibus solet negare.--Martial. ep. 1.v.6.
[294] Vasa pura ad rem divinam.--Plaut. in Cap. Act. iv.sc.1.
[295] Discedite ab aris, Queis tulit hesterna gaudia nocte Venus Tibul ii. 1.12.
[296] Cruei haeremus, sanguinem sugimus, et inter ipsa Redemporis nostri vulnera, figimus linguam.--Cyprian. de Caena Dovt. __________________________________________________________________
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; [297] only they must leave their secular thoughts and affections behind them, and then come and converse with God. If any man be well grown in grace, he must needs come, because he is excellently disposed to so holy a feast: but he that is but in the infancy of piety had need to come, that so he may grow in grace. The strong must come lest they become weak; and the weak that they may become strong. The sick must come to be cured; the healthful to be preserved. They that have leisure must come, because they have no excuse; they that have no leisure must come hither, that by so excellent an act of religion they may sanctify their business. The penitent sinners must come, that they may be justified; and they that are justified, that they may be justified still. They that have fears and great reverence to these mysteries, and think no preparation to be sufficient must receive, that they may learn how to receive the more worthily; and they that have a less degree of reverence must come often, to have it heightened: that as those creatures that live amongst the snows of the mountains turn white with their food and conversation with such perpetual whitenesses, so our souls may be transformed into the similitude and union with Christ by our perpetual feeding on him, and conversation, not only in his courts, but in his very heart, and most secret affections and incomparable purities. __________________________________________________________________
[297] L'Evaque de Geneve, Introd. a la Vic Devote. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
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. Psalm lxiii. 1, etc.
I am ready, not only to be bound, but to die for the name of the Lord Jesus. Acts, xxi. 13.
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. Psalm lxxxiv. 1, 2, 4.
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. [298] Hide not thy face from me in the time of my trouble, incline thine ear unto me when I call; O hear me, and that right soon, For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burnt up as it were with a firebrand. My heart is smitten down and withered like grass, so that I forget to eat my bread; and that because of thine indignation and wrath; for thou hast taken me up and cast me down: thine arrows stick fast in me, and thine hand presseth me sore. [299] There is no health in my flesh because of thy displeasure; neither is there any rest in my bones by reason of my sin. My wickednesses are gone over my head, and are a sore burden too heavy for me to bear. But I will confess my wickedness and be sorry for my sin. O Lord, rebuke me not in thine indignation, neither chasten me in thy displeasure. [300] Lord, be merciful unto me, heal my soul for I have sinned against thee. [301]
Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness, according to the multitude of thy mercies do away mine offences. [302] O remember not the sins and offences of my youth; but according to thy mercy think thou upon me, O Lord, for thy goodness. [303] Wash me thoroughly from my wickedness; and cleanse me from my sin. Make me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. [304] Cast me not away from thy presence, from thy all-hallowing and life-giving presence; and take not thy Holy Spirit, thy sanctifying, thy guiding, thy comforting, thy supporting, and confirming Spirit, from me.
O God, thou art my God for ever and ever: thou shalt be my guide unto death. [305] Lord, comfort me now that I lie sick upon my bed: make thou my bed in all my sickness. [306] O deliver my soul from the place of hell; and do thou receive me. [307] My heart is disquieted within me, and the fear of death is fallen upon me. [308] Behold thou hast made my days as it were a span long, and my age is even as nothing in respect of thee; and verily every man living is altogether vanity.
[309] When thou with rebukes dost chasten man for sin, thou makest his beauty to consume away, like a moth fretting a garment: every man therefore is but vanity. And now, Lord, what is my hope? truly my hope in even in thee. Hear my prayer, O Lord, and with thine ears consider my calling: hold not thy peace at my tears. Take this plague away from me: I am consumed by the means of thy heavy hand. I am a stranger with thee and a sojourner, as all my fathers were. O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength, before I go hence and be no more seen. My soul cleaveth unto the dust: O quicken me according to thy word [310] And when the snares of death compass me round about, let not the pains of hell take hold of me. [311] __________________________________________________________________
[298] Psalm cii. 1-4, 10.
[299] Psalm xxxviii. 2-4, 18.
[300] Psalm vi. 1.
[301] Psalm xli. 4.
[302] Psalm li. 1.
[303] Psalm xxv. 6.
[304] Psalm li. 2, 10, 11.
[305] Psalm xiviii. 13.
[306] Psalm xli. 3.
[307] Psalm xlix. 15.
[308] Psalm lv. 4.
[309] Psalm xxxix. 6.
[310] Psalm cxix. 25.
[311] Psalm cxvi. 3. __________________________________________________________________
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. Job xix.25, etc.
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. [312] O blessed Jesus, thou art my judge and thou art my advocate: have mercy upon me in the hour of my death, and in the day of judgment. See John v. 28, and 1 Thess. iv. 15. __________________________________________________________________
[312] Psalm 1. 3, 4. __________________________________________________________________
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. Psalm vii. 11.
And all they that knew thy name will put their trust in thee: for thou, Lord, hast never failed them that seek thee. Psalm ix. 10.
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! Psalm xxxi. 21.
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. Psalm xxxiii. 18, 19.
The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a contrite heart; and will save such as are of an humble spirit. Psalm xxxiv. 18.
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. Psalm xxxvi. 7.
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. Verse 8.
For with thee is the well of life; and in thy light we shall see light. Verse 9.
Commit thy way unto the Lord, and put thy trust in him, and he shall bring it to pass. Psalm xxxvii. 5.
But in the salvation of the righteous cometh of the Lord, who is also their strength in the time of trouble. Verse 40.
So that a man shall say, Verily there is a reward for the righteous: doubtless there is a God that judgeth the earth. Psalm lvii. 10.
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. Psalm lxv. 4.
They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. Psalm cxxvi. 6.
It is written, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee. Heb. xiii. 5.
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. James v. 15.
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. Hos. vi. 1.
If we sin we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins. 1 John ii. 1, 2.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleans us from all unrighteousness. 1 John, i. 9.
He that forgives shall be forgiven. Luke, vi. 37.
And this is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us. 1 John, i. 14.
And ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins. 1 John iii. 5.
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? Matt. vii. 11.
This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. 1 Tim. i. 15.
He that hath given us his Son, how should he not, with him, give us all things else? Rom. viii. 32. __________________________________________________________________
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. Rom. viii. 38, 39.
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. 2 Tim. iv. 7, 8.
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. 2 Cor. i. 3, 4. __________________________________________________________________
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 Psalms cvil. and cxxx. __________________________________________________________________
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? Psalm xiii. 1, 2.
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. Psalm xi. 6.
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. Psalm xliii. 3, 4.
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. Psalm xxvi. 6, 7.
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. Verse 2, 3.
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. Psalm xxiii. 5, 6.
This is the bread that cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die. John vi. 50.
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. Verse 54, 56.
Lord, whither shall we go but to thee? thou hast the words of eternal life. John, vi. 68.
If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. John, vii. 37.
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? 1 Cor. x. 16.
What are those wounds in thy hands? They are those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends. Zech. xiii. 6.
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. Matt. viii. 8.
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 __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
[191] James, i. 27.
[192] Tit. ii. 12. __________________________________________________________________
Indexes __________________________________________________________________
Index of Scripture References
Genesis
[1]24
Leviticus
[2]19:13
Numbers
[3]30
Deuteronomy
[4]31:13
2 Samuel
[5]2:5
Job
[6]19 [7]24:15
Psalms
[8]1 [9]1 [10]1 [11]1 [12]1 [13]1 [14]1:3 [15]1:4
[16]4:4 [17]4:6 [18]4:9 [19]6:1 [20]7:11 [21]8 [22]9:10
[23]10:11 [24]11:6 [25]13:1 [26]13:1-2 [27]13:4 [28]13:6
[29]13:7-8 [30]15:5-6 [31]15:6 [32]17:13 [33]21:5-6
[34]23:5-6 [35]25:5 [36]25:6 [37]26:2-3 [38]26:6-7
[39]29:3-4 [40]30:6 [41]31:21 [42]33:18-19 [43]34:18
[44]36:7 [45]36:8 [46]36:8-9 [47]36:9 [48]37:5 [49]37:40
[50]38:2-4 [51]38:18 [52]39 [53]39:6 [54]39:9 [55]41:3
[56]41:4 [57]43:3-4 [58]49:15 [59]51:1 [60]51:2 [61]51:10
[62]51:11 [63]55:4 [64]57:10 [65]63:1 [66]65:4 [67]65:5
[68]66:8 [69]84:1-2 [70]84:4 [71]96:3 [72]102:1-4
[73]102:10 [74]116:3 [75]119:25 [76]121:1 [77]124:8
[78]125:4 [79]126:6 [80]138:1-2 [81]156
Proverbs
[82]3:9 [83]23:29 [84]23:33 [85]28:13 [86]31:4
Isaiah
[87]3:16-18 [88]4:15 [89]25:1 [90]26:12 [91]58:5
Jeremiah
[92]6:5 [93]11:15 [94]13:17 [95]17:10 [96]23:23-24
Ezekiel
[97]9:9 [98]16:49 [99]27:31 [100]33:15
Daniel
[101]4:27
Hosea
[102]2:6 [103]6:1
Joel
[104]2:13
Zechariah
[105]13:6
Malachi
[106]3:10
Matthew
[107]6:4 [108]6:25 [109]7:11 [110]8:8 [111]10:19 [112]11:25
[113]13:12 [114]13:33 [115]18:20 [116]22:29 [117]25:15
[118]25:35 [119]26:12
Mark
[120]11:24
Luke
[121]6:17 [122]6:30 [123]11:41 [124]12:2 [125]15:7
[126]16:29 [127]16:31 [128]18:1 [129]19:9 [130]21:34
[131]21:36 [132]24:45
John
[133]5:28 [134]6:50 [135]6:54 [136]6:56 [137]6:68 [138]7:37 [139]9:31 [140]13:15
Acts
[141]3:6 [142]4 [143]10:4 [144]15:21 [145]17:28 [146]19:18 [147]21:13 [148]28:2
Romans
[149]6:3-4 [150]6:7 [151]8:10 [152]8:10 [153]8:32
[154]8:38-39 [155]10:2 [156]11:22 [157]11:27 [158]12:12
[159]13:1 [160]13:4 [161]13:7 [162]13:13-14 [163]15:30
1 Corinthians
[164]3:16 [165]3:17 [166]6:8 [167]6:18 [168]6:19 [169]7:5 [170]7:19 [171]10:16 [172]10:31 [173]11:31 [174]13
2 Corinthians
[175]1:3-4 [176]5:20 [177]6:16 [178]7:11 [179]7:11 [180]8:12 [181]9:7 [182]13:5 [183]13:5
Galatians
[184]4:18 [185]5:6 [186]5:24 [187]6:10 [188]6:15
Ephesians
[189]5:18 [190]5:32 [191]6:4 [192]6:18
Philippians
[193]3:6 [194]4:6 [195]4:8 [196]4:11-12 [197]4:17
Colossians
[198]1:21-23 [199]3:12 [200]4:12 [201]21
1 Thessalonians
[202]3:10 [203]4:3-5 [204]4:6 [205]4:15 [206]5:14 [207]5:17
2 Thessalonians
[208]3:10
1 Timothy
[209]1:15 [210]2:2 [211]2:8 [212]2:9 [213]5:1 [214]5:4 [215]6:6
2 Timothy
[216]2:8 [217]3:16 [218]4:7-8
Titus
[219]2:12 [220]2:14 [221]3:1
Hebrews
[222]2:18 [223]4:13 [224]7:15 [225]10:16 [226]10:22
[227]10:24 [228]10:25 [229]12:1 [230]12:9 [231]12:14
[232]12:16 [233]13:5 [234]13:5 [235]13:5-6 [236]13:16
[237]13:17
James
[238]1:6-7 [239]1:27 [240]2:5-7 [241]4:6 [242]4:9 [243]5:15
1 Peter
[244]1:15 [245]1:22 [246]1:22 [247]2:13 [248]2:14 [249]4:7 [250]4:10
2 Peter
[251]1:3 [252]1:9 [253]1:10 [254]3:10 [255]3:11
1 John
[256]1:6 [257]1:9 [258]1:9 [259]1:14 [260]2:1-2 [261]3:5 [262]3:8-9 [263]3:22 [264]5:16
Revelation
[265]1:3 [266]2:17 [267]3:16 [268]4:10 [269]5:10 [270]5:13 [271]11:17 [272]14:4 [273]15:3 [274]21:23 [275]22:5
Sirach
[276]7:21 [277]31:25 [278]31:26 __________________________________________________________________
Index of Greek Words and Phrases
* Aischunm.: [279]1 * Amunomenoi tmn eneran.: [280]1 * Atiria paxm.: [281]1 * Di alloroion ergon ptaiei onxeis: [282]1 * Elpis kai sn Tuchm, rega Chairete ten uuun enrn.: [283]1 * Elta leagomen Kurte s zeos, pos mlagono; mooe, Cheiras ouk echeis: ouk epoimse soi autas s cheos; euchou nun kazmmenos opos ai mueat sou me reosin apomneai mallon.: [284]1 * Enroit un nuentas oper xeuis esti nomsai: [285]1 * Eoi ue deou tosa doten --: [286]1 * Enati to ute paiua katektanon Anphixanatos, Nnpios ouk zxelon, anph astrageloisi cholopheis: [287]1 * Kai manphanein men, oia oran mello kaka phnmos oe kreisson ton enon bonlenmaton.: [288]1 * Kalon xe zmlonsphai en tps kalpst pantote.: [289]1 * Klepsasa kala klerrata aneu anoros tas eupoiad zpoimse: [290]1 * Kraipalm apo pphoteraias aut apo chdizms oino posias.: [291]1 * Mertrnan exzi, koud euon donein tase: [292]1 * Mikropsuchoi rakrolnpoi.: [293]1 * Mouou skipssu posou poleis tlu seautou praireaiu, amphrope ei reotu allo, re oligou autpu polpads.: [294]1 * Nuktiporian kai oligaristan.: [295]1 * Nurphenphaton uen ton eron patmph eros.: [296]1 * Ondeis oe penms tragpsoian snmplmsoi ei rg choreutis.: [297]1 * Onk eti gar spheteirois ipiterporai errete arpho: [298]1 * Ossa gar atrekeos ouk essetai, nmmes in mrin: [299]1 * Ouneken in reropessi puluplanees rala este.: [300]1 * Pleonektei onsen o ou boezesas chrebasi oi anelenxerian.: [301]1 * Ti oun pros estin euriskeiu bonphea; tu enantionephoz: [302]1 * Ps: [303]1 * aizoite, stropheoite, osons emen nsteron ontas: [304]1 * axpsa te kai nega neikos epistamenes katepause.: [305]1 * muktiporiau kai oligaristian.: [306]1 * uphomegou tigos, pos estin esphtein artos pheots; eidikaios estn, ephe, kai eugoroos, kai isoe, kai egeoatos, kai kosmios, omk esti kai aresos tois pheois.: [307]1 * phasmata, os en npno, erxallete, nia t eonta: [308]1 * phd dn autots euokiglomtes, ots eusrtom, euprepdpdserm deu apogiam eisaei pheromtai.: [309]1 * pheos periechei tg zouledee to tag, retxogn tou tomtoz ospeg ouaib, outos chsixig.: [310]1 * philees olugpia uekeasi: Dei se eutakteiu, auankotropheiu apechesphau peraton, germazesxat pmankem, : [311]1 * phxartikai ton archon.: [312]1 __________________________________________________________________
Index of Latin Words and Phrases
* "Quique sacerdotes casti, dum vita mancbat,: [313]1 * (Edipum curiositas in extremas conjecit calamitates.: [314]1 * Alexandrum intemperantia bibendi, et ille Herculanus ac fatalis scyphus perdidit.: [315]1 * Alter alteri satis amplum theatrum sumus; satis unus, satismullus.:
[316]1 * Ama nesciri et pro nihilo reputari.: [317]1 * Angustum annulum non gesta, disit Pythag, id est, vitae genus liberum sectare, nec vinculo temetipsum obstringe.: [318]1 * Animusque menus sursum usque evectus ad polum: [319]1 * Appetitus fornicationis anxietas est, satietas vero poenitentia.:
[320]1 * Arbuteos foetus, montanaque fraga legebant.: [321]1 * At meretrix abigit testem veloque seraque; Raraque Summaeni fornice rima patet.: [322]1 * Atticus eximie si coenat, lautus, habetur; Si Rutilus, demens --:
[323]1 * Beatitudo pendet a recis consilliis in affectionem animi constantern desinentibus.: [324]1 * Beatus qui intelligt super egenum et pauperem.: [325]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.: [326]1 * Berecynthia arva.: [327]1 * Bis sex dierum mensura consero ego agros,: [328]1 * Casso saltem delectamine amare quot potiri non licest.: [329]1 * Cicero vocat Temperantiam ornatum vitae, in quo decorum illud et honestum situm est.: [330]1 * Contra libidinis impetum apprehende fugam, si vis obtinere victoriam.: [331]1 * Convictio est quasi quaedam intensio benevolentiae. Inferior matrona suo sit, sexte marito: Non aliter flunt foemina, virque pares.: [332]1 * Corpus onustum Hesternis vitiis animum quoque praegravat.: [333]1 * Cruei haeremus, sanguinem sugimus, et inter ipsa Redemporis nostri vulnera, figimus linguam.: [334]1 * Danda est opera at matrimonio devincianur, quod est tutissimum juventutis vinculum.: [335]1 * Dandum interstitium paeniteniae: [336]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.:
[337]1 * Decidit humi, et me sic videtur alloqui;: [338]1 * Demus, Deum aliquid posse, quod nos fateamur investigare ion posse.: [339]1 * Desideria tua parvo redime; hoe enim tantum curare debes, ut desinant.: [340]1 * Dieere quid coena possis ingratius ista?: [341]1 * Discedite ab aris, Queis tulit hesterna gaudia nocte Venus: [342]1 * Disea haud nimis magnifacere mortalia.: [343]1 * Donum nudum est, nisi consensu vestiatur: [344]1 * Ebrietas est voluntaria insania.: [345]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: [346]1 * Ergo solicitae tu causa, pecunia, vitae es: Per te immaturum mortis adimus iter.: [347]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.: [348]1 * Fabis abstine, dixit Pythagoras. Olim nam Magistratus per suffragia fabis lata creabantur.: [349]1 * Facilius est initia affectuum prohibere, quam impetum regere.:
[350]1 * Felix initium, prior aetas contenia dulcibus arvis; Facileque sera solebat jejunia solvere glande.: [351]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.: [352]1 * Homerus, Thersitis maloa mores describens, makitim summam apposuit, Pelidae inprimis erat atque inimicus Ulyssi.: [353]1 * I1villan nobilitado non cognosce partentado.: [354]1 * Idem fere apud Plutarch. Vinolentia animi quandam remissiem et levitatem, ebrietas futilitatem significat.: [355]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.: [356]1 * In rebus miris summa credendi ratio est omnipotentia Creatoris.:
[357]1 * Insaniae comes est ira, contubernalis ebrietas.: [358]1 * Inter sacra et vota, verbis etiam profanis abstinere.: [359]1 * Ira cum pectus rapida occupavit, Futiles linguae jubeo cavere Vana latratus jaculantis.: [360]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.: [361]1 * Jejunium sine eleemosyna, lampas sine oleo.: [362]1 * Juvenis relinquit vitam, quem Dii diligunt.: [363]1 * Laete venire Venus, trists abire solet.: [364]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.: [365]1 * Laudatur Augustus Caesar apud Lucanum, -- media inter praelia semper Stellarum coelique plagis, superisque vacabat.: [366]1 * Laudi ductum apud vet. : [367]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.: [368]1 * Mortem venientem nemo hilaris excipit, nisi qui ad eam se diu composuerat.: [369]1 * Multa faciunt ebrii quibus sobrii erubescunt.: [370]1 * Nalla lex (civilis) sibi soli conscientiam justitiaw suae debet, sed cis a quibus obsequim expectat: [371]1 * Nemo alienae viruti invidet, qui confidit suae.: [372]1 * Nequam illud verbum, Bene vult, nisi qui bene facit.: [373]1 * Nihil ita dignum est odio, ut eorum mores, qui compellantibus se difficiles, praebent.: [374]1 * Nil interest, faveas sceleri, an illud facias.: [375]1 * Nisi fundamenta stirpis jacta sint probe, Miseros necesse est esse deinceps posteros.: [376]1 * Nobilis haec esset pietatis rixa duobus; Quod pro fratre mori vellet uterque prior.: [377]1 * Non facta tibi est, si dissimules, injuris.: [378]1 * Non licet suffurari mentem vel Samaritani.: [379]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.: [380]1 * Nosti tempora tu Jovis sereni, Cum fulget placidus, suoque vultn, Quo nil supplicibus solet negare.: [381]1 * Nunquam memini me legisse mala morte mortuum, qui libenter opera charitatis exercuit.: [382]1 * Omittenda potius praevalida ct adulta vitia, quam hoe adsequi, ut palam fiat, quibus flagitiis impares simus.: [383]1 * Patellas luxuriae oculos, dixit Isidorus.: [384]1 * Plutarchus citans carmen de suo Apolline, adjicit ex Herodoto quasi de suo, De eo os meum continens esto.: [385]1 * Potior mihi ratio vivendi honeste, quam et opime dicendividetur.:
[386]1 * Praebeant misericordia ut conservetur justitia.: [387]1 * Praemonstro tibi Ut ita te aliorum miserescat, ne tui alios misereat.: [388]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.: [389]1 * Provocet ut segnes animos, rerumque remotas Ingeniosa vias paulatim exploret egestas.: [390]1 * Pulla prosternit se ad pedes: Miserere virginitatis meae, ne prostituas hoc corpus sub tam turpi titulo.: [391]1 * Quanto preaestantius esset Numen aquae, viridi si margine claugeret undas Herba, nec ingenuum violarent marmora tophum.: [392]1 * Quem Deus tegit vercundiae pallio, hujus maculas hominibus non ostendit.: [393]1 * Qui animum vincunt, quam quos animus, semper prokiores cluent.:
[394]1 * Qui dedit beneficium, taceat; narret, qui accepti: [395]1 * Qui laudat servum fugitivum, tenetur. Non enim oportet laudando augeri maium.: [396]1 * Qui pauca requirunt, non multis excidunt.: [397]1 * Qui turatur ut maechetur, maechus est magis quam fur.: [398]1 * Quid refert igitur quantis jumenta fatiget Porticibus, quanta nemorum vectetur in umbra, Jugera quot vicina foro, quas emerit aedes? Nemo malus felix.: [399]1 * Quisquis in primo obsitit Repulitqua amorem, tutus ac victor fuit: Qui blandiendo dulce nutrivit malum, Sero recusat ferre, quod subiit, jugum.: [400]1 * Si tua culpa datum est damnum, jure super his satisfacere te oportet.: [401]1 * Sic Jesus dixit. S. Carpo apud Dionysium epist. ad Demophilum.:
[402]1 * Sic Novatus novitios suos compulit ad jurandum, ne unquarm ad Catholicos episcopos redirent.: [403]1 * Sic Vivianus resipuit de injusta accusatione: apud Cassiodo.:
[404]1 * Sp. Minucius Pontifex Posthumium monuit, ne verbis vitae eastimoniam non aequantibus uteretur.: [405]1 * Spiritu principali me confirma.: [406]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: [407]1 * Time videre unde possis cadere, et noli fieri perversa simplicitate securus.: [408]1 * Tu sia nimum vicisi potius quam animus te, est quod gaudeas.:
[409]1 * Turbatus sum, et non sum locutus.: [410]1 * Vasa pura ad rem divinam.: [411]1 * Venter mero awstuanus cito despumatur in libidines.: [412]1 * Venus rosam amat propter fabellam, quam recitat.: [413]1 * Verum humilem patientia ostendit.: [414]1 * Virginitas est, in arne corruptibili, incorruptionis perpetua meditatio: [415]1 * Voluptates abeuntes fessas et poenitentia plenas, animis nostris natura subjecit, quo minus cupide repetantur.: [416]1 * amaram amaro bilem pharmaco qui elunt.: [417]1 * amoris ut morsum qui vere senserit.: [418]1 * res an gusta domi: [419]1 * super totam materiam: [420]1 __________________________________________________________________
This document is from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library at Calvin College, http://www.ccel.org, generated on demand from ThML source.
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