thought, and knowing without knowledge, and loving without love, comprehended of him whom thou canst not comprehend. SECT. VI. 1. Too much desire to please men mightily prejudgeth the pleasing of God. 2. Too great earnestness and vehemency, and too greedy delight, and bodily work and external doings, scattereth and loseth the tranquillity and calmness of the mind. 3. Cast all thy care on God, and commit all to his good pleasure; laud and praise, and applaud him in all things, small and great; forsake thy own will, and deliver up thyself freely and cheerfully to the will of God, without reserve or exception, in prosperity and adversity, sweet or sour, to have or to want, to live or to die. 4. Disunite thy heart from all things, and unite it only to God. 5. Remember, often and devoutly, the life and passion, the death and resurrection, of our Saviour Jesus. 6. Descant not on other men's deeds, but consider thine own: forget other men's faults, and ̧remember thine own. 7. Never think highly of thyself, nor despise any other man. 8. Keep silence and retirement as much as thou canst, and, through God's grace, they will keep thee · from snares and offences. 9. Lift up thy heart often to God, and desire in all things his assistance. 10. Let thy heart be filled, and wholly taken up, with the love of God, and of thy neighbour, and do all that thou dost in that sincere charity and love. The sum is: 1. Remember always the presence of God. SECT. VII. 1. Little love, little trust; but a great love brings a great confidence. 2. That is a blessed hope that doth not slacken us in our duty, nor maketh us secure, but increaseth both a cheerful will, and gives greater strength to mortification and all obedience. 3. What needest thou, or why travellest thou about so many things? think upon one, desire and love one, and thou shalt find great rest. Therefore, 4. Wherever thou be, let this voice of God be still. in thine ear; My son, return inwardly to thy heart; abstract thyself from all things, and mind me only: Thus, 5. With a pure mind in God, clean and bare from the memory of all things, remaining unmoveably in him, thou shalt think and desire nothing but him alone; as though there were nothing else in the world but he and thou only together; that all thy faculties and powers being thus recollected into God, thou mayest become one spirit with him. 6. Fix thy mind on thy crucified Saviour, and remember continually his great meekness, love and obedience, his pure chastity, his unspeakable patience, and all the holy virtues of his humanity. 7. Think on his mighty power and infinite goodness; how he created and redeemed thee; how he justifieth thee, and worketh in thee all virtues, graces, and goodness; and thus remember Him, until thy memory turn into love and affection. Therefore, 8. Draw thy mind thus from all creatures, unto a certain silence, and rest from the jangling and company of all things below God; and when thou canst come to this, then is thy heart a place meet and ready for thy Lord God to abide in, there to talk with thy soul. 9. True humility gaineth and overcometh God Almighty, and maketh thee also apt and meet to receive all graces and gifts; but alas! who can say that he hath this blessed meekness, it being so hard, so uncertain, so secret and unknown a thing, to forsake and mortify perfectly and exactly thyself, and that most venomous worm of all goodness, vainglory? 10. Commit all to the high providence of God, and suffer nothing to rest or enter into thy heart, save only God; all things in the earth are too base to take up thy love or care, or to trouble thy noble heart, thy immortal and heavenly mind: let them care and sorrow, or rejoice, about these things, who are of the world, for whom Christ would not pray. 11. Thou canst not please nor serve two masters at once; thou canst not love divers and contrary things: if then thou wouldst know what thou lovest, mark well what thou thinkest most upon; leave earth, and have Heaven; leave the world, and have God. 12. All sin and vice springeth from the property of our own will: all virtue and perfection cometh and groweth from the mortifying of it, and the resigning of it wholly to the pleasure and will of God. END OF VOL. II. Nicholson, Printer, Warner Street. |
