A SPIRITVALL COMBAT: A TRIAL OF A FAITHFUL SOUL OR CONSOLATION IN TEMPTATION.  
Written in French by I. P. CAMUS Bishope of Belie, and translated into English by M. C. P. of the Eng. Coll. of Douai.  
AT DOUAI, By the widow of MARK WYON, at the sign of the Phoenix.  
M. DC. XXXII.   

riers. There is a grant given of a hiden Manna: but to such as fight, as fight lawfully, as overcome. There is a blessing, a crown, a crown of life promised: but after trial by temptation. Heaven is our Land of Promise, yet if we be not fed with some consolation we run hazard to fail in the way.  
This book, a SPIRITVALL COMBAT; A TRIAL OF A FAITHFUL SOUL; or, A CONSOLATION IN TEMPTATION; (for which of the three is most proper, the Author makes doubt) seems voluntarily and without constraint to refer unto all these. As it exhibites a SPIRITVALL COMBAT, we may learn the posture, the defence, the comportment of a Spiritual Combatant; in a word, to fight, to fight lawfully, to overcome, to bear away the hidden Manna. As it expresseth A TRIAL OF A FAITHFUL SOUL, we may discover in it, our own defects, our disordered fight, our weakness, want of courage; thence endeavour to correct; to order; and as it contains CONSOLATION, to revive, solace, and reinforce our decaying courage. This is the whole scope & end. And, MADAM, though I know, that what is here in precept, is your Honours in practice; nor can I doubt, but that your noble, obedient, and virtuous Daughters, knowing S. james his counsel, did then make provision against temptation, when hearing the divine invitations, and seeing his goodness, they inclined their ear to his evangelical Counsels, forgot their people, friends, favourites, father's Family, to become Spouses to that heavenly King, who coveted their beauty, to walk amongst the lilies of chastity in the forsaken ways of the Heavenly Jerusalem. Yet can I never think, that too much water can be brought to the extinguishing of so common a flame, or too much skill achieved to fight with three so powerful, and guileful enemies, the world, the flesh, and the Devil. Your Honour will vouchsafe to patronise this poor piece, and propose it to your pious children's views. I will not dare so much to distract you in your more serious affairs, as to invite you to become a spectatrix of this Battle, since there is in it no feat you already know not, yet this I dare promis, that if leisure permit you to cast an eye upon it, you shall not fail to draw comfort from it, while you speculate that in the advice of a Pious and learned Bishope, which you have so long, frequently, and happily practised; such approbation giving assurance; such assurance dilating, and as it were, blessing your mind: a mind full of prime nobility, pure Religion, solid piety, prudence, candour, and native goodness. A pen that had a design to praise, could not but joy to address upon so rich a subject, where the most flourishing rhetoric would fall short of a due expression: where nobility wonders to see itself got to the top of perfection: perfection joys to be enshrined in so goodly a case, seated in so noble a heart. Where, in fine, even envy itself finds not what to dispraise, with any specious show of truth. But what I cannot speak, my strife shall be not to spoil. I would not my proneness to please, (not seconded with performance,) should offend the respect I bear, and homage I desire to do, to virtue in your Honour, which, I doubt not, will engage some more able pen to register it in a fixed monument for Posterity. While I, living in admiration of what I have seen, but cannot say, may be numbered amongst  
\Your Honours observant and best wishing servants MILES CAR.   

To the Reader.  
THE little stars which do occur to the Reader all through the book, are put to mark out the places where the Author alluded to Scripture, yet rarely used the precise words thereof, and therefore could not so well be put in a diverse letter. The book was written to one afflicted with temptations of infidelity or blasphemy, but may be applied to any other temptation.   

A TABLE OF THE CHAPTERS.  

First part.  Chap. 1. 
THe Pastour's Duty. Page 1.  Chap. 2. 
Prayer to God for a soul in temptation. p. 9  Chap. 3. 
An encouragement. p. 14.  Chap. 4. 
The profit of temptation. p. 19  Chap. 5. 
The estate of a soul in temptation. p. 24.  Chap. 6. 
Happy estate, and sign of God's favour. p. 31.  Chap. 7. 
An wholesome Fear. p. 39  Chap. 8. 
To doubt and to consent are incompatible. p. 44.  Chap. 9 
That in the temptation we are to fear the fault and not the pain. p. 46.  Chap. 10. 
Grief for Peace lost. p. 52.  Chap. 11. 
A lenitive. p. 57  Chap. 12. 
God's assistance in temptation. p. 60.  Chap. 13. 
Profit drawn from temptation. p. 65.  Chap. 14. 
Temptation glorious. p. 68  Chap. 15. 
The Ideas which are in the mind or before it. p. 73.  Chap. 16. 
Temptation is atryall. p. 78.  Chap. 17. 
A sleight of self-love in temptation. p. 86.  Chap. 18. 
Distrust of ones self and confidence in God. p. 93.  Chap. 19 
Of Patience. p. 102.  Chap. 20. 
That a moderate complaint is no sign of impatience. p. 107.  Chap. 21. 
The pain of temptation is a participation of our Saviour's passion. p. 112.  Chap. 22. 
How honourable this Trial is. p. 117.  Chap. 23. 
It is one of the Marks of Election. p. 124.  Chap. 24. 
Temptation doth humble us. p. 129.  Chap. 25. 
It crownes us. p. 132.  Chap. 26. 
By it we are holily Chastised, p. 135.  Chap. 27. 
God prone to assist the tempted. p. 139.  Chap. 28. 
Against unjust complaints. p. 147.   

The second part.  Chap. 1. 
THat we are to despise certain temptations. Page 158.  Chap. 2. 
That temptation augments virtue. p. 171.  Chap. 3. 
Prayer, a good remedy against temptations. p. 178.  Chap. 4. 
The word of God another Antidote. p. 185.  Chap. 5. 
That melancholy is to be avoided. p. 188.  Chap. 6. 
That we are in no wise to omit the ordinary exercises of our vocation. p. 193.  Chap. 7. 
Aspirations in the presence of God. p. 204.  Chap. 8. 
The difference betwixt Meditation and Contemplation. p. 212.  Chap. 9 
The facility of Contemplation. p. 221.  Chap. 10. 
An Act of simple Contemplation a sovereign remedy against temptation. p. 236.  Chap. 11. 
An act of Contemplation. p. 246.  Chap. 12. 
A Practice of this Act. p. 255.  Chap. 13. 
An Elevation towards the top of the Spirit. p. 262.  Chap. 14. 
A general abstraction. p. 270.  Chap. 15. 
Against general temptations. p. 272.  Chap. 16. 
An Exhortation to spiritual valour, in imitation of Jacob's wrestling. p. 282.   
FINIS.   

A SPIRITVALL COMBAT OR A TRIAL OF A FAITHFUL SOUL BY TEMPTATION. THE FIRST PART.  

The Pastour's Duty.  
CHAP. I.  
THE Prince of the Apostles commands us by God's order, to be continually ready to render an account of our Faith, to whosoever shall demand it; * Could I then, o Theopiste, turn a deaf ear to your friendly invitation, without violating this divine ordinance, and infringing brotherly charity which we owe to every one, as the great Apostle said, since God hath commended our neighbour to every one of us; * and hath put down in his law, that we should love them as over selves? * And seeing by God's providence I was ordained to be one of the Pastors of his Church, am I not obliged by my state and condition, to contribute to the necessities of my brethren, brethren unless I would be liable to the reproach, and expect the sad effect of the dreadful threats, which the divine zeal, thunders out by the mouth of one of his Prophets: woe be to the Pastors, who feed themselues; who eat the flesh, and are covered with the wool of their flock; who suck the marrow and drink the milk, and yet nourish them not: They do not strengthen that which is weak; cure not that which is sick; rejoin not that which is broken; reduce not what is strayed; they seek not that which is lost; so that the sheep were scattered, and exposed to the rage of the raviuous beasts. But behold I live, saith our Lord, and I will exact my flock at their hands. * And my hand upon them shall take vengeance of their blood. * And behold, saith he by the organ of another Trumpet, how my people are led away captive, because they wanted knowledge, * the knowledge of Saints * which doth reclaim from the slavery of sin, and enlarge us with that precious liberty, which doth cast off the heavy yoke of sin, and which is the true liberty of the children of God. * Now to whom doth it belong to communicate to others this knowledge of the God of knowledge, but to those who are called the salt of the earth, * and the light of the world, * who together with the holy Ghost, received the knowledge of the voice, * by the imposition of hands in their ministry; and whose lips keep the depositum of the divine knowledge, who are to be a law, † and a Rule of life to their subjects, and to the souls of whom they are liable to give an account? Shall it ever be said, that the Samaritan poured his wine and oil, into the wounds of the hurt-man, * and performed even works of supererogation, † to save his life; and that yet the Priest and Levite shall pass without pity, not casting an eye of mercy upon him? * He, saith the beloved Disciple of our Saviour, who is possessed of good things, and seeing his brother in necessity, shuts his bowels of mercy upon him, with what face can he affirm, that the Charity of God is in him? * No, saith he going on, whosoever saith he loves God, and yet takes no thought for the necessity (he understands spiritual and temporal.) Of his neighbour, is a liar, and the truth of God doth not inhabit his soul. * Love one another, saith the Apostle, to all Christians, with a brotherly, and mutual charity, * and bear one another's burden, and so you shall fulfil the law of CHRIST, * reputing yourselves each others members, or rather members of JESUS CHRIST; and that you do but compose one mystical body with him. But it doth principally appertain to the Heads of the People, * which are the Pastors, and who have the bands of Charity and perfection * for the portion and honourable part of their inheritance, to watch over the necessity of the souls committed to their trust, as the she herds who were first of all advertised by the Angels of the birth of our redeemour; because during the dead of the night they were watchful over their flocks. Blessed is that servant, who shall be found waking in the day of the coming of the great Master: * and who shall be able to say with him of the Gospel: behold five talents profit, which I have made out of the five which thou gavest me to use: * and with job, I have been the foot of the lamb, and the eye of the blind: * and with the Doctor of the Gentiles: Who is infirm, with whom, by compassion, I become not infirm? * Who are those little ones ask for bread, to whom I have not communicated what I have learned without envy or fiction, in simplicity of heart? *   

Prayer to God for a soul in temptation.  
CHAP. II.  
OIESUS my Lord! can I have the hart to see my brother in tribulation without bearing a part of his pains, since I clearly discover that thou thyself art together with him in that anguish which doth trouble him, with intention to deliver him from it, and crown him for it with Glory? Art thou not continually near unto those who have their hearts shut, and do invoke thy holy name? * Art not thou he who doth save the humble of hart? * o what a height of happiness is it to be Coadiutour, and Cooperatour with thee, * in this good work? what am I not able to do together with thy help, * verily I can do all things, not I, but thy grace within me. Woe be unto me if I Euangelise not, * if I retain verity prisoner in Injustice, * if I hold my peace, when there is question of Zion, * and of the good of a soul, redeemed with the inestimable price of thy precious blood: If I become a dume dog, which either cannot or will not open his mouth; * If my tongue be not a pen, or my pen a tongue, to direct in thy ways, the footsteps of such as want direction. * Alas most amiable Saviour! Lo THEOP. poor THEOPIST whom thou lovest, * and who I know loves thee, with an unfeigned Charity, and a true affection: * THEOPIST my dear brother in thy holy Spirit, is not only sick, but even suffers violence, ti's thy part to make answer for him, * since being united unto thee, as a vine-branch to its stock; as a member to its head, * thou bearest part in his afflictions, as in the times of Saul, whom thou madest a PAUL, thou didst resent the persecution of thy Faithful. That which doth most torment him, is the knowledge he hath of his own frailty, and a fear to offend thee, in this great tempest which the enemy of his salvation hath stirred up against his Faith. He is driven to the main sea: being weatherbeaten he dreads shipwreck: he cries out unto thee, save me o Lord, I perish * thou who savest those which hope in thee * how long wilt thou be forgetful of him, o Lord, how long wilt thou turn thy favourable face from him? * thou who dost command the sea and the winds. * And who in the twingling of an eye, dost turn the most desperate storm, into a plasant calm? * O God increase his Faith, * purify his hart with that virtue * Restore him the joy of thy salvation, * and with thy principal spirit confirm him. * This is the prayer, my dear THEO, which I make upon your affliction. It is the balm which I pour into your wound, following therein the Apostles counsel, who will have us pray over him that is sad. * weep with him that is soerowfull. * And me thinks, I hear I know not what secret voice give me assurance, that this infirmity shall not be to death, but that the glory of God shall be thereby more manifested in you. * And if with patience you expect his blessed pleasure, you shall shortly see the splendour of his divine face shine upon you.   

An encouragement.  
CHAP. III.  
ATTEND therefore God's pleasure; be courageous. Let your hart rise as a palm-tree against that which doth oppress it; sustain this assault. * What doth he know who is not tempted? Blessed is he who suffers temptation, for being once tried, he shall receive the crown of life. * Patience works probation, begets Hope, and such a hope as is not confounded: For by patience we possess ourselves in Peace. * Say to the pusilanimous; lift up your dejected minds, * saith the Prophet. Tell them, that they are to hope even against all hope. * And that when they conceive they are lost, they are nearer to their salvation than they can believe. * Lose not then your confidence, THEOPISTE, sith so great a reward is promised unto it. * Give care unto your sweet Saviour, who cries unto you; be confident, for I have overcome the world. * And what virtue is it which gives us victory over the world? The Apostle makes answer, it is our Faith. * But alas, say you THEOPISTE, This is that which. I want, this is my disease: and you say unto me, be well. From that quarter war is waged against me, & your counsel is, live in Peace. That is the evil which doth afflict me, and you say unto me, o man of little faith, why dost thou fear? * It is not I that say thus unto you THEOPISTE, it is our Saviour himself, the very words of whose Testament you use. It is his Apostle that assures you, that virtue is perfected in infirmity; * that even from its own infirmity it gains new strength: & oftentimes when we apprehend we have lost all, we win all. For God is faithful and never tempts us in evil. He permits us not to be tempted above our strength. * chose, he makes us draw profit from our tribulation: * and find out our salvation in the midst of our enemies. * When we think that our virtue doth fail us, and that the light of our eyes hath forsaken us; * he serves us as a Pillar of fire in palpable darkness, and makes a light shine amongst the obscurities, to those that are of a right hart. * That which you repute a serpent taken by the tail upon a sudden, is in our hand a flourishing rod, and a rod of direction in the Kingdom of Heaven. Believe it THEOPISTE, either am I a very bad Prophet, or else this temptation against Faith which doth afflict you, will more affright than hurt you: for all the temptations which do not please, cannot hurt, * as a Father of the Church saith. chose, if you will please to follow my counsel and advise, with as much confidence as God hath given you freedom to reveal your cause, and discover unto me the ways and feelings of your interior man, I doubt not but you will draw confusion upon the house of NABUCHODONOSOR; * cut of HOLOPHERNES his head with his own sword; * and with the dint of a stone from a sling, beat down that proud PHILISTIAN, who would outbrave the army of your good desires. *   

The profit of Temptation.  
CHAP. IU.  
I Dare promise myself, that as DAVID found bitterness in Peace; * so chose you shall meet with sweetness in this war. And that honie-combes shall not only spring out of rocks to you, * but even out of the Lion's jaws which you think is about to devour you, * according to SAMSON'S Emblem: That you shall draw fresh water out of the midst of this brinish sea, as veins thereof are found in the bosom of the Ocean: & that one day you shall sing with the Psalmist; it was good for me, o Lord, to have been humbled by thy hand, to th'end I might learn thy iustifications. * Then shall you know, that that affliction, which gives you the same blows in matter of Faith, which the Angel of Satan gave S. PAUL in point of dishonestly, * shall have the like effect in you, as the waters of the Deluge in the Ark of Noë. And what effect had they in it? Marry they launched it from the shore, they bore it up towards Heaven: brought it safe at length to the top of the highest Armenian Mountains? * ay would say hereby, that this trouble, in lieu of depressing, shall exalt your faith: and that this essay of your valour, shall purge and purify your Faith as gold in the Crurible *, and shall give it a deeper colour; and perhaps, whereas she now creeps upon the earth, (amidst shades, Enigmas, Mirrors, * fantomes and imaginary shapes) her youth being renewed like unto the Eagle *, she shall become clear-sighted, resembling that bird, which, without shutting her eyelides, can fix the apples of her eyes upon the brightest sun beams. Yea may it not be, that after my, Theopiste have once read this Practice, or spiritual Combat (and when I say Practice, my meaning is that that which is read should be practised) he shall hear with the thief upon the Cross (who seeing himself with in two fingers breath of shipwreck, received yet pardon from the King of mercy, in these few words) amen amen, I say unto thee, this day thou shall be with me in Paradise? * Which was accomplished even in Hell, or in Abraham's bosom, whither this good thief descending, saw the glorious and triumphant soul of our Saviour, who defeated Death, and blunted the sharp point of the sting of Hell, * while he bore away the spoils, and led Captivity captive after him. * ITHEOP. my belief is, that we shall not die, but live; * and that if we do firmly & constantly believe, floods of waters of life *, running to eternity, * shall issue out of our breasts. * This blessed Hope is surely lodged in my bosom. *   

The estate of a soul in temptation.  
CHAP. V.  
BUT before I begin to dress your wound, which seems to me more daunting then dangerous, I must behold it nearer. You are, say you, for some time past so vexed with thoughts of blasphemy and infidelity, that all your wisdom is defeated in this hot assault, and the malignity of the sore, surpassing all the remedies, you apprehend your wound incurable. You have had recourse to the seeing, to the Prophets, and to the Angels of God, to be delivered by their assistance, from the Monsters, and perils which are found in the way of Rage, or rather in the way of this rage of infernal furies, which seem to stand with open jaws ready to swallow you up. You have run from living to dead Oracles, that is, you have betook yourself to pious books, especially those which do treat of temptations; and of the means to put them to flight, or to vanquish them. As the PHILOTHEE of our B. Father: the Spiritual works of Grenado: Point, ALVEREZ; RODRIGVEZ; and the like. And as great fires are enkindled by the same wind which doth extinguish little weak ones; so you apprehend that your grief gathers strength from the very means which you use either to lessen or lose it. Following your Directours Counsel, you have multiplied the herb Borith, which is that whereof the Fuller's make use, to take spots out of cloth: I mean, you have had recurse to the sacred exercises of Penance and mortification, knowing that a contrite and humble hart * is the greatest present which can be offered unto God. You have extraordinarily frequented the use of prayer, reading spirituality, of the Sacraments of Confession and the eucharist, with due attention to the word of God; being all of them sovereign Antidotes to strengthen assaulted Faith. In a word, there is no practice of devotion, whether counselled by writing, or word of mouth; whether inspired, or found out by your own understanding being opened by vexation, which you have not employed, opportunely, importunely, to make those horrible thoughts vanish away, which like a brood of vipers, do threaten their parent's death, according to that which the Psalmist saith of him who hath conceived iniquity, engendered grief, and brought forth injustice. To what Saintes did you not make vows to be delivered of those importune motions which keep a continual bussing in the Temple of your hart, which being consecrated unto God by Piety that reigns therein, ought only to be adorned with Sanctity, not admitting any thing that is profane or defiled, since the Temple of the City of God, had a privilege that it should not be disturbed with any of those loathsome beasts. What violent endeavours have you not used, like another ABRAHAM, to drive away those ravenous birds from above your interior sacrifices? How oft have you taken your hart, as it were, in both your hands, to force it to produce Acts of a lively Faith, and quickened with Charity, to repelle the fiery darts, of the midday-divell, who doth dazzle your eyes with his execrable illusions? Me thinks I see my Theopiste useing all kind of defence in this skrimish, employing, as it were, his whole man upon it, invokeing Heaven and earth to this succour, Heaven which seems to be Brass to him, and the earth iron: and God pitiful and rich in mercy, becomes cruel and inexorable to him. Being thus abandoned, he is burdensome to himself: his sins (as he thinks) multiplied beyond number, do oppress him as a heavy load. Even Giants would groan under so many waters of anguish. And his greatest torture is the very same which affected job, who complained of nothing so much, as to find himself contrary to God, even while God himself, (a thing far from his conceit) called him just, upwaight, and a man full of a chaste fear.   

Happy estate, and sign of God's favour.  
CHAP. VI  
MY dear THEOPISTE, the eye which seeth all things, sees not itself, so blind we are in our own deeds! Whence Phicitions and Advocates do rather refer their own diseases and suits to the judgement of some other of the same professions, then to their own directions. I do not wonder, that the ways of of God which are Mercy, Truth and judgement, are as far beyond our reach and capacity, as the Heaven is distant from the earth: And if the thoughts of our imaginations be so different, sithence in that which you now propose unto me, the opinion which I constantly embrace of you is so far different from your own, and that which you term God's justice, Rigour, and abondoning of you, I consider as God's Grace, Benignity, Bounty and Mercy to your soul. O my dearest THEOPIST, if you knew the gift of God, * his hand which now seems so heavy unto you, would appear light; and you would perceive that that sweet and favourable hand, doth sustain you by the right hand, and doth lead you in the way of his will, to conduct you to his Glory. These temptations which do essay and affray you, and which you take for torents that do violently bear away your Faith, are to me as so many honourable argument, of your loyalty: and your wounds, in this good Combat of Faith as the Apostle calls it, appear in mine eyes so many glorious marks; and even this also, unless I deceive myself, will be the judgement of all those that love and setue God, and who have any experience in this interior commotion and Combat, which is raised not against flesh and blood, but against the powers of darkness, and spiritual malice. You curse, and I bless it, and though I would curse it, yet should it be no more in my power, than it was in Balaam's to fasten his imprecations upon the Army of Israel. Why, are we ignorant, that he, who like unto yourself, doth range himself in the discipline of God, is to prepare his soul against temptation * as the wise man said: and the Angel to the good Toby; because thou wast agreeable to God, it was necessary (mark this word) that temptation should try thee. * Who knows not that the trees which are most shaken with the winds, do spread their roots more deeply into the ground: that incense doth not smell but when it is burnt: that the Vine is not fruitful unless it be pruned: that a soldier's valour doth only appear in dangerous exploits: nor doth virtue show its solidity but by resisting its contrary. Take courage, THEOPISTE, thou walkest in good company. No saint doth serve for a lively stone in the celestial City, which was not squared cut, carved, in the quarry of this world by temptation. And the Saint of Saintes was he not tempted in the desert? Yea and that in all things, as saith his great Apostle, even to that great abandoning, whereof he complains, and with a loud voice cries out upon the Cross. And the same Apostle, speaking of the members of his mystical body, to wit, the faithful, saith he not (after the great wonders of Faith which he racounts in the eleaventh chapter of his Epistle to the Hebrews) some were stoned, others hewed, all were tempted, and many put to death by diverse sorts of punishments, or banished & dispersed into diverse parts of the world, forsaken, afflicted, tormented, wandering in deserts, and mountains, and rocky dens, the world being unworthy of their presence: and by their sundry tribulations they bore testimony to Faith, and gave a trial of their fidelity. You apprehend, peradventure, THEOPISTE, that I flatter your grief and that to assuage it by the levitive of consolation, I use these discourses more delightful than true, and that mine aim is to inchante that Asp * with pleasing passages, which notwithstanding you apprehend doth kill you, and doth extinguish the light of your faith with her could poison, and the fervour of your first Charity. * But in very deed, THEOPISTE, I do not proceed with you in spirit of guile, but speak out of the abundance of my hart* and according to the true sense of my soul. A sense so true and solid, that all the holy Scripture, which is the word of Truth, of Truth and of life everlasting, * is all full of it, nor are pious books furnished with any other instructions upon the matter of temptations. Which, I assure myself, you will be constrained to confess unto me, if allaying for a while, the tumult of your hart, and silencing the noise of your disquiet, you would call to mind the precepts of our B. F. in the fourth part of his Philothee. For what he speaks there of temptations in general, aught and may easily be applied to yours in particular. And if my ignorance dare add any thing to so great an Oracle, I beseech your humility to arm herself with patience, to read what I am about to put down.   

An wholesome Fear.  
CHAP. VII.  
You think you are lost; and I hold that you walk in the way of salvation. You repute yourself an Ethnic, worse than an Infidele: and I admire your Faith: you apprehend yourself defeated: and I sing, not your victory: (For all victory proceeds from the God of Hosts) but the victory of the Triumph of God's Mercy in you. You never saw yourself, say you, so feeble in point of Faith: and I never saw you so constant in it. It is true in deed that your adversary like unto a roreing Lion, doth roam about, endeavouring to make you his prey: marry the resistance you make against him by the force of Faith, * doth make me justly believe, that grace superaboundeth, where you deem sin doth abound. * For you have to do with an enemy, whom JESUS CHRIST by his death, did so weaken, that he can gain no advantage against us but by our own disloyalty and dasterdlinesse: all the feelings which he can raise up in us, not being able to form any sin at all without our consent. So that as from Grace, which is never wanting, all our succour comes, so from ourselves alone is our ruin. * Which when it arrives, we are not so much to accuse the enemy's force, as our own malice. But you fear, say you, to fall by consent, and that force of the Tempest driveing your frail vessel against the shelves, you may suffer shipwreck in Faith, * which is the most deplorable that can be suffered in spiritual life. While I for my part dare assure you, that he is blessed who fears continually: * for he that fears to offend God, doth truly love his Law, * and his Faith. This fear of our Lord, doth drive away sin, * and permits it not to reign in the soul. * DAVID terms it the ferme Pillar and firmament of the mind. * Who knows not, that it is the will of God that we should work our salvation in Fear and Trembling? * O Lord, said DAVID, pierce my flesh with the nails of thy Fear, and make me to dread thy judgements. * ay should be exceeding sorry, THEOPISTE, that this Fear should forsake your hart; and I should entertain a far worse opinion of your disease, if your pulse did not beat so hard. That which makes you sorrowful, glads me, what afflicts you, comforts me: what you, conceive to be signs of death, are to me, marks of life in you.   

To doubt and to consent are incompatible.  
CHAP. VIII.  
YOu stand in fear, THEOPISTE, that your consent should follow your sense or feeling: and I, hold according to all Divinity, a far better warranty than your apprehensions, that it is as impossible to join a doubt and a consent together, as a certain with an uncertain thing: For consent doth presuppose so full and absolute aggreement and yielding up of itself, and so constant a determination, that it leaves no doubt at all behind it. The Archer that hath a shaking hand, hardly ever hits the white. The aim, to be level and strait, must also be stiddie and constant. The surest sign that we consent not, is to doubt that we consent. So that, the same thing which doth trouble you, doth free and clear my judgement of all doubt. Thus your blinding Egyptian fogs, are to me a light, as to the Israelite. The dark cloud which doth encompass you, is to me a Pillar of fire, * for its light a fire, for strength a pillar. I would to God that you had either my eyes, or at least would credit my words, you should presently be cured.   

That in the temptation we are to fear the fault and not the pain.  
CHAP. IX.  
But happily it is the too inordinate desire of health that delays the cure. Fire is fallen upon them, * saith the Psalmist speaking of the children of Israel, nor have they seen the sun. * Nothing doth so much hinder a man to discern the light of reason, as the heat of a violent passion which is never without smoke. THEOPISTE, I do a little doubt me, that in this tribulation which doth afflict you, you do more fly the Pain then the Fault; or at least, that you fear and fly not the Fault, but by reason of the Pain, which follows it, as the inseparable shadow of this infortunate body. This peradventures is the root of your evil. God will be loved for his ownsake: Not for the reward which he promiseth (otherwise the reward would be loved as God, and God as the reward). He will have us to abstain from sin, not so much for the fear of his justice, as for fear to offend his goodness. Thence, it may be, he leaves you to be tempered and seasoned in this temptation. By means of it, he urgeth you on by fright's, to th'end that being gotten to a higher degree of Charity, this stern and servile fear, may give place to filial fear. And then this yoke shall rot away, that is, shall burst, by the application and force of that heavenly oil * following the terms of one of the Prophets. Lay your hand upon a good, not an erroneous conscience, and upon an unfeigned Faith * and tell me in words of Truth, * THEOPISTE, whether I have not put my fingar upon your sore, and touched you to the quick? For the knowledge which I have of the goodness of your soul, makes me, as I conceive, clearly see, that this fear causeth you to run up and down searching for Dittanie to draw out of your thigh, or rather out of your hart, the arrow of temptation, the smart whereof, doth more trouble you, than any ferme belief you have of fault committed. But tell me then in simplicity of hart, my dear THEOPISTE, if it be not as I say, or rather, as I conjecture, since like unto NABUCHODONOSOR, you will have me not only to interpret, but even to arreade, your dreams and thoughts. For lo, Physicians do only cure the diseases they know, nor do they know them, but by a true relation which the patient makes of the state he feels himself in. Those little duplicities, those windings, that spiritual cunning, those covertures which we sometimes make use of, while we treat in matter of conscience, with those to whom we have trusted the government of our soul, are oft cause, that the temptations which would but pass through our hart, do put themselves in garrisons, and withal falling into mutiny, do stir up revoults, seditions and tumults.  
But blessed be God, Father of our Lord JESUS CHRIST, Father of Mercies, and God of all consolation who comforts us in all our troubles. * Benediction, light, wisdom, thanksgiving, honour, virtue, and strength be to God, who hath given you courage, as to another Acan, to glorify him, * and to confess unto him your own injustice against yourself. A great part of health is to wish to be well. This makes us courageously use all convenient kinds of remedies. It is a great step to goodness, to desire to become good: for grace, whereby we are made such, is never wanting to those who have a will fruitfully to receive it, and carefully to manage it. Such may I esteem you, my dear THEOPISTE, since for so many years you have made profession of piety, and given the testimony of a good life, that you desire to be devout.   

Grief for Peace lost.  
CHAP. X.  
ALas, and this it is them, that draws so many sobs from your breast, such a world of sighs from your mouth, and such floods of tears from your eyes, while you think of the fair weather that is past, wherein you fought with such courage and alacrity. * Ah, say you, the crown of my head is fallen, woe be to me, for I have offended. * And my misfortune is that I know not mine own misery. * Hence I lift up my hands towards the heavens, and say, o Lord from my secret sins cleanse me, and from other men's spare thy servant. o Zion! o wishful peace of my hart! when I think of thee, mine eyes become fountains, and the apples of mine eyes swim therein! I ran so well, ay me! what's this that holds me? * What troublesome Remora stopps the ship of my affections, which sailed under full sails upon the Sea of Grace and spiritual delights? What scorching wind hath dried up those pleasing fountains * out of which I drew water of life wherewith I quenched my thirst. While God dilated my hart with sweet affections, I ran without pain within the compass of thy ways. * While he covered me, or rather environed me with his good pleasure, as with a buckler, * I contemned the attempts of mine enemy. O who will reduce me to the same estate, in which I was in times past, while I washed the feet of mine affections in the butter, * of consolations; and while to me, from the Rock of Faith, flowed floods of oil *. O how my gold is obscured, or rather, turned black! how my red colour is changed! * No, let me be called no more Noemi, but Mara, since my soul is filled with bitterness. * O God what stumbling block is laid to cross my way, who walked towards thee so directly: and whereas nothing but holy words of praise, honour, and benediction, issued out of my mouth, and rose up in thy sight, like unto the smoke of incense; * while my tongue did only meditate thy justice, & my lips thy glory; * whence is it, that mine interior doth open its mouth against the Heavens, * and like to the wells of the Abyss, vomits out no other thing, but a smoke of blasphemy and impiety, which doth dim the stars, and deprive me of light? THEOPISTE, do not you lie to the Holy Ghost, as did ANANIAS and SAPHIRA. Tell the truth. Are not these your vexations and anguishes? Are not these the groneings, or rather the roreings of your hart? But alas! why do you thus wrongfully change judgement into Absinth, * honey into Gaul; and mistake the heavenly dew and Manna for hail?   

A lenitive.  
CHAP. XI.  
BE comforted, and I say again, be comforted, * to speak with isaiah; for what you apprehend chastisements, are caresses. Be it that the tempest is great, must we therefore loose courage, & forsake the stern? Though even the whale, had swallowed you up with IONAS; though the knife were put to your throat *; though God should even kill you, ought you yet for all that to leave of to hope in him? * ay rejoice in my sufferances for CHRIST *, said the Apostle; and delight in mine infirmities, to the end that the virtue of my master may remain in me. * And what is this virtue but Patience? I but, will you say, I suffer not for JESUS CHRIST, as did his vessel of Election, but against JESUS-CHRIST, so that I am one of the devil's martyrs. Why, though the devil should martyr and torment you, as he did JOB, and saint PAUL, by the dinuine permission, who told you yet that the torments which proceed from the devil, are suffered for the devil, and not for JESUS CHRIST? who knows not, that it is the cause, not the sufferances which makes the martyrdom? Now the mark and seal of a good sufferance, is patience joined to Charity. He that suffers without this, though he should give his body to be burnt, should only advance his own damnation. Beware then, o THEOPISTE, least by your impatience, you spoil the work of God in you, which can never come to its full perfection, but by patience. * Why, do you think that patience is merely useful to sustain exterior crosses and vexations? and that its employment doth not also concern the interior? As though, forsooth, invisible enemies were not as much to be feared as visible ones; and we ourselves were not as dangerous to ourselves, as any other? If you know not this, you are but yet a freshman in the spiritual warfare: But if you be not ignorant of the truth of it, when do you think you can make better use of this Weapon, then in the present occurrence?   

God's assistance in temptation.  
CHAP. XII.  
BUT give me leave, o man, not of little Faith, * but of little courage, a little to raise up thy hart, without making it swell, like a balowne, with the wind of any presumption, and to tell you, that according to the proverb, you cry before you be hurt, and imitating the Prophet, you cry out that your belly acheth, acheth and that death is in the pottage, * Without any just cause. For I beseech you, what is it that doth affright, and so desperately terrify you? It is, say you, that I continually am haunted with a blasphemous spirit, wherewith mine eye is troubled, my soul, and my belly, * that is, my soul and my body; my whole man. Alas, do you not discover, that there is nothing there but the the shadow of death, not death itself? And with a very grain of confidence in God, are you not able to walk in the midst of the region of the shadow of death, without fearing any wisfortune? * Is it possible that you do not perceive God his assistance therein; or at least, that you hear not the voice of him who saith unto you, walking upon those angry waves, 'tis I, fear not? * For who can doubt, but that since the beginning of your Combat, your soul weighed down to the very depth of desolation, had descended into the lower parts of the earth, if God had not been your aid? * Do you not discern that you resemble children, who fearing masked-men, runne into their mother's lap: and to chickens which hide themselves under the Hens' wings, when they espy the kites approach? For I pray you, the remedies which you seek all up and drown, to appease your pain, what other thing is it then to say unto God, under the shadow of thy wings I will still hope, till iniquity shall be passed by. * And he, though you perceive it not, will hide you with his wings and Feathers, * or rather, with the protection of his countenance, will save you from the molestation of men *. This divine Saviour doth lock you up in the closet of his sacred wounds. He registers your name in his hands, * Nor shall all the world be able to raze it out. He doth place and lodge you in his open side, as a dove in the hole of a wall wall. But you perceive him not, you see him not, and which is worse, you believe him not. Yet so it is, my dear THEOPISTE, & when the assistance of Grace shall have opened your eyes, you will say with JACOB: our Lord was truly with me in my tribulation, & I knew it not. * That which I took for the gate of Hell, was the gate of Heaven.   

Profit drawn from Temptation.  
CHAP. XIII.  
I Will tell you, THEOPISTE, marry upon condition that vanity shall not enter into your hart (for that devil would be hardlier dispossessed, than he who doth now torment you) If God have given me any insight at all in your interior, now it is your acceptable time, now are your days of salvation. * And if any had cured you, you were to sue them, to make them restore your sickness unto you. It is the time of fight; and consequently the time of victory and Triumph. Are you ignorant, that none is to be crowned but such as have lawfully fought? * It is a time of booty, and of dividing the spoils of the enemy *. Nay further; It is the harvest time of Faith, which you think is bet down and spoiled in you. Who knoweth not, that those that sow in tears, do reap in joy a plenteous crope? If you will believe me, you shall not only find God's assistance in your tribulation, but as the text of the Psalmist saith in express terms, you shall draw it from the very tribulation *. And you shall turn your grief upon your adversary's head, and shall cast his iniquity in his teeth. * And as the wild boar doth whet & sharpen his tusks against the rock, so may you edge your virtue against the rock of temptation, and make it more vigorous. This you shall perform, if imitating JUDITH, you offer up in the temple all HOLOFERNES his movables; if with ACAN you throw into the fire execrable things: and bury the Idols with JACOB: for by this means those abominations of desolation being detested you may turn those impure and profane vessels to ornaments of the Tabernacle? and with the Wood of Hiram, and gold of Orphir brought out of an Idolatrous land, you may raise the building of the Temple of God. So true it is, that, to those who do love and fear God, all things do cooperate to good. * And that which is their food, is an others poison and death.   

Temptation glorious.  
CHAP. XIV.  
I Will yet go much further, and will speak (may it be to God's glory) more advantageously in your behalf, by advertising you that the temptation, which makes head against you, is not a Combat of Apprentices, the devil never being accustomed to use this kind of battery, but against the most perfect souls. It is his principal and last piece wherewith he doth ordinarily assault those that are near unto their death, as being his most rough and violent engine. What a grace is it THEOPISTE, that God permits you to meet with this most dangerous encounter, before your forces fall into decay, while you are yet vigorous * and in perfect health. And while the Amandtree doth not yet blossom, nor the pitcher is not yet broken upon the banks of the fountain, * That is, to use the wiseman's manner of speech, before your old age? How much more rough and perilous is that onset in the pangs of death, where it is so full of danger to sleep in the shadow of sin * and while the devil doth use the extremity of his fury, finding the time short * in which he is to win or lose us for ever. Now we have a fair and fit time, both to fight and bear away the victory, by the assistance of the Saints of Heaven and of Earth. Marry in this Deluge of many waters, * in this period of life, how much more are temptations to be dreaded?  
Further, what an honour is it for you to be used not like a fresh-water-soldier, but like a tried Champion, in a battle where none are admitted to fight, but old beaten soldiers, and who are most skilful in handling spiritual weapons. The blast of those winds do only toss the talest and strongest trees. These thunderbolts do only blast the tops of the highest mountains: and it is a sign that the devil, whose, force as S. HIEROME saith, is in his Reins, * which he fills with illusions, * saith DAVID, and who hits us in the flank as ELEAZAR did Anthiochus his Elephant, I would say, by sensuality, the weaker part of man; it is a sign, I say, that you Were too hard for him there, since that he makes head against the superior part of your soul, resembling in that a General, laying siege to a town, who despairing to make a breach, or take it by scaling the walls, by reason of the breadth of the ditch, and thicknsse of the walls and Bastions, plants his Ordonnance, against the tops of the steeples, wageing war against weather-cokes'. And do not I see plainly, that your Ghostly enemy, hath got but a poor advantage against your Faith by this temptation, while he doth rather assure it by your apprehensions, then shake it? All that he can do, is but to make demonstration of his despair & despite, in tormenting you so much the more temporally, by how much he perceives his feeble attempt to fall short of tormenting you eternally.   

The Ideas which are in the mind or before it.  
CHAP. XV.  
HOwbeit I hold younot so little experienced, in interior skirmishes, as that you know not sufficiently, (when any respite gives you leave to breath, and to make reflection on that which doth pass in you) that all the Ideas which appear unto you, and which indeed are so hideous and horrible, that I will not stain this paper with them, do but only beseige your hart, they have not got entry into it. I add further, not so much to comfort you, as to testify the Truth, that they are not inhabitants of your hart; nor can they any more come out of it, than they, can enter into it, and yet much less are they able to penetrate it. I had need of a clear and facile similitude, to make you plainly conceive what I say unto you. There is nothing more clear or more familiar than the glass of a Mirror. Thence will I draw it. Behold this glass then, it doth naturally represent the thing which is opposite unto it, yet is not the thing in the glass, but only before it: say the like of your hart. It is a glass, where the devil by his hellish guiles, can represent all that is hideous, infamous, or abominable in Hell; but the Will alone hath power to open the Gate, and to permit those execrable things entry. Let the devil therefore make as many mimic and antic faces as he list: Let him form, in presence of our hart, all the lascivious representations he can possibly: Let him buzz in the ear of our interior, all the blasphemies and detestable impieties that can be imagined. As our understanding is not infected by the knowledge it hath of the greatest evils in the world; & as our ear makes us not guilty of the impieties & blasphemies, more stinking than an open grave * which we hear proceed from the mouth of the wicked: so the most blasphemous thought, and horrible infidelity cannot attainte us, so long as they displease us; and that the Devil doth pronounce them without the gate of our hart, nay even within our hart, yet without our heart's consent. Yea chose, if we do valiantly repulse them; or if we suffer this interior humiliation before God with Patience, saying unto him; behold my humility & deliver me, * there is no master of spirituality that teacheth us not, that it serves for a whetstone, to sharpen and edge the virtue which is assaulted by temptation: & that God in those times, is so much nearer unto us, by how much we conceive him further of: and that we do never make so happy progress in virtue as in those circumstances, not unlike unto the storms which force the ship to sail extraordinarily fast towards the port for which it is bound, and drive it even into the Haven.   

Temptation is a trial.  
CHAP. XVI.  
THis will seem hard of belief unto you, being in the trouble which you are, which doth darken your judgement, and hinder you clearly to discover this truth: but if you consider how the Ore-men sit with their backs turned towards the place to which they row, you will not find it strange, that God by means of the fire and water of tribulation, doth conduct you to refreshing: * and that that which you take for an horrible imperfection, yea the very top of imperfections, doth mainly advance you to perfection. Through how many cleansings and fornaces are metals to pass, before they be fully purified, and brought to their true use? And before corn be eatable under what a number of flails, vanns, millstones, sives must it pass? What handling and working must it undergo to make it fit to be employed? Would you not say that one spoilt it? And if the effect were not familiarly known, who would not doubt of the cause thereof? When we read the daunting temptations of a S. PAUL, a S. ANTONY, a S. HIEROME, a S. BENEDICT, a S. FRANCIS, a S. CATHARINE OF SIENNA, of a B. ANGELUS OF FOLIGNY, and of many others, wholly Seraphical souls, who will not cry out with DAVID: o Lord thy friends are exceedingly honoured * (another version, hath, afflicted, because to be afflicted for justice sake, is an honourable & happy thing) their principality was assured by tribulations, that is to say, the dominion which their Reason hath over their appetite. * But if we do throughly examine the examples of those great Sainte's temptations, and how the divine grace which did assist them in their Combats brought them off, laden with victorious palms and Laurels, we shall learn that then they were in their probation, and if one might say so, between the hammer and the anvil; and that the great Potter holding them in his hand, made them of vessels of ignominy, vessels of honour, and delivered them from the disgrace which they feared. That of S. CATHARINE OF SIENNA especially, which our Blessed Father handled so delicately in the 4. Chapter of the 4. part of his Philothee, being well pondered, will serve you THEOPISTE, as I conceive, yea and unless I be deceived, will suffice you, to pour into your wound the precious balm of a solid consolation. I invite you therefore frequently to consider it, & though at the first it seem bitter, like to the Prophets' volume, yet if you once confidently believe it, you shall find it as sweet as the honie-combe. But if you desire to cast an eye upon, or rather profoundly to meditate Saint PAVLE'S temptation, imagining it to be the same which doth afflict you, doubtless you shall thereby exceedingly ease your pain. For if the fire did exercise so absolute an activity upon green wood, what will it do upon dry wood? And if Satan durst buffet so chaste and virginal a body, whose purity did mount even to the third Heaven, what dare not his temereity attempt upon your weaker mind? Again, those great examples of the Apostles, those children of the Thunder; and all the exemples which are contained in holy write, will have great force and power in your belief: for all that which is written, is written for our instruction, to th'end that by the Hope and consolation of holy Scriptures our Faith may be confirmed. Who, in your opinion, were further from Faith, than the Centurion, the Cananie, the Hemorroisse? and yet the Son of God, with his own mouth doth extol their faith even to the Heavens: tells the one of them, that his Faith hath saved him; * the other, that his Faith is great; * and protests that the faith of the first, doth surpass all those of Israel. And yet after all this you go vex and trouble yourself with illusions, with thoughts of blasphemy and infidelity which do mortally torment you, and even in that name, rather proceeding from the devil than from yourself, as I dare pronounce with as much assurance, as assured truth. That impudent Tempter durst tell the Son of God that he would bestow Kingdoms upon him, if falling down before him, he would adore him: he durst persuade him to throw himself headlong down, and demand of him, for a proof that he was the Son of God, that he would change one substance into another. If the like fantomes pass through your spirit, is it any thing strange, or to be wondered at? Do you think that he dreads the servant more than the Master? the members more than the head? you are too delicate and dainty a soldier, if you seek to be devoid of sufferances, under a Capitaine who is nailed to the Cross? & whose triumphant crown of glory is all composed of thorns?   

A sleight of self-love in temptation.  
CHAP. XVII.  
I But, reply you, as many Crosses, as many tribulations as you please, provided always that I offend not God, that I lose not his grace, that I stray not from the way of Glory. My daily prayer to God is, that he reclaim my feet from sinful ways, and that I may keep his law, * which without. Faith I cannot do, nor without it fight a good combat, and bear away the crown of justice. * O who will confirm my feet for ever in the paths of Paradise, * so that they may not decline to the right or left hand, sith God doth conduct the just man through strait ways, and thereby shows him his Kingdom.  
Shall I tell you, THE OPISTE, this is not your discourse, 'tis the very language of self-love; let him strive as much as he will to cover himself with the skines of pretextes, & counterfeit the hands of ESAV, I discover him by his Jacob's voice. Let this self-will disguise and veil itself as much as it will, yet though I be not a Prophet, I will easily descry this IEROBAM'S wife through her cloaks and dissimulations, albeit you yourself in whom she speaks, be deceived in her. Howbeit God opens my eyes to discover her, and to advertise you to be wary of her treachery. She is like unto those wand'ring nightly fires, or flashes, which in lieu of guiding such as walk in darkness, do lead them, (if they be so wise as to follow) into marish places, and dangerous cliffs. Stand upon your guard, watch and pray, * shut not your eye in the shadow of death, * least your enemy may prevail against you. * But who will bestow upon you some of that purifying water, to separate the true mettle from its dross and scum? Who will open your eyes to discern the causelesnesse of your complaint. Take for your ey-salue the clay of humility, and you shall see clearly: humble yourself before God, and acknowledge from your very hart that he knows better what is be hoofefull for you, than yourself; and protest unto him, that in life & death; in time of Peace, and time of war; in honour and disgrace, you will be constantly his; and that having once embraced him by the holy Faith of the Church, and according to the saying of the Prophet, espoused him in this virtue for ever, * you will forsake him for no creature * no, nor yet for the forces and powers of Hell. * But is it possible that you perceive not that it is the pain and sufferance which you fly, and whereof you complain; and that the importunity of those horrible thoughts, which do but skirmish about you, not vanquish you, do rather trouble you with the pain thereof, than any fault which you commit? And there it is that self-love doth throughly play his part, and doth subtly deceive you, making you apprehend that you fear to offend God, & to lose the sight of the star of salvation, holy Faith, whereas in very deed, it is the thorny sting of your anguish, which doth vex you, and deprives you of the sweet repose which you tasted before that trouble; the calm which you enjoyed before that tempest; & that delightful peace passing all understanding, which had formerly been your Saboth of delights. This being now discovered, take that self-love, that child of Babylon, & dash him against the rock * of God's most holy will: yet take not hold of the firebrand where it is most hot; look not upon your temptation as a thing suggested by the wicked Spirit; but as permitted by your sweet Saviour for your probation, and your greater glory. Receive it as a Cross that hath nothing that is amiable in it, but only the the hand that sent it. As a LIA, whom JACOB did merely receive upon considetation that she was LABAN'S daughter. Take this serpent by the tail, that is, by the end, and it will become a miraculous rod, as that of MOSES. O no, we must never to look upon our temporal or spiritual afflictions, whether they be interior or exterior out of the hand of God, otherwise they will be insupportable unto us: for as we are able to do all things with him; * so without him, we are neither able to do, or suffer any thing at all.   

Distrust of ones self and confidence in God.  
CHAP. XVIII.  
THis self-love being always accompanied with some secret presumption, is consequently always blind. And indeed what greater blindness can befall us, then to think, that of ourselves we are able to do any thing, in things that are above us, and which pass the bounds of nature? Be not wise, that is, presumptuous, in things that are above you, * saith SALOMON, but stand in fear: And the great Apostle; do not affect high senses, but accommodate yourself to the lowest. * ay have not walked in great and wonderful ways, that are above me: my thoughts have been abated, and my soul humbled * saith the royal Prophet. I beseech you, THEOPISTE, whence doth this fear of losing faith proceed, but from the opinion that you have, that it depends in some measure of you, albeit you are not ignorant, that it is an infused light, a pure gift of grace, descending from the Father of lights * a splendour which hath shun upon you, without your merit; otherwise, saith the Apostle, grace were not grace. * Whence then doth this fear possess your mind? As though, forsooth, God's hands were shortened and weakened. * And as though he were less merciful in conserving his gifts, then in bestowing them. If the wiseman assure us that none can be continent (this is understood of infused not acquired continency, which even Pagans have practised after an heroical manner,) but by a special grace from God, * can we be so vain as think, that Faith can be conserved without the same grace? Let us go therefore with confidence to the Throne of that Grace, that we may obtain by God's mercy * the conservation of our Faith, not trusting in ourselves, and in our own endeavours, as did PHARAOH in his troops of horses and Chariotes: * for commonly they are confounded who put their confidence in their own virtue, * in the strength of their horse, or legs, * nothing being so diligently recommended unto us in holy writ, as the distrust of ourselves, (who are but a mere vanity) and to place our whole confidence in God. Place thy thoughts upon God, saith DAVID, & thou shalt not be tossed in uncertainties. * He that hopes in God, is never confounded, though a whole army make head against him, yet shall he not lose his assurance and resolution. * He, saith the Apostle, who hath recourse, to this constant hope, hath a most sovereign solace, a most solid support. * If at any time, saith S. HIEROME to his devout EUSTOCIUM, the devil's assault you, and upon these assaults, your thoughts say unto you, what shall we do? ELIZEUS will make you answer. Fear not; we have more friends than foes: and praying for you, he will say; o Lord open this Maids eyes, and make her see: and then you shall discover a fiery chariot descending upon you, which taking you up, as another ELIAS, will make you sing with joy: My soul hath been delivered out of the fowler's snares, as a bird that escapes, and flies away from the springs which are set to catch her. In the like air, S. chrysostom comforting a soul laid at by temptations, saith unto her, give ear to JESUS CHRIST saying; you shall be afflicted in the world, yet lose not for all that your confidence. And with what reasons doth he encourage her? by the promise of his grace and assistance: have assurance, for I have over come the world. * Harken to him who promiseth us to lighten our burden, by putting himself into the yoke with us. He will not suffer us to be vanquished by the temptation, since he doth promise us that we shall draw profit from it, & that he will not permit it to pass our strength. If we on our part contribute what is ours, a little Patience, courage, acknowledgement of his assistance; when all shall be despaired of, according to humane reason, he will make us victorious. * For who can resist the will of God? And if he be for us, who will be able to vanquish us? let us therefore put our trust in him, sith he hath made us such promises, and we expect so ample recompense from him. Let us call to mind that a reed became as strong as a pillar in our Saviour's hand: and out of his hand, the pillars of the temple became a as reed of the desert, * which plainly appears in the example of S. PETER, who putting confidence in himself had so lamentable a fall, and rising up again after that fall, went so courageously to death, placing his whole trust in his Master's grace. Sotrue it is that those who confide in our Lord, are no more shaken by temptations, than the mountains of Zion! * Their feet are confirmed upon the rock. * They are elevated upon a hgh rock, * where they have built their Abode, an abode which doth resist the winds and weather * of temptation: For as a tempest doth manifest the Pilots skill, saith S. BASILE; wrestling, the wrestlers strength; fight, the Captains' valour; so doth temptation demonstrate what confidence the Christian doth repose in the divine goodness.   

Of Patience.  
CHAP. XIX.  
EXAMINE further, THEOPISTE whether your complaints may not proceed from want of patience, and rather be issues of your weakness then of the force of the temptation. For as passion doth often make us apprehend injury that is done unto us, far greater than indeed it is: so impatience makes us so weak, that a small burden doth over load us, and makes us cry out with those cowardly Discoverers of the Land of Promise, that that Country devours its inhabitants, and that there are none but Giants who live in it. chose, Patience accompaigned with courage, finds all things supportable; & being assisted with the grace and love of God, she suffers all, she endures all, * and though she be even overset with the heavy load of calamity, yet doth she never say, it is enough, knowing well that the light and passing moments of tribulation, do work an eternal weight of glory in us. In this sort a patient soul doth outbrave temptations, and remains unshaken amidst assaults, as a Rock that riseth with a sharp tope out of the midst of the Ocean, and is not moved with the angry billows, which are dashed in pieces at its foot. Make head against the devil saith S. JAMES, & he will fly from you. * He resembles those cowardly curs, which bark more than they bite: and as the great S. ANTONY said, (so Saint ATHANASIUS remarkes upon his life) sets only upon faint hearts, and flies the resolute: a true wolf, which dare only devour the innocent lamb, but dare not meddle with mastines. Hereupon S. GREGORY in this morals saith, that in the holy Scripture he is tearned MARMICALEON, that is to say Formica-leo, for as much as to weak hearts like pismires, he is cruel, arrogant, violent as though he were a Lion: but to brave and Lion-like spirits, he is as vile and contemptible as a Pismire. Which the same S. ANTHONY did frequently obbraide him withal in the desert, while he alone (if one may be said to be alone who hath God in his compagnie) domineered over so many legions of wicked Spirits; and by a heavenly generousness (like to that of SAMSON mowing down the Philistians) defied all Hell; S. EPHREM considering a soul of this temper, compares her to an Anvil, which though it be continually beaten, yet doth it not budge an inch out of the place where it is once set. It remains immovable. And in steed of being made hollow like to a stone under the drops of water, it becomes harder and more solid. He that complains under the assault of temption, (unlike to a Laurell-tree which being burnt cracks not) resembles an empty Cask; knock upon it, and it redounds vastly; which the full Piece doth not: If he were replemished with grace and virtue; his tune would be grateful; and he would imitate isaiah who saith, Our strength is to be placed in Hope and silence.   

That a moderate complaint is no sign of impatience.  
CHAP. XX.  
HOwbeit, I do in no wise affirm, THEOPISTE (that I may not augment your temptation by scruples, and so add affliction to affliction *) that you offend in groaning under the burden which doth press you down: for we have even seen the Mirror of Patience, the good JOB, testifying a dolorous sense of grief in many words. The grief were to too miserable, that were deprived of speech, and prohibited to complain. The very Son of God, Pattern of all virtues, gave testimony of sadness in his annoys: and uttered words that had appearance of complaints: as that his soul was sorrowful even unto death: and those which he took in so high a strain upon the Cross. As for the kingly Prophet, he so frequently, all through his Divine Psalms, groans under the load of his miseries, as do also all the rest of the Prophets, especially JEREMY, that none can deny their plaints, without affected blindness, nor yet blame them without rashness. As it happens therefore, to those who are full of interior consolations, that at unawares, and even against their will, some secret voice doth escape from them, whereby one may gather the excess of their delight, and abundance of their joy: * so how worthy is his complaint to be pardoned, who, as JOB said, being oppressed with thoughts which do torture his hart, * doth give thereby testimony, that an interior grief hath seized upon his hart? saint ANTONY that famous Champion, said well unto our Saviour; where wast thou, o my master, while I sustained so rough assaults? Dost thou so abandon those that serve thee? And our Saviour said unto him, I stood at thy right hand, a spectator of thy valour and loyalty, encouraging the one, crowning the other. saint PAUL will have us to weep over the dead in a mediocrity. * And I am confident, that moderate and modest complaints are pardonable in a violent affliction. Marry we must be careful to put a door of circumspection to our lips, * least we might commit excess offensive to the Divine Providence, as though it did only walk at pleasure upon the celestial vaults, without consideration of that concerns us: For if without it, the least bird doth not fly in the air, nor doth one heir fall from our head, * how much more will it shine in things appertaining to our eternal salvation? JOB is highly commended in the holy scripture, for that in all the rude essays of his Patience, one only word did not escape out of his mouth, which could be imputed to him for sin. O how faithful is that soul who can say with the Psalmist, I have not opened my mouth because it is thou, o Lord, who workest in me what thy holy pleasure is. Then shall my wound be healed, when it shall be thy blessed pleasure to say the word. Mean while I will kiss thy always merciful hand, yea even when it afflicts us; because thou dost never visit but for the conservation of our soul.   

The pain of temptation is a participation of our Saviour's passion.  
CHAP. XXI.  
THus we are to suffer, my dear THEOPISTE, not only with patience, but with love too, (love an unseparable companion of joy, and both of them daughters of a good will) the labours and pains of contradictions and Crosses, as well interior as exterior: calling to mind that he (who suffered for the sinners of contradiction in himself, lest we might chance to fail in courage.) Was to pass through many contradictions, even to the dying of his garments in the purple of his own precious blood to enter into his own glory? * This is properly the Cross which our Saviour commands us to take up and follow him, * and it is in those sufferances that the true imitation of the passion of our Redeemour consisteth, and that touching of his Cross, * which the Apostle commends unto us. And by how much these pains are greater, by so much more lively do they represent, and so much more conformity they have, with those of JESUS CHRIST. For which cause the great Apostle exhorts us, to have the same feeling in our anguishes, which the Son of God had. * And what feeling had he, but to bathe himself in the Baptism of his blood? * weighing nothing so much in all his sufferances, as well those of body as of soul, as the holy will of his father, to whom he was made obedient unto death, and the death of the Cross. * Such aught our disposition to be in all our afflictions, of what nature soever they be, esteeming them as a fountain of JACOB wherein we are to wash our uncleanness: * or rather as an excellent and noble estate, since that by means of them, provided that we be in grace, we suffer in quality of our crucified Saviour's members, not in fancy but in truth; not following our own choice, but as it shall please God almighty, whom we are constantly resolved inviolably to follow even to death, through the midst of these contradictions, though they were even to continue to the last gasp of our life. It was in this generous disposition, that the great Apostle with an invincible and heroical courage, gave assurance, that all the creatures should not be able to separate him from the Charity of God. And though at certain times, moved by the contradictions which he felt in his mortal body betwixt the laws of his members, and those of his spirit, * this motion made him desire to see his soul delivered out of the prison of his body, * yet was it not out of any desire he had to descend from this Cross, * as he himself assures us in many passages, where he shows his indifferency to live or to dye: but it was a sacred sally of his love, which as fire, did continually make towards its Centre (and his Centre was the bosom of God) there was all his desire, * and his delightful rest for ever and ever.   

How honourable this Trial is.  
CHAP. XXII.  
But what an honour is it to us, THEOPISTE, that God by temptations doth deign to put us to trial, thereby to make us worthy of himself! * Is it not a special grace done to a soldier, when his Capitaine, out of the good opinion which he hath of his judgement and valour, sends him out to discover the enemy? and though this honour be attended by danger, yet so far is he from complaining, that of the contrary, he reputes it a singular obligation, and an argument of his Captains' Favour. Shall we be less acknowledging of God's favours, since faith assures us, that he neither tempts, nor permits us to be tempted, but only to make manifest whether we love him or no? no as the sacred Oracle speaks in the book of Deuteronomie. God and the devil tempts diversely, saith saint AMBROSE, the one to destroy, the other to crown us; nor indeed is God's temptation any other thing but a trial of our fidelity, according to the Psalmist: prove me, o Lord, and tempt me, burn my reynes and my hart: * So was the Patriarch ABRAHAM tempted, so proved, and found obedient. * All this life is but the Novishappe of the next, and a continual essay of our constancy. The Lamb shall one day say to the Elect, receiving them into his eternal marriages; these are those who remained constant in my service through all their temptations. * This caused JOB to affirm that all our life was but a warfare upon earth, * or as S. HIEROME notes upon the Hebrew text, a temptation upon the earth. * Whence we are taught, faith that good Father, that if we pretend the crowns of Glory, we are to have no other employment here below but to fight. * O how wonderful great is God's mercy, saith the Doctor with the golden mouth, to treat us in temptations like to a Physician, who by a light pain, remedies a greater, curing a hot feever with a little hunger and thirst. Certes temptation is equally profitable to the virtuous and vicious, working increase of grace in those; and moving these to purge themselves of crime, and by the help of Penance to obtain pardon thereof. * And least that you may be troubled to read, that sometimes God doth tempt us, * sometimes he doth tempt no man, * as though the devil only did tempt, being thereupon called, HE THAT TEMPTETH, tempteth S. AUGUSTINE will teach us by a clear distinction, that there is a main difference, betwixt the temptation of deceiving, and that of proving, the one being from the devil alone, the other, from God; * who, as S. BASILE writing to Chilon, saith, by such sufferances proves the fidelity of his servants. servants Which if they do not only endure with patience, saith S. CHRISOSTOME, but further, become even thankful to him that permits them, than they ascend to a certain degree of force and courage, which makes them exceeding agreeable in the sight of God. * As long as we wander in the pilgrimage of this life, saith S. AUGUSTINE upon the Psalms, we can never be without temptation, since even our spiritual profit depends thereof, none knowing his own strength and ability, unless he be tempted: nor can any be crowned but for victory; nor be victorious but by fight; nor fight unless Temptation assail him. * It is impossible, saith S. HIEROME, upon S. MATTHEW, that a soul should not be tempted; whence in our Lord's Prayer we petition unto him, that he lead us not into temptation, * not that we refuse it, but we beg grace to be able to resist it. * ay would not otherwise propose this truth unto you, but in the testimonies of so many great personages who taught others justice, and for that cause doc shine like stars in the firmament of Eternity's, * to th'end that their undeniable authorities might captivate your judgement, and that this doctrine clothed in their sweet terms, might with more facility and felicity flow into your belief.   

It is one of the Marks of Election.  
CHAP. XXIII.  
THEOPISTE, hold for certain, that to be one of the Elect above, you must be tempted here below; for such as are not approved, are reproved: those that are not marked with the letter Tau, made in form of a Cross, have no part in the Kingdom of Heaven. Ah. what an happiness it is, to be burnt, cut, carved, mangled here below, according to S. AUGUSTINE'S wish, to enter into that heavenly repose. Take a good hart, if we be here afflicted for a while, it is to draw many good dispositions into us. I dare be bold to aver, that one my confidently range temptation amongst the Marks of Election. At the least, certain it is, that it is a sure sign of our fidelity, to stand constant, like the good Angels, in this storm, and keep our Principality, * that is, to conserve the Empire of our Reason. No No, saith S. HIEROME, writing to EUSTOCHIUM, the devil never troubles himself with tempting infideles, vagabonds, and such as are swallowed up by sin, he sets only at those that stand right, and are in grace with God; His cheer, according to ABACUC, is choice; He will none but the daintiest bits to please his palate. Lo how he sets upon JOB to destroy him: and having slain JUDAS, he begins to sift and essay the rest of the Apostles? * Our adversary, saith S. GREGORY in his morals, doth bandy so much the more violently against us, by how much we more resolutely resist him: those that he accounts his own, he works not upon; but the more a hart reiectes him, the more he essays to make himself master of his afflictions, * resembling in this the mastiff, which barks only at strangers, never at those of the same family. O God what a consolation it ought to be to the poor soul, amidst the assaults of the devil's malignant suggestions, who, by being a stranger to that infernal Cerberus, doth surely discern herself to be one of God's family! Esteem it the fullness of your joy, saith Saint JAMES, to fall into many temptations. * And doth not S. PAUL repute his temptations his glory, saying that he doth glory in the hope he hath therein to be the child of God. Yes, for as the Potter's clay is hardened by the fire: so a good man is perfected by temptation, * saith the wiseman, his hart being tried by our Lord like unto gold or silver in the Crusible. * O God, saith the Psalmist, thou hast tried us, as silver is tried in the fire! * And the Prophet ZACARIE saith, that temptation works the same effect in a just man, that fire, in gold or silver, * purifying the one from dross, and the other from tin * saith isaiah. It is a quick fire of coals, saith S. AUGUSTINE, where the gold severed from the dross shines: but the refuse is consumed. The just is made stronger thereby, but the sinner perisheth therein. * If you prune a Cipresse-tree it dies. Yet the Gospel teacheth us that the vine is to be pruned, that it may become more fruitful.   

Temptation doth humble us.  
CHAP. XXIV.  
ARE we not then, THEOPISTE, to be accounted in some sort enemies of our own good, if we fly temptations, or complain of them, since that, if we have as much resolution and courage for our part, as we shall have assistance from God, we may draw so fair advantages from them? Will you for your consolation, that I point out some of them in passing by? Peace, the mother of abundance, doth ordinarily make us swell with a secret pride, which while it doth insolently raise us above ourselves, we forget ourselves, and turn ungrateful: but in the trouble of wars, in the anguish which temptation causeth; we enter into ourselves; acknowledge our own weakness; and learn that every man is a pure vanity, * and that all his strength is a shadow and a fantome. S. AMBROSE and saint AUGUSTINE jump in the proof of this truth, in the example of saint PETER, who was taught by his fall, how low a rate he was to put upon his own forces, while temptation cured his disease, presumption. Happy temptation, which makes so excellent a virtue, Humility, spring up in a soul, to which salvation is promised in so many places of holy scripture! saint PAUL, vessel of Election, a vessel of massive gold adorned with precious stones, doth confess that thesting of temptation served him for a counterpoise, lest his mind might have been wafted away by some blast of complacence, caused by the multitude of his revelations.   

It crownes us.  
CHAP. XXV.  
HOW! can we ever hope that any crown shall overshade our head, unless it be composed by the hand of temptation? Which caused S. AMBROSE to say, that such as fear to be tempted, fear to be crowned, * for in the same instant in which they are fight their Prize with temptation, their garland is wrought, which is to gird and adorn their victorious head. Was not JOSEPHES' temptation the proof of his virtue? was not the injury of his imprisonement, the crown of his chastity? * He is sold by his brothers, a rough temptation; Marry it is to reign in Egypt: how great a recompense? When God permits us to be tempted, saith CASSIAN, it is a sign, that he intends to strengthen our virtue, and that he calls us out to victories and triumphs. * For if Captains of this world do liberally reward their soldiers in their return from battle, distributing amongst them the spoils of the vanquished enemy: * how much more plentiful shall their reward be, who have suffered in God's cause, & in his power have overcome temptations? Certes they shall have the same with the Angels who threw down the devils, since men are to repair the ruins of the Heavenly Jerusalem. But what is that? Verily no humane hart can conceive it, like as no eye hath seen, nor ear hath heard it. * We know only by the Apostle writing unto the Romans, that the pleasures which pass, can enter into no comparison with the glory which shall be revealed unto us in Heaven. * And to the Corinthians, that those moments of labour do work in us, above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory, * of a wondrous height.   

By it we are holily Chastised.  
CHAP. XXVI.  
HOw unjustly then should we think that we are forsaken of God, when temptations do oppress us, sith Charity doth then specially press us; & that the heavenly rays do beat upon our foreheads? For though we feel the smart of his rod, yet who knows not that he treats us lick a Father, who doth not chastise his child, but for the love he bears him, & the desire he hath to bring him to goodness? So far is it, saith S. CHRISOSTOME, from being a sign that we are forsaken by God, that it is even a peculiar mark of his love and care, for by that means he will rouse us up out of our drowsy, and languishing neglect, to make us more diligent in his service. * For on the other side, is it not he who cries out unto us, come unto me o you that are loaden and oppressed, and I will refresh you? * We are sensible indeed that one of his hands doth weigh a little heavy upon us: but we also see, if we please, the other stretched out to support and help us. Though the just man be even weighed down under his burden, yet shall he not be oppressed, saith the Psalmist, because our Lord doth hold him up with one of his hands. O how worthy to be loved and adored is this hand in the distribution of afflictions, which it sends us, since by them he opens our understanding and makes us know the true good? * How good it is for me, o Lord, saith the divine Psalmist, that thou hast humbled me? * and again, we have rejoiced in the days of our humiliation, and when we were taken by calamity. With great reason did this great King speak in this sort, because the rough times, when he was persecuted by SAUL, ABSALON, and SEMEI, were far more advantageous unto him, than his times of prosperity, wherein he was cast down into so gross faults, that he stood in need of the great mercy * of God to cleanse him. A violent sickness, saith the wiseman, brings the soul to sobriety, * and wisdom's arrival is accompagned with the rod, and correction. * This made JEREMY say; thou hast chastised me, o Lord, and I have been brought under the yoke like unto a young bull. * This is the gall, by which the Angel restored TOBY his sight; and by the dirt of this humiliation, the Son of God cured the borne-blind.   

God prone to assist the tempted.  
CHAP. XXVII.  
IF it please you, THEOPISTE, maturely and holily to ponder these considerations, I dare assure you, you shall appcase your fright's, & cease your plaints. Verily be a complaint as just as it will, yet it is always to be suspected of daintiness: for it is an undoubted truth, that God who is faithful in his promises, doth never permit us to be tempted beyond our strength, but makes us even from the temptation itself, raise new forces to oppose the temptation. Hence we gather by a necessary consequence, that such as do yield themselves up, made not such resistance as they were able: and when they endeavour out of their frailty to plead their sins excuse * one may stop their mouth * by saying, that iniquity hath lied to itself * as those wicked wretches did, whom the wiseman brings in, saying that the Sun of justice hath not enlightened them; * and that God having cultivated the vine of their interior, in every necessary sort, it is their own only naughtiness, which makes branbles spring from their hart in lieu of grapes. * And if before the tribunal of the divine justice they were so audacious as to cover their fault with the cloak of the infirmity of their flesh, * how many Saints would rise up in judgement against them, making them clearly fee by their example, that with a less measure of grace, they vanquished greater temptations, than those to which their cowardice rendered up themselves. No no, God doth never deny his helping hand to such as perform their duty. * He is good to those that are of a right hart. * He who watcheth over Israel, never sleeps. * If during the tempest he seem sometimes to slumber, he infallibly awakes in time of need: for he doth opportunely come in to our aid, in time of tribulation. * True it is, he doth now and then, let us come to extremities, to essay our valour & Patience. He expected till Israel was come betwixt the sea & the sword; but to make them way through them, he swallowed up PHARAOH with his chariots & army. He reduced JOB to terms that strike temerous and feeble souls with dread, yet he sent the storm according to the ship; the wind with proportion to the sails. Why, if it please him to kill us that he may raise us again, as he permitted LAZARUS to die, to bestow a new life upon him: if he will carry us down to Hell, and bring us back again, * who hath right to ask him why he doth so? * do we not know that he keeps the keys of death and Hell? that is able to draw back whom he pleaseth from death's door, * and from the Abisses below; to deliver our soul out of the claws of death; to wipe the tears from our eyes; and to warrant our foot from falling; * by his power to bear away our souls out of Hell * to effect that its depth devour us not * and that the mouth of the infernal Abisses be not wide open to swallow us up. * Who is able to declare the power of our Lord? Our aid then and sufficiency, yea more than sufficiency proceeds from him, but our destruction from ourselves, * because we loose courage like to the children of Ephraim, who shot marvelous well at Butts, yet fled from the face of the enemy, with whom they were to fight. * We loose Patience, and leave God, thinking, though falsely, that he hath left us: whereas the Psalmist assures us, that those who expect God, shall not be frustrated in their expectation. * And ABACUC, though he stay long, yet leave not to expect, for coming he will come; that is speedily, and he will not delay. * Nor is he indeed long ere he come to our succour, but our patience is too short, our hope too weak. O if we had those sacred promises deeply engraven in our hearts, to wit, that God saves those that hope in him: * that he is their Protector: * their Redeemour: * that he doth protect under the shelter of his wings such as put their confidence in him: * that those that do rely upon him, do never fall into confusion, should we ever then lean upon the stem of the Reed * of our own frailty? we should not, as JOB saith, go about to borrow assistance from our own misery, * knowing well that they who put their confidence in their horse men and chariots, * that is, in their own endeavours, are commonly confounded * but never those who do invoke the name of our Lord: for he takes pleasure in abating the pride of the most valiant; and in bestowing strength and victory on the most weak. * Behold my humility, o God, that is, mine infirmity, said DAVID, and deliver me! * Verily such as repose all their confidence in God, do take for their strength the wings of an Eagle, and take a flight from which they never fall. *   

Against unjust complaints.  
CHAP. XXVIII.  
I Must yet, THEOPISTE, have about with our natural daintiness. one self-love makes us so feeling in the sense of our grieves, that we conceive continually that we have no companions eequall to us in misery, and by an imaginary valour we fall down under the evil which doth presently press us. We imagine that any other would be more supportable unto us. It seems to me, that by the plaints which you make of your present evil, which is more importune than painful (and which by your speaking of it you augment, while you represent it unto your mind, as one of the most horrible monsters of Hell) you would make us believe, that all other corporal or spiritual scourges, are but shadows, and silken whipes, in comparison of this spirit of blasphemy and impiety which doth lay siege to your hart. And upon this ground, you persuade yourself that those that are tempted with despair, hatred, jealousy, ambition, envy, deshonesty: that such as are afflicted in their bodies with sickness, whose pains are sharp and pinching; or horrible ulcers: whether in their goods of Fortune by an extreme poverty; or in their honour, by calumny, shame, infamy: In a word, that JOB tempted in all these kinds, and seated upon the dunghill, as upon the Throne of Misery, had nothing that came near to those daunting representations of Atheism, and Infidelity which do affright you. You do instantly beseech God, that he would send you all other sorts of temptation and tribulation, so you may be delivered of this. Whereas I, my dear THEOPISTE, must needs tell you, that necessarily either you or I are wonderfully mistake in this business. For my part, I apprehend your temptation the lightest in the world, nor would I assure you that the instances which you make to God to have it changed, are devoyed of rashness. How do you know that you should not be defeated by some others, whereas I see you stand to this with your weapons in your hand? Put the case the others were less, which yet I do not easily believe, who gave you yet assurance, that he that resistes greater temptations, will be also found invincible in lesser? How many ships do we see perish even in the Haven: and sink in a little river, after they have performed a long voyage, & sustained the furious blasts of the angry tempest? Saint PETER doth brave & brag, and dare fight against whole troops of soldiers: and at the voice of a poor chambermaid he abjures his Master. SAMSON prostrates the Philistians and Lions, yet sleeps in the lap of a perfidious woman who cuts his hair, & thereby depriving him of strength, puts him into his enemy's power. But I discover sufficiently what is the matter; that which is present is pressing; and you, forsooth, must have pains and temptations of your own chooseing, and those also changeable at your pleasure. As though it were in the power of the besieged, to prescribe laws to the besiegers and to command them lay their battery first to such a side; and then to transport it to another, which is a merely ridiculous homour. You must not think to bear your diseases, temptations, and other afflictions, as soldiers carry their muskets, now on one shouldier & then on another for their greater ease: for such as they befall us without our election, such we must be content to bear them. One of the most famous amongst the Stoics said of old, that if all men were to put their calamities upon a heap, & that afterwards an equal distribution were to be made to all, there would not one be found, who would not demand his own affliction again. For though we conceive ourselves never foe much tortured with the evil we endure, yet there are others in the world who are incomparably more afflicted, Alas, THEOPISTE, where are your thoughts, when you do not only wish for an other Cross, but even dare to demand it of God, as though you were wiser than that eternal wisdom, to discern what is most convenient for you? O what a presumption, how blind an inconsideration, what an immortification is this what irresignation, what self-love! No, my THEOPISTE, no, not as thou wilt, but as God will: his will not yours be done. * Tell him in a quite contrary tune: yes, Eternal Father, be it so, sith so it hath been found pleasing in thy blessed sight. * And like as the Ethiopian Ruby never shines so bright as when it is steeped in vinegar; so what ever contradictions, reluctations, and violence you suffer in your will, while you make this Act of resignation, yet omit not to perform it, and to make that fair rose spring out of the midst of so many thorns.    

THE SECOND PART.  
HItherto, THEOPISTE, I have discoursed with you, rather as with a sound then a sick man, or as with one that plains without a cause. Howbeit I cannot but take compassion of your evil, and without flattery, rather dress your wound by anointing then lanceing it; rather by lenitives, then by the fire and flame, S. PAUL commanding us to weep with those that weep, and to be all to all, that we may gain all to JESUS CHRIST*. Wherefore, though I could make you clearly see, that you are rather sick by imagination or in imagination, then in very deed and in your will: yet lest I might attristate you, or exasperate and renew your grief, I will frame my judgement to your opinion, imitating the Prophet, who shortened himself upon the widow's child to restore him to life. To an imaginary sore I will apply true remedies. Take here then such as the Heavens suggest unto me for your consolation.  

That we are to despise certain temptations.  
CHAP. I.  
Lo here a pill which I assure myself will seem to you a little too rigorous, and bitter, but if you have but the hart and stomach to take it down, I dare promise myself, you will perceive a speedy and wonderful effect in it, and be notably comforted thereby. Marry you must take it down without chewing it; you must shut your eyes when you take this potion. Shall I tell you in a word what this so sovereign an Antidote is? it is contempt. ay, contempt, THEOPISTE, for since your spiritual Director hath so often told you (founding the bottom of your conscience, while you reveal your cause unto him, * and lay open unto him the windings of your hart) that in all those thoughts which seemed so horrible unto you, there was more pain than fault, if you desire to free yourself from the former, as by God's grace you are from the second, nothing can with more facility or expedition deliver you from it, than the contempt of those suggestions of the devil. For be the devil as srtong as he will (and JOB assures us that there is no earthly power in any sort to be compared to his) yet since our Saviour JESUS CHRIST bound him, he is able to overcome none but such as deliver up their weapons into his hands, as S. AUGUSTINE in one of his Sermons doth teach us, and like to a mastiff, he can only bite such as of their own free accord put themselves into his mouth, though indeed he have liberty to bark at all the world. Let him cry then, let him knock, beat, snarl, keep a coil at the gate of our hart: unless our consent open him the door, he can never enter. And hereupon they are convinced of imprudence who permit one to come in to them, whom they know for a thief, and one that comes to rob them. He that knows, saith S. LAURENCE JUSTINIAN, that the wine which is presented unto him is empoisoned, is he not devoid of all reason, if without all compulsion he drink it? But mark the sleight: The devil imitates the fisherman, who coveres the point of his hook with a bait, to th'end that the greedy fish may swallow it down, without perceaving the ambush which is laid to catch him. He resembles the Serpents, whereof the Prophet maketh mention, which under the fair dugs they show, hide a venomous, milk, which they freely communicate to any that will suck it. But be the venom of temptation as near unto us as it will, yet can it never hurt us, unless it be joined unto the free and deliberate consent of our will, according to that infallible Maxim, that no man doth hurt, or is hurt but by himself. The devil may beat the steel as long as he list, and by temptation, may beat sparkles of fire upon our hart, yet if he want the match of our consent, he shall never be able to set our inward house on fire. Though the temptation should continue all the days of our life, saith our B. F. in his Philophee, yet shall it never defile us with sin: yea, I add, that if we fight valiantly, it serves for matter to many crowns. But call you that fight valiantly, will you reply, to contemn the charge the enemy makes upon us? yes, THEOPISTE, it is in my opinion one of the greatest feats of valour. For contempt of the enemy is a sign of assurance, and the first step to victory, is to be confident of it. Those that are doubtful and disamayed, in, or before the Combat, come hardly ever happily off. Notwithstanding the advantage which Goliath had in greatness, yet the little DAVID being confident in God, doth despise his bravadoes, and hopes as well to see an end of him, as of the Lions & Bears which formarly he had slain. And again, I will discover unto you a stratagem 'tis this. The devil, though feeble, and damned to the deep pit of Hell, yet comes not an inch short of his ancient pride, but esteems himself as strong & powerful as he was, when he made the revoult against his Creator, and strove to become like to the Highest, so that he can in no wise endure to be despised, but flies from those that fight with that weapon, as from such as assault him upon that side where he is the weakest, and where (as did ELEAZAR, who struck the Elephant of Antiochus in the flank) one may easily reach him a deep and deadly blow. And that the thing goes as I deliver it you, frame a judgement by our Saviour's temptation in the desert: As long as our Saviour daigned to make him answer, measuring, as it were, his own greatness with his adversary's force, he doubles his blows, and waxeth hotter in the fight: but as soon as these words of contempt, begun Satan, proceeded out of the Redeemours mouth as thunder and lightning; he slid away with confusion and shame, and shortly forsook the field. Further, what reason have you, THEOPISTE, to treat those importune thoughts which molest and toil you, otherwise, then in terms of contempt. Eagles you know, according to the old Proverb, disdain to fly at Flies. And he that would employ his best endeavours, & put himself into a sweat, to drive away, and keep those little troublesome creatures off his face, would more move his spectators to laughter then to pity. Such, doubtless, is the unprofitable, I will not say, the ridiculous employment of many, who by continual clamours and complaints, and if I might so say, by force of arms, think to drive away their evil thoughts, uttering now and then such strange speeches, and making such mouths and faces, that such as see and know their disease, do rather mock than pity them. In this point they are not altogether unlike to that old Emperor, who shut himself up in his Chamber, and exercised himself in catching flies, while it was conceived that he was employed in more serious affairs. Let, therefore, THEOPISTE, those curs bawl at you, without ever taking notice of their barking, and you shall see, they will hold their peace. If you irritate them, they will bark and bawl louder. Give those crows leave to croak, without driveing at them with clods & stows, as an ancient Poet speaks. Imitate him, who in the Summer time walks in a dusty way, where the wind makes the dust rise from under his feet. He shuts his eyes: holds on his way, without troubling himself with the allaying of all this dust: otherwise, it were to follow & fight with his own shadow, and feigned fantomes: to strive to measure the air, and weigh the fire. * An endeavour as fruitless as foolish. Follow ALEXANDER'S way, who with one twarte blow cut the Gordian knot which he could not lose: so by a powerful disdain you shall more easily deliver yourself out of the snares and nets which the enemy hath set to catch you, than ever you can disengage yourself by a violent winding and turning. S. JOHN CLIMACUS brings in to this purpose, the story of an old Monk, who for many years together having been tempted with blasphemy, and endured incredible pangs in this trial, he discovered himself to a neighbouring Hermit to have some counsel and consolation from him: He had no other, then that which I prescribe unto you, that is, absolutely to contemn all his illusions. In the interim, the Hermit who was a beaten and experienced soldier in that kind of war, took upon him all the sins which the tempted person apprehended he had commit; whereupon he received such consolation, that upon the first act of contempt which he made according to counsel, the devil forsook him quite, nor was he afterwards disquieted with the like thoughts.   

That temptation augments virtue.  
CHAP. II.  
But if the terror which doth possess you (and which I would term vain, if I did not know that even servile fear is a grace of God) doth not permit you to contemn an enemy which you dread, & whose assaults are so terrible unto you, make this consideration a rampire to your breaches, and like unto the fabulous Giant, let your overthrow redouble your forces, representing unto your mind that that which fights against virtue, defeats it not, yea, that opposition contributes force and growth unto it. Why, would you ever fall into that opinion as to think, that the virtue of Chastity should consist in being wholly unsensible, like unto a stone or a block. I cannot persuade myself that your judgement can give credit to a thought so absurd. In what then doth this fair virtue consist? do not you see that it consists in a perfect resistance of all that is contrary to purity: whereupon it is compared to the white and dainty Lily, which grows amidst the black and rough thorns? Do you not see, that gardiner's fetch pinks, sweet Marierome, and other odoriferous flowers, out of stinking dung hills. Roses do smell far more fragrantly being set near unto the strong savered garlic. We must make the like conceit of Faith, nothing doth drive it foe far in, nor imprint it more deeply in our hart, than the temptations of blasphemy and infidelity: For as fire is never so hot, as when it is exceeding cold, so is our Faith never so closely united unto God, as when it is violently opposed. We resemble sheep who run all close together on a heap, and make towards their shepherd, as soon as they perceive the wolf draw near: for as soon as we apprehend that the enemy goes about to bereave us of the precious treasure of our Faith, which is the ground of our eternal salvation, we cast ourselves into the lap, or bosom of the Prince of Good Pastors, and the Bishope of our souls. * This moved S. LEO to say, that without temptation virtue cannot be reduced into Act. For there is no Faith without trouble, and agitation; No Charity without the sting of sensuality; no fight without an adversary; no victory without fight; nor crown without victory. This is a thing of great consolation, if you can well understand and Practise it, THEOPISTE: For thence you may learn to make progress in virtue, by means of that very thing which seems opposite unto it, since it is true, according to the doctrine of S. BONAVENTURE, that by the resistance which we make against temptation, we make a great step in the virtue wherein it strives to hinder us. This is manifest in S. BENNET, S. FRANCIS, S. THOMAS OF AQVINE, whom God voutsafed to favour with the gift of a perfect Continency & purity, for that they had by heroical Acts subdued motions contrary to honesty. The like happens, saith the same Doctor, to those that are tempted in matter of Faith: for if they behave themselves like the brave Soldiers of JESUS CHRIST, * the end of their Combat is always accompaigned with extraordinary lights and notions, which are, as certain rewards of their fidelity. So doth light rise and increase to the just, * and in the midst of the darkness, a splendour doth shine to those that are of a right hart. * In this sort Patience did dilate itself in IOB'S hart, (whereof he is a perfect pattern): and in sequall thereof, the goods, which by the Divine permission, were take from him by a violent hand, were restored him to the double. judge yourself then, THEOPISTE, whether I had not great reason to tell you above, that you did reject your own good, when you begged to be delivered of temptation. Your sick hart doth loath this delightful manna: and your craysie judgement, makes little esteem of the wishful Land of Promise, which God makes flow with the honey and milk of his benedictions.   

Prayer, a good remedy against Temptations.  
CHAP. III.  
BUT I see plainly, that in vain I persuade you to remain upon this happy Cross: and that you are resolved to stay at the otherside of jourdaine, together with those two inconsiderate Tribes: well then, I must provide a lodging for you there, squared out by the line of distribution. * Do you apprehend your back too weak to support so heavy a burden? have recourse to prayer, according to the Counsel of S. JAMES, Is any sorrowful amongst you? Let him pray. * And according to that of S. PAUL, that to resist the devil's assaults, we are to put on the armour of God, which he calls frequent, and in a manner, continual Prayer. * Yea, even following our Saviour's own Counsel; who wills his Apostles to pray lest they may enter into temptation. And in the form of Prayer which he taught us, doth he not order us to pray, that we be not led into temptation? * Cassian doth advertise us, that this verse of the Psalmist, which the Church orders to be said before every hour of the divine Office, Intent into my aid o God, Lord make haste to help me, * hath a peculiar force to drive away temptations and distractions in our Prayers. As also that other, let our Lord rise up, and his enemies shall be dispersed. * The many prayers also, which DAVID made to be succoured in his temptations: Lord forsake me not for ever. * Let thy mercy comfort me. * My dejected eyes say unto thee, when wilt thou comfort me? restore me the joy of thy salvation, and with thy principal spirit confirm me. * Thou who hast promised to deliver them from pain, who shall call upon thee in time of tribulation. * Mine eyes are always turned towards our Lord, that he may pull my feet out of the gyves and snares. * ay suffer violence, o Lord, make answer for me. * Rise o great God, rise up, why dost thou sleep? do not reject me for ever. * Why dost thou turn thy face from my poverty and affliction? * Take thy sword and buckler, and come in to my succour. * Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation. * How long, alas, wilt thou forget me, & turn from me thy heavenly countenance? * How long shall my enemies have advantage over me? * Cast thine eyes upon, and give ear unto me o Lord. * Enlighten mine eyes, lest I may sleep in the shadow of death. * ay have listed up mine eyes towards the mountains, whence I am to have succour, which I expect of that Lord who made Heaven and earth. * To thee it is, o great Lord, that I lift up my eyes, who dost inhabit the Heavens. * Alas, do not chastise me in thy fury, correct me not in thine angar. * And a number of others the like elevations of of mind, which the Psalmist breathes out in so many passages of his heavenly Canticles. Whereby we are taught, that Prayer is the tower of DAVID, an Armoury wherein are all sorts of armour against the assaults of temptation, so that we always conclude over prayers in those words of perfect resignation: Let thy will, o Lord, be done, not mine. * Be it done in earth, as it is in Heaven. * Be it done according to thy blessed pleasure, not according to my guste or liking. For if we desire that God should do our will, is it not most reasonable, that we should submit ourselves unto his? And that we should repute him our sovereign law, * put down in the beginning of our book, * and engraven in the midst of our hart. We do often ask and receive not, because we ask amiss. * And God who is good, doth sometimes out of Love deny us that, which, if he were offended with us, he would grant us. S. PAUL petitioned to be freed from that shameful temptation which did afflict him; but was answered, that grace did suffice him, because his virtue was perfected in infirmity. * So that he was heard in one sense, and not in another. Let us therefore ask what we ought, and as we ought, and God's promise will never fail us. For his Truth remains forever, and his word passeth not.   

The word of God another Antidote.  
CHAP. IU.  
BEsides Prayer, there is yet another weapon, very powerful against temptations, especially that with which you are afflicted. THEOPISTE, it is the sword of the Holy Ghost, the word of God, * whether it be heard (for faith is by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ) * read, or spoken: for its redounding is the voice of thunder which doth daunt the accursed spirits. The trial of this remedy was made by our Saviour's temptation in the desert, who repelled the Tempter's darts with the words of life, life everlasting. * The Author of it, is S. HIEROME writing to his EUSTOCHIUM, delivering her very particular and ample documents touching it; S. GREGORY in his Morals; S. BASILE in his short Rules; and CASSIAN in his twenty two Conference: all who, with one consent, do advice us to store ourselves with sacred darts, opposite to the vices which temptation doth suggest, as with so many sharp arrows quivered up in our memory, where of we may make use in time of need to beat down all the enemies plots by a constant and courageous conter-batterie. Howbeit I must ingeniously confess, this remedy is not so common, nor is it useful for every one, but such as are conversant in holy write, or books of spirituality. And indeed, THEOPISTE, I speak to you as to one that knows the law, * as S. PAUL saith, that you may make use of this weapon, in this your extremity, according to the skill you have thereat. All the Holy Fathers hold it sovereign. Hence DAVID said, that the arrows of God, that is, of his word, were sharp headed, powerful above his works, & fit to beat down the enemies of the King of Glory. *   

That melancholy is to be avoided.  
CHAP. V.  
BUT I perceive the tempest of your mind requires, that I should sound & search your wound yet deeper, and press and pry with more diligence into your sore. O God, THEOPISTE, take-heade lest that bitterness of mind which doth possess you, proceeding, from the smart of your evil endured with melancholy and impatience, may be worse than the temptation itself. It is a remedy which nature without the help of Grace can apply unto itself: while yet in lieu of disengaging itself it inveigles itself; in lieu of curing, it impoysones its wound; in lieu of lightning it makes its own burden more unwieldy. In vain, THEOPISTE, in vain do you strive to build your interior house upon a solid and sure foundation, unless God put his hand to the work; If God keep not the City of your soul, in vain do you stand sentinel, in vain you walk the round of the walls. * Unless that strong armed keep the Fort, you are never to hope for Peace. * If he awake not, if he speak not, the storm will not cease, * the calm will not come. * If you think to find out the means in yourself whereby to conserve your Faith against the powers of darkness, * you seek for birds in the sea, fishes on the dry land; you look to find out fountains of living water in broken cisterns; and in Nature, fruits not to be found in her garden; effects that are beyond her reach. Yes, for Faith being infused into our hart, by a divine and supernatural way, she will not be stayed there By humane means, nor by our endeavours & strife alone. If you think by your own endeavours to quite yourself of the assaults which are made against you, you shall never be freed from them: because this buckler, is not of a temper strong enough, nor is this armour proof. The more that you drink of the water of your Cistern, * the more you demand, the more you are inflamed, the more your thirst is augmented: and your melancholy will increase by the very means you use to remove and put it away. It is as oil cast into the fire, which in steed of extinguishing, doth kindle it. Have recourse therefore to God in this behalf; in him you shall find Peace, and repose: for he assures us that his yoke is sweet and his burden light. * But that I may no further dilate myself upon this remedy, I refer you, not to the bare reading, but to the diligent and faithful practice of the eleventh and twelfth Chapter of the fourth part of our B. F. his Philothee, where he speaks of unquietness & saddesse; There you shall find sovereign recepts for your disease; and in the storm wherein you are tossed, the Seagalls calm; In fine, that Peace of God which passeth all understanding, and all humane conceit.   

That we are in no wise to omit the ordinary exercises of our vocation.  
CHAP. VI  
ABOVE all things, THEOPISTE, be ware that this affliction of mind which doth cross you, do not delay you, as an importune Remora, in the course of your navigation, that is, in the exercises of your vocation. For as the Crampe-fish, having taken down the fisher's bait, sends out by the line, such a munnesse into his arm, that he is forced to let all go: so the Angel of darkness, who strives still, as the Proverb goes, to fish in troubled waters, perceaving himself not able to staggar a soul by temptation, takes pleasure at least, to put him out of the rack or path of his duty, casting wood on his bread, * as well as snares in his way, * that he may forget to eat that, or at least stumble at this. He thinks he gains not a little, when he delays us, if not to do what is good, at least to do it well. It is a great step to victory, to have disrancked the enemy's troops. He will at least accoaste and encumber us, if he cannot retire and make us return backwards. For the guileful villain knows full well, that not to advance in the way of God, is to recoil; and that upon IACOB'S ladder, all ascend or descend, none stay linger upon it. He strives to stoup the mouth of our Canon, if he cannot carry it away. He is content to make our defence unprofitable. He will presently after make a new charge upon us; and will have an easy victory over us, if he find us disarmed and disordered. Wherefore I do very earnestly exhort you, THEOPISTE, that, (be your pensiveness, apprehension, dolour & distress, which this temptation brings upon you, never so great) you grow not slack and careless in any of your spiritual exercises, or any exterior employment appertaining to your state and condition. In this you will not only give a laudable testimony of your courage and skill, but even of your love and loyalty towards God, showing that the waters of annoys cannot extinguish, nor the torrents of water bear away that heavenly flame, * It is an easy task for the least of mortals to steer the ship in fair and calm weather: but in rough storms, the master Pilot, hath his hands full to guide the stern. This lawful employment will work two good effects in you at once; for it will frustrate your adversary in his plot, which was to withdraw you from your ordinary course & proceedings, in the functions and actions of the vocation to which God hath called you: and it will withal serve to divert your mind, that the grief which doth afflict, may not seem so sensible unto you. I will add a third advantage: It is, that as flies do not sit upon running waters, nor can find good footing upon a smooth glass: so doth temptation get but small footing in a soul that is well employed, and who flies idleness. This is the most general Counsel, that those great Masters of spirituality of the old time, delivered unto their disciples, to avoid the surprises of their mortal enemy, to wit, so to dispose of themselues, that they might always be found in some laudable exercise. CASSIAN, S. AUGUSTINE speaking to his brethren in the desert, S. HIEROME in his epistles, S. BERNARD in sundry places, do urge nothing so much, as the flight of idleness and carelessness, which the wiseman names the Mistress, and worker of all evil. If you will believe me, THEOPISTE, in lieu of losing courage, you shall renew your fervour, calling to mind your first Charity. * You shall imitate those sick men, who eat rather by reason than appetite, to conserve their strength, and more vigorously sustain the disease that hangs upon them. In the end, saith DAVID, the patience of the poor doth not perish. Be ware that the heat of this temptation put you not out of your way; run without intermission for the prize which is proposed unto you, but run so that you may bear it away. * Follow not that unfortunate Hermes-fire of your suggestion, which will seduce and mislead you: Imitate the faithful dog which continually follows his master, giving no ear to their holas and cries who meet him on the way. In a word keep yourself still in action, and the enemy will not know how to catch you. The serpents of temptations, and the pensiveness which doth accompaignie them, resemble serpents and toads, which desire rather to live in standing and stinking pools, then in clear and running rivers. chose, as in time of war, one is far more vigilant and stands more upon his guard, then in the repose of a constant Peace, when each one walks in confidence. So in the Combat in which you now fight, double your exercises of piety, give yourself more frequently to Prayer, to works of mercy, to reading spiritual books, to mortifications; go more often to the Sacraments of Penance, and the holy Euchariste. And although you be forced to practise all these things without guste, without feeling, and as you conceive, without fervour; yea even with aversion, repugnance, contradiction, loathsomeness, and a certain violence of mind, yet omit not to continue them: for as the most renowned valour doth appear in the greatest dangers; so the most generous fidelity, doth show itself in those difficulties, no otherwise then the strongest wine doth grow in the most rocky ground, and such as are most exposed to the heat of the Sun at moonetyde. But how is it possible, will you say, that I should produce so ferme acts of Faith, while I hardly think I have any faith at all? No, THEOPISTE, no, you are not deprived of Faith. A man in a swoone is not dead. His hart beats still, though his poulse be very weak and slow. Under a great heap of hot ashes, there is yet some hot coal, and so much the more hot, as it is more closely covered. Fire that is shut up in an Oven is far more active, then that which flies in the open air. The water of the fountain doth spring up so much the higher, by how much it is restrained in a straiter conduit. And is it not written, that out of the belly of him that shall believe, living waters shall flow, * and waters that shall run to life everlasting. * And if you desire to be further instructed in the practice which I propose unto you, I refer you to our B. F. in his 14. and 15. Chap. of the 4. Part of his Philothee.   

Aspirations in the presence of God.  
CHAP. VII.  
BUT if you be not yet wholly possessed with dryness, repugnances, and distemper of mind, here it is that you must recollect & call together all your interior forces, as the king in the Gospel, who raised all the forces he could possibly, to go out to meet him, who was about to set upon his Contrie. * And you are to make all the acts of lively Faith that you are able, either by word of mouth, or at least in hart: For these will be as so many contermines, which will frustrate and spoil all the enemies works: And will fortify your hart against the assaults which blasphemous thoughts shall make against your faith. O what an honour it is for you, to have God a Spectator in this your Combat, who looks down upon you from the highest heaven, as he did of old upon S. STEPHEN in the shower of stones. Is it not in this occurrence, that you are to encourage yourself with the kingly Prophet: I consider God present, & at my right hand, what is it that can shake me? * Our Lord is with me as a valiant Champion, and thereby all those that do persecute me, & do rise up against me shall be abated and confounded. * O God, said DAVID, place me near unto thee, and then let them fight who list against me. * If thou be with me, saith the divine Apostle, who can be against me? * Now as stars do not only look down upon the earth, but also do dart down upon it divers influences; so the eyes of God are not merely cast upon us, as JOB saith, as one man beholds another; but, as the scripture doth teach us, they do infuse a certain force into us * which makes us become valorous against our enemies: So we read of SAMSON, who overthrew the Philistians while the spirit of God did assist him. This supply of courage doth also appear in humane valour: For what do soldiers perform, when they have the honour to fight in presence of their Prince, do they not lend bellows about them, even beyond their force? Yet are they ordinarily moved thereto by humane respects, and vanity too often is their motive. * What then ought not a truly faithful and generous soul do for an Eternity? Is she not in this behalf to imitate the Angels of light, who threw down to Hell those of darkness in that great battle which was fought in Heaven, by that word which testified their inviolable allegiance: WHO IS AS GOD, who is as God? In like manner when those legions of wicked thoughts of infidelity, abomination, and blasphemy shall discover themselues to your thoughts, and as importune Drones shall buzz about your hart, you are but to make this protestation: WHO IS AS GOD? Who is like unto our Lord God who doth inhabit the heavens above, and doth lend a favourable eye to things below? * Thence proceeded those sacred ejaculations, which we see in many passages of holy Scripture, holy Saints made in like occurrences. JOSEPH being tempted protests that he will not offend his Master. SUSANNA also resistes temptation, out of the apprehension she had of God's presence. S. PAUL: I live in the Faith of the Son of God who hath loved me, and who gave himself for me. * S. BLANDINE being drawn to martyrdom, used no other words then that she was a Christian, and died in that holy protestation. S. PETER MARTYR being wounded to death, and left upon the place by the Murderers, had yet leisure to write these words upon a stome with his fingar dipped in his own blood, I BELIEVE. * And Saint TERESA drawing near unto death, said sometimes; at the least Lord, I die a child of thy Church: making thereby a brief profession of her Faith, whereof she made use, as of a fiery sword, to drive away all illusions contrary to her belief, and entire loyalty. Thus it is, that those that are faithful in Love, * do exercise themselues against the assaults of the midday devil. * For the rest, I will assure you, that those who by interior or exterior acts of Faith, do make head against the temptations of the spirit of infidelity, do soudainely dash all his designs, and do what he can, they frustrate his attempts: For like as a Maid can never be married while she saith, No because it is the consent that ties the knot of marriage; so temptation can never cast a soul into sin, and by sin, marry her to death and Hell, * till freewill yield itself up to so loose a disloyalty, as to forsake the Creator for the Creature, and the living fountain, for a dry Cistern.   

The difference betwixt Meditation and Contemplation.  
CHAP. VIII.  
NOw these acts of Faith, whereof I have spoken, THEOPISTE, are produced in this life, which the Misticalls term Active, by means of vocal Prayer, if they be exterior; or by Meditation if they be interior. But if you desire to make them equal in vigour and force to their excellency; as darts, by how much they are sharper, by so much they are the more penetrating, I will yet furnish you with other means, which are, in my judgement, two of the most forceable remedies that are to be found, not only to disperse & repel those troublesome temptations, but even to draw so great a riches out of them, that you will be constrained to crie-out with that Ancient, we had been lost, if we had not been lost. Both of them shall be taken out of the box of Contemplation, the use of which, doth Wonderfully refine Faith, as it doth also inflame Charity, but in two different degrees. For the first shall be drawn out of simple, the other out of eminent Contemplation. And this being said, I have no more to say unto you, but only to leave you in the hands of God almighty, and with MOSES, to the kiss of our Lord. * You are already, sufficiently instructed in spiritual affairs, to discern the difference betwixt Meditation and Contemplation: yet to renew in you the memory thereof, you may please to look what our B. F. saith of it, according to his ordinary, that is excellently, in the 6. book of his Theotime. I will say only that which is absolutely necessary, for the clearing and illustrating of that which I am about to tell you. Meditation, which is no other thing, than the groaning or murmuring of the Dove, * a mystical ruminating, * or recogitating, * whereof frequent mention is made in holy Scripture, is made by an attentive consideration, or interior discourse, which tends to move and excitate the soul to holy affections and resolutions. To this purpose, it doth bend, apply and employ all the faculties of the soul, replenishing the Memory with the presence of God, and with the points which she is about to examine: The understanding, with discourse, reasons, and intelligible species: The will, with aspirations, resolutions, affections: The Imagination, with figures and Ideas, following that which the Philosopher doth teach us: that he that doth meditate is to frame unto himself Ideas or Images: So that Meditation doth sound & examine, the truth of things, or hidden mysteries by piecemeal, making, as it were, an anatomy of them, imitating therein the Fisher and fowler, the one whereof, doth beat the fields and bushes; th'other, the rivers, to find out their game: or else to one that is eating, who turns and chews the meat in his mouth, before he be fed with it. It's game and food, are the diverse Acts, which the powers and faculties of the soul do produce which is never done without labour and pain, though indeed that pain is solaced by Charity. For he that loves, labours not; or if he labour, he loves that beloved labour, by reason of the Object which is the dear cause thereof. All Jacob's labours seemed light to him, by reason of the love and affection he bore to the beautiful RACHEL. It fares not so with Contemplation; for it resembles drinking, a flowing action, sweet and easy: It is made in unity, not in multiplicity; It leaves the activity of MARTHA to meditation, and takes to itself MARY'S best part, which shall never be taken from her. * It is a simple, singular, and lovely look, cast upon any Truth or Mystery; yet a look, which in its one only simple, and naked Act, doth comprehend in eminency, virtue, and substance, all that great variety of Acts, which Meditation doth produce: This, doth exercise the Powers distinctly and separately: that doth unite and gather them together into one point, reduceth them to that unity, which is held so famous amongst the Mystical Divines: to that one necessary thing, * praised by our Saviour's own mouth: to that one eye, * to that only hair, which doth wound the Spouse his hart. An act so excellent, that it may be termed the quintessence of all spiritual extractions. An act, which, like as the herb Dodecatheon, contains in itself the virtue of all the other simples, so it comprehends all the force and vigour of all the other Acts, which the soul is able to produce in the life called Active. It is a known thing, that Empirikes by means of fire, are accustomed to draw all the essence of the medicines which they compose into a little water or powder, so that by little things in appearance, they work wonderful effects. The same may be said of the Act of Contemplation in spiritual life, one only, hath more force, than a great many squised out, with a great deal of beating of the brain, and breaking of the head, by meditation, wherein many are deceived, as well spiritual Directours as the directed, those, many times, loading, overloading and oppressing these, with such a multiplicity of Acts, Methodes, Aduises, and exercises, that the too great variety of remedies doth very often augment the disease which they strive to cure.   

The facility of Contemplation.  
CHAP. IX.  
BUT every one, will you say, is not capable of CONTEMPLATION; the very word doth affright you, THEOPISTE, because it is not so common as MEDITATION; yet I can assure you, the thing itself is far more facile more familiar, and more usual than you imagine. Yes, THEOPISTE, for do you not esteem it an easier thing, to behold simply, that is, with a simple and interior look, some Truth, or mystery, then to think of it; and again, to think of it simply, more facile then to frame a multiplicity of discourses upon it; so many acts of the understanding, Will, Memory, Preludes, Points, Affections, Resolution, Thanks givings, oblations, demands, Preparations, Invocations, Compositions of Place, Representations, with all that great and cumbersome train, whereof the instructions for Meditation are full: for before you can beat all this into a gross or shallow brain, you shall spend many a fair year, and often times, after a great deal of pains taken, you prevail nothing but weary his brain, and breed in him a disgust of devotion, that I may say no worse. I say not this, as conceiving these precepts not to be good, and all these Acts profitable, proper, necessary, especially to beginers in spiritual life; for who knows not, that meditation is the forerunner, and as it were, the Aurora of the light day of Contemplation; and in some sort a necessary means, considering the course of nature? O God, be it far from my hart to blame those Acts, not only of the three powers of the soul (especially sith even, according to all Divinity, eternal beatitude doth consist in those of the understanding & will, which are to know, and to love) but also those of the passions subject to reason's lore, and interior sense, as the Imagination and the rest. I know further, thanks be to God, that such as would omit, or leave them off, contrary to the Rules which are prescribed by Spiritual men upon this subject, would fall into a certain Idleness as blameworthy, as that silence, that holy Rest is laudable which the Spiritualistes have in such esteem. But I affirm that excess in every thing is to be cut of; and like as too much salt or suggar spoil the meats wherein they are put, (where as otherwise, the use of them in a mediocrity, is excellent, the wiseman to this effect adviseing us, that me take honey moderately, lest that the stomach being overcharged with it, may render it, not being able to retain it;) So is it an Advise of the best Masters in Spirituality, to cut short, in Meditation, the discourses of the understanding and curious Speculations, which do savour rather of study, then of the spirit of Prayer; yea even not to multiply the acts of the will so excessively: for he that eats too much meat, digests it not: and oftentimes those that make so many aspirations, Elevations, affections Resolutions, stifled with the multiplicity, know not which to take or stick to: and making a number of good purposes, they perform none at all. They embrace much & hold little. One affection or two well chewed well tasted; one or two resolutions well engraven, deeply imprinted upon the soul, In my opinion, make a man come from his meditations, better disposed, and more resolute to do well, then when the mind knows not at which end to begin to put in execution those purposes, which it rather beheld superficially as in a confused heap, then perfectly relish. The Archer that beholds many marks at once, rarely hits any. But here is not the place wherein I am to enlarge myself upon this point, which I have already done, in a Direction which I made and published touching mental Prayer. I will only make use of this digression to prove what I have undertaken, to wit, that it is easier to Contemplate, then to meditate; & that more do contemplate, (though they reflect not of it) then do meditate, as we see by experience. Tell some simple and vulgar person, that God became man for our sake, or some other Article of the Creed, he will believe it simply, and humbly and sweetly will embrace and assent to that mystery of our Faith. Go when you have done this, & make him make a Meditation upon it, according to the long methodes which many Directours deliver. Let's, for example, upon Christmas day, tell a soul that believes simply, and adores JESUS borne of the blessed Virgin, that she should place herself in the presence of the little JESUS; that she should frame in her imagination the manger of Bethlon together with the ox, the Ass, hay, straw, the Blessed Virgin, S. JOSEPH, the night, the cold season, the stable open one every side to the wind & weather, the child quaking with cold, lying all along upon the litter, swaddled in poor clouts, adored by his holy mother, his foster-father, the Angel's Pastors etc. Tell her further, that she is to invoke the divine grace, to make her preludes, her preparatory prayers. From thence, make her pass on to her three points of Consideration. Show her how she is to amplify and enlarge her reasons and discourses, by looking upon, weighing and examining all; the causes, the effects, the time, place, persons, all the circumstances, actions, words, etc. Then teach her, how she is to move herself to good affections out of her discourse and reasoning, affections of all sorts of love; Compassion, Fear, joy, Grief, Mercy Compunction, etc. Instruct her how out of these affections she is to form Resolutions. Yet further, give her a model of thanksgiving, unions and the rest. In fine speak to her touching attentions, Actual, habitual, virtual: of distractions, of want of guste, of lights, visions, with a number of other terms. Do you not plainly discover that in steed of giving her the wings of a dove to fly, you lay a load upon her, under which she is not able to stir, while she knows not at what end to begin a work so confused. So that having at once more to do than she is able, she doth less than she ought. But if omitting all this, you would move her to believe in simplicity of hart, that JESUS CHRIST was borne of the virgin MARIE, * (as we have in our Creed) having, as she hath the habit of Faith, this simple Act is easy unto her. Wish her to love him who by this his birth gave himself unto her, * and in himself, whom he gave without reserve; all things, * you will find her moved, with this excess of Charity, * freely to offer up herself to him, and perceive her to be, as it were, in the very same disposition, which caused the Divine Apostle to say, I live in the Faith of JESUS CHRIST; who hath loved me even unto death, and the death of the Cross. * Now, in your advice, is not this simple and loving aspect a kind of Contemplation, since it is made without discourse, and without that multiplicity of Acts, or rather agitations of the understanding, and will? Hence it is, that simple people are sometimes more capable of devotion, then curious, active, reslecting, and penetrating wits, who make a great deal more brute, but yield less fruit. Endeavour far more, yet perform less. Who think you, hath more fruition of the Sun, the rustic who hath a clear sight to behold and consider its beams and brightness; or the Philosopher, who is short sighted, yet is able to discourse of the motions, influences and effects, of that great light? What man, in his right wits, will not prefer the rustic before the Philosopher in that consideration? Say the like of him who discourseth very much in Meditation, and yet hath far less taste and light in heavenly things, though he toll a number of Ideas about his imagination, his memory, his understanding, he falls far short notwithstanding, of the sweet and delightful knowledge which springs from the simple and amiable attention of Contemplation. Yet do I ingeniously confess, that this kind of simple contemplation in simple souls, which forerunns meditation, is but unpolished, rude, and accompanied with much imperfection. And that that which follows a long exercise and practise of Meditation, is far more complete and high: because the soul being persuaded to heavenly Love, by force of so many considerations, ratiocinations, affections, aspirations, resolutions, and other acts of Meditation, doth with much more facility, light and heat, fall into simple acts of Contemplation, having so frequently and so attentively beholden tasted and acknowledged a good Truth, or a true Good; and thereupon is inclined to that love which doth unite the hart to God, and thence is called the band of perfection. * Yet this doth in no sort prejudice the proposition which I made, to wit, that it was easier to contemplate then to meditate, whether we understand that rude and unpolished Contemplation, which forerun's, or that subtle and accomplished, which follows the long use of Meditation.   

An Act of simple Contemplation a sovereign remedy against temptation.  
CHAP. X.  
BUT what am I to infer out of all this, THEOPISTE? Marry, that if by many Acts of Faith, taken out of the Storehouse of Meditation, you cannot drive away the thoughts of infidelity which do trouble and disturb you, you should have recourse to the Act of Contemplation, which is more efficacious, and less forced; more powerful against your adversary; more comfortable to your soul: and fitter to fortify her in the virtue which temptation strives to shake. It is a simple and pure act, devoid of all composition of discourse & Ideas or if it have any mixture of any, they are so subtle and delicate, that they can hardly be perceived at all. For it happens often by the industry of that wicked man who oversowes cockle amongst the good corn, * that the same acts, which one would make use of to repulse the darts of temptation, do more encumber then comfort the mind, and do rather inveigle than illustrate it. Be they fair and easy, be they violent and rough, they do often times equally hurt, while the Devil doth change cures into poison, and wounds us with our own weapons. Vinegar and honey, though contrary in taste, yet agree in this effect, that they both inflame the wound into which they are poured. Even touching and rubbing of a sore doth venom it. To dispute against a temptation is to irritate it. To endeavour to drive it away by force of arms, is to stoup its departure. To strive to put it out of the memory, is to engrave it therein. Belzebub Prince of Flies, never coming so thick upon us, as when we often strike him off. If you will believe me therefore, you shall not weary your mind, by producing incessantly Acts of Faith to repelle those assaults, but you shall practise the counsel of our Blessed Father in the 7. Cap. of the 4. Part. of this Philothee, you shall use diversious; and fair and softly taking, and turning the eye of your mind off the dreadful face of the temptation, you shall simply and lovingly place it upon the truth and assurance of the divine Goodness, and this loving aspect, being an act of lively Faith, quickened and informed by charity; and with all produced in contemplation with great facility and simplicity, will serve you for an impenetrable buckler, against all the darts which temptation shall send out against your fidelity. O who is able to express unto you how efficacious this simple aspect is, when it is accompaigned by Love, and how dreadful it is to the Devils, since it makes the soul as terrible unto them, as an Army ranked and put in battle array: because her powers and faculties being united in this contemplative act, are far more strong, then when they use their activity in Meditation distinctly and separately. The old Champions in wrestling, when they would exercise themselves therein, came naked upon the Theatre, and anointed their bodies with oil, that their antagonists might catch no hold of them. And whereas temptation, whereof we now speak, is a spiritual wrestling against the Angel of darkness, by how much more naked the soul shall be stripped of all representations and acts, and recollected in herself, drawing all her forces into the unity of her Spirit, more vigorous shall she be, and less hold shall she afford to her enemy. DAVID when he was to go out to meet GOLIATH, put off SAULES' armour, which did load and hinder him more, than it was serviceable unto him: and with a poor sling, and a stone, slew that dreadful Giant, who in his bravadoes threatened to make him haulkes meat. I do not affirm that the Acts of Meditation are not good weapons, weapons, as S. PAUL saith, of our spiritual warefare, able to overthrow the enemy. * But as it happens often, that those that are overburthened with too heavy armour, do fall down under the weight of them, and are less able and active in the fight, then though they were but armed with light armour; so in spiritual Combats, the multiplicity of acts contrary to the vice wherewith we are tempted, do more oppress then succour the soul: and with the simple act of Contemplation it gives a more victorious blow, then with the variety of others. All those little Acts, are like unto the due drops or pearls, which the nighte's freshness, upon the Aurora's approach, doth spread over the face of the earth, wherewith it is but superficially watered: but the act of Contemplation resembles a full flood, which overflowing its banks, doth throughly water the whole fields, and sinks even into the tree roots. The Father of a possessed person, as S. MARK doth teach us in his Gospel, brought his son unto our Saviour, beseeching him to deliver his child from the wicked spirit, which did torment him, and said unto him: I believe o Lord, help mine incredulity. This word of Faith, invoking the Divine assistance, invited our saviour's sweetness to be merciful unto him. If you could but once, THE OPISTE, recollect all the powers of your soul in the unity of your spirit, and with a lowly and loving aspect express before God this only word, I believe, with as much heat of the will, as light of the understanding, I doubt not but either this Spirit of Blasphemy would depart from you, or if by the Divine permission, he should persist to persecute you, it would be to bring the very virtue which he seeks to ruinate, to a greater perfection in you. Exercise yourself therefore with care and attention in this interior recollection, and in this act of simple Contemplation, which is that eye of the dove washed in the milk of meekness, and mourneing over the floods of afflictions, and you shall see, God will restore you your wished Peace, and will place you in a plentiful & deep repose, * calling you into the holes of the rock, into the hollow places of the wall.   

An act of Contemplation.  
CHAP. XI.  
But what is this hollow place? Marry Contemplation, but in a higher degree than the former, and which doth extend itself, not to the height of passive Contemplation (which depends not of him that doth plant and water, but of the only mercy of God, * who gives that grace to whom he pleaseth, the Spirit being free to blow whet it will, * a hight, which I will in no sort strive to touch, THEOPISTE) but such an one as will bear you up upon the wings of the Dove, * that is, of Grace, to the highest point, to which that active Contemplation can raise a truly faithful soul, & one that is holily enamoured of the sovereign good. * Now which is this high point, this supreme degree, but that, whereof the divine S. DENIS the Areopagite, the Apostle of France, speaks in these terms to the Bishope of Ephesus, TIMOTHEE in the first Chap. of his book of mystical Divinity? As for you, my dear Timothee, applying yourself with an attentive and recollected study, to mystical speculations, forsake both sense, and intellectual operations, all sensible and intelligible things, all things that are, and those that are not too: and after an unknown manner raise up yourself (words that do point out an active Contemplation, proceeding from our own endeavours assisted by God's grace, without which we are able to do nothing) raise up yourself, as much as you can possibly to his union, who is beyond all essence and knowledge: for being disintangled from yourself, & all things, all which you have forsaken and cleared yourself of, with a purely free issue, you shall be carried up to the super-essentiall ray of the divine darknesses. * Hitherto are the words of this great Saint, whom all the mystical divines behold as their light. Words of gold, and which would not only merit to be written in marble, but upon the hearts of all those that make profession of a spiritual and contemplative life. Here is no place to explicate them; I do but only represent them to your eye, or rather to your mind THEOPISTE, to th'endend that you might note, by the way, the high and inaccessible covert or hole, where you are to take up your refuge, if your desire with the dove, to save yourself from the Hawks talon, which by the temptation of infidelity, doth so eagerly pursue you. You shall find out this refuge, if, during the storm, renouncing all the operations of your sense & reason, of the inferior & superior part of the soul, as well sensitive as reasonable, you retire and betake yourself into your inmost chamber, the Centre, bottom, point and unity of your Spirit, into the essence of your soul (for all these terms signify the same thing amongst the mystical Divines.) And there in the high silence and repose of all your exterior and interior faculties you be quiet & see that God is God* you taste and see how sweet he is. * And if in a close union you adhere to him by a lively faith: this adhesion will make you one same spirit with him, according to that of the Apostle, he that adheares unto God, is made one spirit with him. * Thus shall you imitate the shells of the Sea, which that they may not be the billow's game, cleave to the Rock, as soon as they perceive the tempest approach, remaining there immoveable and unvariable: and you shall cleave to God; you shall hold him and not let him go, like to the Spouse in the Canticles you shall tie yourself to the pillar & firmament of Truth, * the holy Church which doth propose unto us his oracles: a pillar, against which all the Gates and Powers of Hell, shall never be able to prevail. * This is that secret to you, * or rather which is in you, whereof the Prophet speaketh, whither you may retire yourself near unto God; who is present to the most inward corner of your hart, as all the Contemplatives hold, in a most peculiar manner. This is the covert of his countenance, under which we may shelter ourselves from the violence of contradictions and temptations, no otherwise then little sucking children, who do thrust into, and hide themselves in their mother's bosom when any thing fears them. This is the den where DAVID, persecuted by SAUL hid himself; and where his very enemy fell into his power. This it that great City of Refuge, that Sanctuary, where you may free yourself from your invisible enemies; and where they are not permitted entry. This is that high place, that sharp top of the Rock where the Eagles build their nest, * as JOB saith. And that most high & sublime refuge, whereof the Psalmist makes mention, to which no evil come nor shall any scourg approach. 'tis the Desert where the woman in the Apocalypse saved herself, lest the dragon should have devoured her fruit. These are the wings of the dove, which the Psalmist wisheth for, to fly up to his rest. * It is in this high degree of Contemplation, that he compares himself to a Pelicane in the wilderness, a night crow in the house, and to a sparrow solitary in the house top.   

A Practice of this Act.  
CHAP. XII.  
YOu will perhaps ask me what that happy shelter is, that you may spring away towards it, as a Hart dead run by the hounds, his breath and legs failing him, who runs himself into some thick Grove, as into an unpregnable Fort, or into some hollow den in the side of some high Rock, according to the Psalmists song, that the high mountains are for the Heart's, the rock a refuge for the jechins. * ay did point it you out in S. DENIS, his words, THEOPISTE, which if you find somewhat obscure, I will here a little illustrate them by an explication fitted to your purpose. Know then, that if all the remedies which I have prescribed, be not able to work the cure: and if you find not your hart delivered of disquiet by the diverse considerations, and practise of so many virtues, & different Acts, you are to imitate the Prophet JEREMY: The solitary shall sit, and hold his peace, and afterwards he shall rise above himself. Endeavour then, following this advice, to settle your thoughts entering into yourself: and to hold your peace; that is, to silence all the noise of your exterior or interior senses, of all your passions: to deprive your imagination of all the shapes of created things; to stripe your memory of all the Ideas of creatures & sciences: not to permit your understanding to discourse, no not to appease the motions, and boilings of the will which is to sing to God the Hymn of sacred silence, in the Jerusalem, or City of Peace of our hart: to throw down upon the ground, or rather to throw out all natural light, admitting only into the Sanctuary of the bottom of our soul, the simple, abstract, pure, universal ray of a lively Faith; exempt from all discourse, representations, and acts: and in this loving submission or assenting quiet of mind, in this settled attention, in this inward union; by so much the stronger, as it is less perceived; so much more exquisite, as it is less sensible; keep yourself near unto God: cast yourself into this sacred blindness, clearer-sighted then all sight: into this night, which is brighter than the day: into this darkness clearer than the light: into that resplendent cloud, so much celebrated by the mistikes; and as another MAGDALENE set at our Saviour's feet, remain invariable and immoveable, without ever regarding the spoils which the temptation seems to make in all the parts of your soul, whether it be sensitive or reasonable, so it be inferior to the highest point of your spirit. For as long as that shall say no, let the flesh be moved, let the devil rage, you can never be vanquished. God can take you up by this hair out of these troubles, as well as the Angel took ABACUC by one of his: and as long as this hair remains entire, you shall never lose your interior strength. And though we apprehend that the inferior portion of our reasonable part, is disloyal and impious, yet fear not, the highest point of your spirit, like another MOSES, is with God in the clouds, upon the top of the mountain, he will appease his wrath against Israel, who below, eats, danceth, plays, and then adores the golden Calf. Though all your senses, passions, and powers, should be troubled and disordered by temptation, and as it were, should live in a kind of impiety and idolatry, so that you stick and adhere to God in the top of your spirit, it is enough to warrant you from his wrath, and the dread of his justice. And though you seem to be forsaken of God upon this Cross, and that malice seems to be consummated in you, that is, accomplished in a highest degree, yet as long as in the bottom of your hart, you are able to say unto God, o heavenly Father I commend my poor soul into thy hands, * you are still in good estate. Your lot is assured in such hands, * out of which no power can bear you away by force, * till by your free consent, you take yourself out of them, God never forsaking any but such as forsake him.   

An Elevation towards the top of the Spirit.  
CHAP. XIII.  
THe wiseman saith, that it is in vain to set snares for birds already flying, * because a man is not able to force them from the wing: and indeed we never read that the bird of Paradise is caught, nor is she ever found in earth, but when death makes her tumble down: for having no feet, she keeps continually in the open air, where she doth feed and repose. The same may be said of souls, which do soar above all sensible and intelligible things, yea even beyond themselves, towards God. In vain do the devils set traps for them: while their eyes still turned and set upon God, do never sleep, the sleep of the death of sin. * The little flies once inveigled in the Spider's nets, stick therein: the great ones do burst and break them. Temptations are true Spiders-webbs, which do scarcely ever catch those souls, which do soar above created things, & which entertain thoughts of God, more dear than all other thoughts, and are more sensible of his touches, than all other feelings. Thunders, winds, storms, hail, rain, and the rest of the impressions of the air, do only beat upon the midst, and the foot of the Mountain Olympus, whose top enjoys so constant and continual a calm, that that which one writes therein in the dust, remains still in the same estate, never being touched with the least breath of wind. And though the midst and lowest part of our soul be weatherbeaten with the tempests and storms of temptation, yet it is in our power, with the assistance of God's grace, to maintain the top of it in a constant peace and serenity, by so much the greater, by how much it is less known, and by so much more solid, by how much it is less sensible. In two parts of the Tabernacle of the Iewe's Temple, there was nothing seen but fire, flames, flesh, blood, sacrificed victim, sacryfices; nothing heard, but the brute of beasts which were slaughtered, and the harmony, of the heavenly Hymns and praises: But in the SANCTA SANCTORUM, nothing was felt but parfumes; and the High Priest, who alone carried them thither, adored God only in a high silence. It is into this mysterious silence of the Sanctuary of the bottom of your hart that I invite you to enter, THEOPISTE, never taking notice of the noise and rustling outrages of your interior powers and faculties: and in this sort you shall find out that so much desired Peace, termed best * by the wiseman. When a town is besieged, at the first the inhabitants make sallies to free themselues, till the enemy force them in; and then they contain themselves within the compass of the walls: But if the town come to be taken by assault, they retire and betake themselves into the Castle; which being also taken, they imprisone themselves in the dungeon, where they come to reasonable terms of composition. We are to proceed in like manner in our temptations. First we are to use sensible Acts to raise the Siege: but finding the enemy too violent and strong, we are to retire ourselves into our interior, yea, in case the appetire and Powers suffer violence, we may shut ourselves up in the very bottom of our soul, where full and absolute Consent doth reside) and hart, whence the wiseman saith life doth proceed, * and never depart or render up that place till we accord an honourable composition, to wit, that our Sovereign be not offended. It is better to fall innocent, then criminal to live, saith an ancient Father. And doth not holy write say, what better were a man to gain the whole world, and lose his own soul * for an Eternity. Certes this retireing of ourselves, into the bottom or inmost room of our soul, makes us resemble the Tortis, who is, as it were, impregnable, while she keeps herself within her shell, and the Irchine, which cannot be bit by a dog, nor taken by the bare hand of a man, being as a cheshnut upon the tree, beset on every side with pricks. The devil knows not where to catch hold on us in this happy estate, nor where to hit us: for having renounced sense, humane Reason, and all created things, he knows not how to assault us, while we leave no place or footing to his illusions. Happy is the soul that is come to this degree: for one may affirm of her, that God hath raised her a Horn of salvation in his house, where freed from the hands of her enemies, she may live devoid of fear, in sanctity and justice. And which is yet more remarkable, he makes her draw advamtages from her enemies, from all that hate her; and profit from her temptations and tribulations.   

A general abstraction.  
CHAP. XIV.  
MAKE haste, THEOPISTE, to enter in▪ this Repose. * But by what gate are you to enter: by a mental abstraction from all that is created, and all that can be any impeachment to the union of our soul with God. Then it is that you are to imitate the Commanders of the Army of Israel, who having made their garments and weapons a troop of testimonies, and placed JEHV upon them, they proclaimed him King, and cried, live JEHV, JEHV is King. When you shall have turned the old man out of his vicious habits, and shall have renounced all the impressions of sense and reason, then, in that entire humane ignorance, you shall meet with the obscure brightness, or bright obscurity of Faith, which will appear unto you, as a Pillar of bright & light fire; a pillar in strength, in truth a light, and burning in Charity. This eminent degree of Active Contemplation, doth not behold God in any affirmation or negation, as the Misticalls speak, nor yet in any particular species, but as an universal Object elevated above every created knowledge and capacity. In which respect, this practice would be soveraignely good against your temptation, which being only general, would be much more efficaciouslie repelled by this general aspect, then by any one in particular.   

Against general temptations.  
CHAP. XV.  
FOr I must here tell you for your consolation, that in matter of temptations, the most universal are the least to be dreaded. For as in good Philosophy, the arguments that conclude too much, conclude nothing at all: so excessive suggestions do fill the soul tempted with such a horror and distaste, that they never get admittance, since the soul cannot be carried so soudenlie to such an extremity. Whereas particular ones which come with a less noise; do run like water into the interior, and as oil into the bones, * that is, in a sort insensibly and imperceptibly. The bait is quicklier swallowed down, than the hook that is hid under it, is thought of. We gather Aspalata delightful to the eye, without ever thinking of the Ask that lies under it, whose sting is mortal. This will be more easily conceived in an example. You are tempted in general against all that faith doth teach us, and there is no kind of abominable Idea to this effect, no kind of brutish infidelity, of execrable blasphemy, of detestable impiety, which the wicked spirit doth not represent unto your hart, to bring you to Atheism. Lo the Picture of your affliction! But do you not also discover the folly, & foolery of the devil therein, as malignant & mischievous as he is? do you not perceive that that which you esteem force and violence, is mere want of force, and infirmity in him, who used so little flight and guile in laying his snares. For your soul conceiving an incomparable horror against such like illusions, falls into the other extremity, and, though imperceptibly, (which is admirable, and indeed is the work of the fingar of God * in you) diues deeper, and takes better root in faith, which that hellish Fiend strives to root up, or shake. Whereas, if the temptation were against some one article of our belief, as against the real presence of the body & blood of the Son of God in the Eucharist; of the Trinity of persons in unity of Essence; or the like, doubtless his battery were more to be feared: for like as in an ALARM if one link or ring break the whole is spoilt; so taking away one Article of the Catholic Faith, we fail in the whole, that is, we forsake universality which makes the true Catholic, and consequently the whole frame doth threaten ruin. At the Siege of a town, though it be environed round about, to prevent the entry of any succour; yet is battery laid only to one side of it, where the breach being made as great as they desire, the assault is given, & unless good resistance & opposition be made, the falls town into the besiegers hands, who entering only that way, and not over all the walls at once, make themselves notwithstanding Masters of the town. The devil our sworn enemy, doth continually lay siege unto our hart, and roaes about it, like a Roaring lion seeking his prey. * But to make himself Master, he missed his mark in assaulting us so generally, without making a particular breach, whereby he was to enter. This is it that makes me judge, that the temptation which doth assault you. THEOPISTE, being too general, is but a false ALARM which the enemy gives rather to trouble your inward repose and quiet, than any hope which he conceives to overthrow, or reduce you to the Abyss of misery. Take a good hart therefore, and say with the Psalmist, that though all the forces of Hell should make head against you, yet would you not fear; though a million of companies encompassed you, yet would you not dread, because God doth rise up to succour and save you. Unite yourself unto him in the high point of Contemplation which I have discovered unto you, & keep yourself there without all discourse, without all reflection upon yourself, without framing any particular act, in a profound and general silence. For it was in the universal Peace and silence of all the universe, and in the midst of a dark night, that the Omnipotent WORD came from Heaven to earth to unite himself to our nature, * to enlighten every man coming into this world * and to illuminate those who were in darkness and in the Region of the shadow of death, * And with what torch, but the torch of Faith, whereby he makes our darkness lightsome? I remember, THEOPISTE, I made once a little spiritual treatise, or EXERCISE OF LIVELY FAITH, which might, as I conceive, not a little comfort you, and more amply instruct you, touching this act of Contemplation, which I have marked you out for your last refuge. I made you this Paraclese or Consolation, being at our villemond, where I am detained this winter, to distribute the word of God. After my return to my Residence, I will look out that writing from amongst the papers of my Study, where it lies buried, and I will make a copy of it be taken, to send you. Mean while, make use of the instructions which are contained herein, not only in the temptation which doth presently press you, but in all the rest that may chance to assault you after you shall be delivered of this. For these precepts, which for the most part, I have gathered out of the advices of that blessed Prelate FRANCIS DE SALES of holy & happy memory our most honoured Father and Directour, may be applied, not only to the temptations of blasphemy and infidelititie, but even to all other temptations, for that these endeavours are not so tied to particularities, as that they do not also descend to generalities: being of the number of those Antidotes which are termed universal.   

An Exhortation to spiritual valour, in imitation of Jacob's wrestling.  
CHAP. XVI.  
IN conclusion, I must make the Apostolic trumpet sound in your ears, fight, I, fight, THEOPISTE, as a good and faithful servant of JESUS CHRIST. * Fight generously, manly, incessantly, that by that good Combat you may conserve your Faith, and obtain the crown of justice. * Our whole life is a warfare, a temptation. Sweet and gentle calms are blown over by rough storms. In the world as on the Sea, the still & calm day, is most doubted, most subject to rain. The Calm of the mind is still essayed by some rebellion, that so standing always upon our guard, temptation may not surprise us. * Doth the greatness of your adversary astonish you? call to mind that IACOB'S antagonist was yet stronger. An Angel at liberty, must needs exceed those Angels of darkness, who be loaden with their chains. Yet at IABOC'S well, the Pacriarke held the Angel play; and though he came halting away, yet victory and benediction was his. Be courageous and the like will befall you. And though you have not a like adversary, yet like JACOB, you fight by God's permission, a try all of your fidelity: you fight in the night of Faith, which is environed with types, enigmas, clouds. At IABOC'S well, signifying that you are to cleanse yourself from all natural lights and reasons, all sensible and intellectual know ledge, to betake yourself naked and pure to the top of the Spirit, without all the forms and shapes of terreane things, where lively and pure Faith keeps her Residence. JACOB never quitted his hold, till the Angel blessed him, and the day began to break. So are you inseparably to hold God, till the rays of his countenance begin to shine upon you. * And till he restore the joy of his Salvation. * Thus shall you become a true Israelite, victorious, and seeing God. * Be not troubled that humane reason in you comes off halting, you shall walk hereafter upon a right leg, the Divine revelation, wherein consists the essence of Faith: An essence by so much the more pure, by how much it admits less of the mixture of natural light and experience. For Faith doth lose its merit, saith S. GREGORY, where experience hath place, being saith the Apostle, of invisible things and such as appear not. * If you desire to be armed with the Armour of God to defeat the Devil, throw away, with DAVID, SAULS' armour, stripe yourself of humane reason, and sense. We are not only to wrestle against flesh & blood, but Powers and principalities also; against the Governor of the world & worldly darkness; against the highest and most subtle malice of our mortal enemy. * The armour of God therefore is necessary for us, to stand constant: to stand immoveable like unto the Mont-Sion. * And to this end we are to retire ourselves into the very top of our Spirit, where God doth soveraignely rain. He that remains there under the wings of the Highest, shall infallibly be delivered out of the Fowler's snare; and under that shelter, shall sing to God the song of his delivery, adoring this Mercy in the 30. 90. & 123. ps. or in the Canticle of our B. La. ZACHARIE. SIMEON. But above all, be sure to keep yourself in this learned ignorance, and Adhering only faithfully to the prime & universal Truth, which is God, banish from you hart all manner of curiosity in point of Faith. Protest with the Apostle, that you will know nothing here below, but JESUS CHRIST. * Stand firmly, lest the enemy bereave you of your crown. Forsake the foul & troubled waters of Egypt, to drink of the pure source. Sacrifice your ISAAC, your natural light, upon the top of this mountain. Repose peaceably in him WHO IS. Be not separated from his Charity, and your faith is in assurance. CHRIST hath revealed a faithful promise by the mouth of his beloved disciples: whosoever shall remain faithful till death, shall be rewarded with a crown of life.   
FINIS.