Book I, Part 1, Chapter 3. Of the third Motive that obliges us to serve God, which is the Benefit of our Preservation and Direction

1. Another obligation man has to God, besides that of his creation, is the care he takes to preserve him. He it is who gave you your being, and who still continues the same to you. So that you depend now as much upon his power, for the preserving of it, as you did, before he gave it to you, for the receiving it ; and it is as impossible for you to subsist without him, as it was, before you were created, to create yourself. Nor is the second obligation less than the first, but rather greater, for that was laid upon you but once ; whereas this is conferred on you every moment of your life. For to be continually preserving you, after your creation, requires no less love nor power than it did to create you. If, therefore, your obligation to him, for having created you in an instant, be so great ; what do you not owe him for preserving you so many moments, so many hours, nay, so many years ? You cannot go a step unless he gives you power to move. You cannot so much as open or -shut your eyes without his will and assistance. For if you do not believe that it is he who moves every joint and member of your body, you are no Christian ; but if you believe it is from him you receive this favor, and yet, after all, are so impudent as to oflend him, I cannot tell what name to give you. If a man were standing on the top of a high tower, with a small cord in his hand, and another man hanging at the end of it, do you think that he who should be so near falling down headlong, would dare to give abusive language to the person that held the cord? Imagine yourself to be in such a condition. You depend on the will of God as it were on a thread ; so that, should he forsake you but for one moment, you would be instantly reduced to your first nothing. With what insolence, then, can you dare provoke so dreadful a Majesty, who is so merciful as to support you, even when you sin against Him? For, as St. Denis says, such is the virtue of the sovereign Good, as to give creatures power to disobey and rebel at the very moment they are rebelling against it. Since there is no denying this truth, how dare you presume to make use of those senses and members, as instruments to offend him who preserves them? O incredible blindness and folly ! O unheard-of rebellion and disobedience ! Was there ever so horrid a conspiracy as this is, that the members should rise up against their Head, for which they ought to die a thousand times ? The day will come when this affront shall be most severely punished. It is then that God will hear those complaints, which his own honor, trampled under foot by you, shall make to his divine justice. Disloyal and ungrateful man ! is it not just, since you have conspired against your God, that the whole world should rise up and exclaim against you? that God should arm all his creatures to revenge the injuries you have offered him ? and that the whole earth should fight for him against the ungrateful ? Without doubt, there is no greater justice than that they, who would not open their eyes to so many mercies, when they might have done it, should be forced to it now by severity and rigor, without finding any remedy or comfort.

2. If to all these benefits we add the whole world, which is as a rich and plentiful table God has prepared and spread for your particular use, how infinitely will the obligation be increased? There is not any one thing under the face of heaven, but what is entirely for man, or for his service. And should any one object, that flies are of no use to man, he may observe, they are food for birds, which are created for him. Though a man does not eat the grass of the fields, it nourishes the cattle which are necessary for his subsistence. Cast your eye about the world, and you will see what rich lands, and what large possessions you have, and how great your inheritance is. All that moves on the earth, all that swims in the waters, that flies in the air, or that shines in the heavens, is made for you. These things are all of them the effects of God's bounty, the witnesses of his mercy, the sparks of his charity, and the common publishers of his greatness. Consider these are so many preachers God sends to you, that you may not want the opportunity of knowing him. Every thing, says St. Augustine, on earth and in heaven, perpetually exhorts me, O Lord! to love you. And that no man may pretend to a lawful excuse from so just a duty, they speak the same language to every body else.

3. O ! that you had but ears to hear the voices of the creatures, you would easily understand how they all agree in their inviting you to the love of God ; for they silently declare they have been created to serve you : that you may, therefore, love and adore this common Lord, not only for yourself, but for them. The sky says, It is I, that by my stars continually furnish you with light, that you may not walk in the dark. It is I, that by my different influences occasion the production of all things necessary for life. The air, on the other side, tells you, It is I who give you breath ; it is I who refresh you with my gentle blasts, and temper the heat of your vital spirits, that you may not be scorched up by it; it is I who maintain this almost infinite number of different kinds of birds, pleasing your eyes with the beauty of their feathers, charming your ears with the sweetness of their notes, and satisfying the niceness of your appetites with their delicious taste. The water says, It is for you that I pour out my seasonable and moderate rains ; it is for you that my streams

4 C and fountains are always running ; it is for your nourishment that I engender such variety of fish. I water your lands and your gardens, that they may bring you their fruits in due season. I make a short passage for you through the sea, that you may thereby have the opportunity of making use of the whole world, and of joining the riches of other countries with those of your own. What shall I say of the earth, the common mother of all things, and the universal shop, as it were, of nature ; where all the different causes produce their several effects ? She may, with a great deal of reason, speak to you, as the rest have done, and tell you, it is she that, like a mother, carries you in her arms ; it is she supplies you with all the necessaries of life; it is she that maintains you with the variety of her products ; that, to serve you, she holds a correspondence with all the other elements, and with the heavens themselves, for the procuring of their influence; and that she, in short, like a tender mother, neither forsakes you whilst you are alive, nor leaves you at your death ; for she it is that nourishes and supports you during your life, and takes you into her bosom when you are dead, and there gives you a resting-place. To conclude, all the world cries out aloud to you, Behold, O mortal man, and consider, what a love your Creator has had for you ; since it is for your sake that he has made me, commanding me, at the same time, for the love of him, to serve you ; that so you may love and serve him, who has created me for you, and you for himself.

4. This, O Christian, this is the general voice of all the creatures ; and can you, after this, deny, that you are most strangely dull and stupid, if you have no ears to hear the same ? How can you avoid confessing, that you are guilty of an unparalleled ingratitude, if you take no notice of so many favors ? If you are not ashamed to receive an obligation, why do you refuse to make* a simple acknowledgment of it to him from whom you have received it, that so you may escape the punishment your ingratitude otherwise deserves ? For, according to a great writer, there is no creature in the world but what speaks these three words to man : " Receive, give, take heed ; that is to say, receive the benefit, give what is due, and take heed of the punishment which follows ingratitude, if you do not do so ;" Rich, de S. Vict.

5. And, that you may have more cause to admire, consider how Epictetus, a heathen philosopher before mentioned, has been able to lift himself up to this sublime divinity. He advises us, in these words, to make the creatures serve us, as so many memorials of the Creator : —

" When the raven croaks," says he, " and thereby gives you notice of some change of weather, it is God, not the raven, that gives you this notice. If men should, by their words and discourses, advise you to any thing, is it not God that has given them power to advise you thus ? thereby to let you understand, that he exercises his divine power several ways, in order to bring about his designs ; for when God thinks fit to acquaint us with matters of greater moment, he makes choice of more excellent and more inspired men for this purpose." Afterwards, he adds this : " In fine, when you shall have read my instructions, say to yourself, Is it not Epictetus, but God, that has given me this advice ; for whence could he have had such precepts and rules as these are, if God had not suggested them to him ?" Thus far the words of Epictetus. Now, is there any Christian in the world, that will not be ashamed, and blush to be excelled by a heathen ? If there be, he may well be confounded to think, that his eyes, with the assistance of the light of faith, cannot see as far as those that were in the darkness of human reason.

§ I. From what has been said is inferred how unworthy it is not to serve God.

6. Since things are really just as we have represented them, is it not great ingratitude and neglect For man to be surrounded on all sides by so many benefits, and yet to forget him from whom he has received them all ? St. Paul says, that he who does his enemy a good turn, heaps coals of fire upon his head (Rom. xii. 20.), by which he inflames his charity and love. Now, if all the creatures in the world are so many benefits God bestows on you, the whole world can be nothing else but one fire, and all the creatures so much fuel to feed and increase it. Is it possible any heart should be in the midst of such flames as these, and not be entirely inflamed, or so much as warmed by them? How comes it then, that after receiving so many benefits and graces, you should neglect even to cast your eyes towards heaven, to see from whence they all come ? If you were to go a great journey, and in the way, being quite tired, and almost dead with hunger, should be forced to sit down at the bottom of a high tower, from the top of which some charitable person should take care to supply you with whatsoever jrou wanted, could you forbear looking up sometimes, if it were but to have a sight of one that was so kind and charitable to you? Does God do any thing less for you, than continually shower down from above all sorts of blessings upon you ? Find me out, if you Can, but one thing in the world, that does not happen by his particular providence. And yet you never so much as look up to know, and by that means to love, so liberal and constant a Benefactor. What can be said of such hard-heartedness, but that man has divested himself of his own nature, and is grown more insensible than brutes ? It is a shame to say whom we resemble in this particular, but it is fit that man should hear it. We are like a herd of swine feeding under an oak, which, all the time their keeper is shaking down the acorns from the top of the tree, do nothing else but grunt and fight with one another for their meat, without ever looking upon him that gives it them, or lifting up their eyes to see from whose hands they receive such a benefit. O ! the brutal ingratitude of the children of Adam ! who, having received not only a rational soul, which other creatures have not, but also an upright body, and eyes set to look up towards heaven, yet will not lift up the eyes of the soul to behold him that bestows such blessings on them.

7. It is to be wished, that brutes and irrational creatures did not excel us iruthis point. For this duty of acknowledgment is, in effect, so deeply engraved by the finger of God upon all his creatures, that the fiercest of them have not been deprived of so noble an inclination. There are a great many examples in history to prove what we here assert. Is there any beast more fierce than a lion ? and yet Appian, a Greek author, tells us of a man who, having accidentally sheltered himself in a lion's cave, and there plucked a thorn out of one of his feet, shared with him every day of the prey he got, as an acknowledgment of the favor and the cure he had wrought upon the beast. This man was taken up a considerable time after for some notorious crime, and was condemned to be exposed to the wild beasts in the amphitheatre at Rome, to be torn in pieces by them. The same lion, which had been taken some days before, being let loose, eyed the man, and, knowing him, came up gently and fawned upon him, just as a dog does upon his master when he has been abroad, and ever after followed him up and down without doing any harm. We read of another lion, who, having received the same favor from a seaman, that had been cast by a storm upon the coast of Africa, brought him daily a part of his booty, which maintained him and his company until such time as they put to sea again. Nor is that less to be admired, when they tell us of another, who, as he was fighting with a serpent, was so put to it, that in all appearance he would have lost his life, had not a gentleman, who was riding that way, accidentally come to his assistance, and killed the serpent ; the lion, to return the obligation, gave himself up entirely to his deliverer, and followed him whithersoever he went, serving him as a hound in hunting. The gentleman at last took shipping, and left his lion on shore. The beast was so impatient and uneasy to stay behind, that he took to the water, and, not being able to make to the vessel, was drowned. What shall I say of the gratitude and fidelity of horses ? Pliny gives us a relation of some, that have had such a lively concern for the loss of their masters, as to shed tears for them ; and of others, that have starved themselves to death for the same reason. Some there are, again, that have revenged their masters' death upon those that murdered them by tearing them in pieces, or by trampling them under their feet. Nor is the gratitude of dogs less surprising, of whom the same author relates such strange things as are almost incredible. Amongst the rest he tells us of one, that, having fought for his master, who was murdered by highwaymen, as long as he was able, sat by the dead body to keep off the birds and beasts from devouring it. He speaks of another, that would neither eat nor drink after he had seen his master, Lucius, dead. He relates another much more remarkable passage, that happened at Rome in his time, which is this: A man, that was condemned to die, had a dog which he had kept very long, and which never left him all the time he was in prison, no, nor after his execution ; but, on the contrary, staying always by him, made known his grief by his howling. If any body flung him a piece of bread, he would take it up, and carry it immediately to his master, and put it into his mouth. At last, the body being thrown into the Tiber, the dog leaped in, and got under it, to keep it from sinking. Can there be any thing in the world more grateful than this was ? Now, if beasts, who have only a small spark of natural instinct, whereby to acknowledge a good turn, are yet so ready to requite, serve and attend their benefactors, how can man, who has so much more light to know the good he receives, be so forgetful of him that bestows so much upon him ? How comes he to suffer himself to be exceeded by beasts, in courtesy, fidelity and gratitude ? Especially, when the benefits, which man receives from God, are so infinitely beyond those which beasts receive from men ; when the Benefactor is so excellent, his love so singular, and his intention so sincere, that he proposes no interest to himself, but does all out of mere charity and bounty. This is, indeed, a matter of no small wonder and astonishment, and evidently shows there are devils, that blind our understandings, harden our hearts, and impair our memories, that we may not remember so liberal a Benefactor.

8. Now, if it be so great a crime to forget this Lord, what must it be to affront him, and to convert his favors into the instruments of our offences against him? Seneca says, that not to pay back the benefits we have received, is the first degree of ingratitude; the second is to forget them; the third is to render evil for good ; and this last is the highest degree. Bu/" what is all this to the affronting and abusing your Benefactor with those very kindnesses he has shown to you? I doubt whether there is any man in the world, who has ever dealt with his fellow creatures, as we frequently deal with God. What man would be so ungrateful, as to go immediately, and employ a considerable sum of money he had received from his prince, in raising an army against him ? And yet you, base and miserable wretch ! never cease to make war upon God, with those very bounties c 2

30 . the sinner's guide.

you have received from him. What can a man think more abominable than this ? Should a husband make a present to his wife of a necklace of pearl, or a rich set of diamonds, to oblige her to honor and love him the more ; what would you say of the perfidiousness of this woman, if she should throw all away immediately upon her gallant, to tie him the more strongly to her, and make herself more the mistress of his affection ? Every body would certainly look upon this as the basest action she could be guilty of; and yet the offence here is only between equals. How much more heinous, then, is the crime, when the affront is offered to God ? And yet this it is those persons are guilty of, who waste all their strength, and spend their estates, and ruin their health, in committing sinful actions. Their strength makes them proud, their beauty makes them conceited, and their health unmindful of God. Their wealth enables them to devour the poor, to vie with the great ones, to pamper their flesh, and to corrupt the virtue of some unthinking maid, making her, like Judas, sell what Christ purchased by his blood, whilst they buy it with money like the Jews. What shall I say of the abuse of other graces ? The sea serves but to satisfy their gluttony, and the beauty of creatures their lust. The fruits and product of the earth serve to feed their avarice, and their wit and natural gifts go to the increasing of their vanity. They are puffed up in prosperity, even to folly, and cast down to despair in adversity. They choose the darkness of the night to hide their theft, and the light of the day for the laying of snares, as we read in holy Job. In short, whatever God has created for his own glory, they, have devoted to satisfy their inordinate passions.

9. What shall I say of their essences and perfumes, of their stately furniture, their sumptuous tables, and niceness and superfluity of their dishes, with their different sorts of sauces, and their several ways of cooking ? Nay, sensuality and luxury are so much in fashion, that men have made a trade of these scandalous excesses, and published books to instruct us how to sin in this matter. They have corrupted all things by their misusing them, and, instead of taking an occasion from them to praise God, the end they were given them for, they have made use of them as the incentives to their debaucheries and vanities ; thus perverting the lawful use of the creatures, they have made those things help and assist them in vice, which ought to have encouraged and excited them to virtue. There is nothing, in fine, which they have not sacrificed to the gratifying of their senses, and the pampering of their flesh, whilst they have quite neglected to relieve their neighbour, though God has so particularly recommended him to their care. They never complain that they are poor, but to those that are so themselves ; nor do they ever so much as think of paying their debts, unless when any body comes to beg an alms of them ; take them at any other time, and you shall neither find them poor nor in debt.

10. Have a care this be not laid to your charge at the hour of your death. Do not suffer so heavy a burden as this, to be pressing upon you at that time. Consider that the greater the concern is, the more strict account you must give of it. To have received much, and to have made but small acknowledgment of it, is a kind of judgment laid upon you already. It is a great sign of a man's reprobation, when he continues to abuse those favors God Almighty bestows on him. Let us look upon it as the utmost disgrace, that beasts should surpass us in this virtue ; since they requite their benefactors with gratitude, whilst we neglect to do it. If the Ninevites are to rise up in judgment against the Jews, and condemn them for not entering into a state of penance after our Saviour's preaching, let us take care that the same Lord have no reason, at the last day, to condemn us upon the examples of beasts, for taking so little notice of our Benefactor, when they have expressed much love to theirs.