Book I, Part 2, Chapter 8. Of the seventh Privilege of Virtue, viz. the true Liberty which the, Virtuous enjoy, and of the miserable and unaccountable Slavery the Wicked live in

1. From all the above-mentioned privileges, but particularly from the second and fourth, which are the grace of the Holy Ghost and the divine consolation, there arises another extraordinary one, which virtuous men enjoy, and is the true liberty of the soul ; it is what the Son of God brought into the world with him; and it is on this account that he is called the Redeemer of mankind, for having delivered it out of that real and miserable bondage it had so long lived under, and having set it in perfect liberty. This is one of the greatest favors our Saviour has bestowed on us, one of the most remarkable advantages of the gospel, and one of the chief effects of the Holy Ghost. For, as the apostle says, wheresoever the spirit of the Lord resides, there liberty is to be found ; 1 Cor. hi. 17. It is, in fine, one of the noblest rewards God promises those who serve him in this life. And it was this our Saviour himself promises to some persons who had a mind to begin to enter into his service, when he said to them, " If you continue in my word, you shall be my disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free ;" that is to say, shall give you a true liberty. To which they answered : " We are the seed of Abraham, and we have never been slaves to any man ; how sayest thou, You shall be free ? Jesus answered them, Amen, amen, I say unto you, that whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. Now the servant abideth not in the house for ever : but the son abideth for ever. If, therefore, the son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed." John viii. 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36.

2. Our Saviour by these words gives us plainly to understand, that there are two sorts of liberty ; the one false, which, though it looks like liberty, is not so ; the other true, which is what it appears to be. As for the false one, it belongs to those persons who, though their bodies are free, have put their souls under the arbitrary government of every passion ; like Alexander the Great, who, after having made himself master of the whole world, was a slave to his own vices. But the true liberty is enjoyed by them alone, whose souls are free from the yoke of such tyrants, though their bodies may sometimes perhaps be prisoners, and sometimes at large, as was St. Paul's, who, notwithstanding his imprisonment, soared up to heaven in spirit, and by his preaching and doctrine set the whole world free.

The reason why we with so much freedom call this liberty, and not the other, is, because, since of those two principal parts which compose a man, to wit, the body and soul, the soul is beyond all comparison the most noble, and, as it were, man's all ; whereas the body is nothing but the matter and subject, or the case the soul is shut up in ; it necessarily follows, that he who has the best part of him at liberty, may be said to be truly free, whilst he whose better part is under confinement, enjoys but a false liberty, though he has the free disposal of his body, and may carry it where he pleases.

§ I. Of the Slavery of the Wicked. — 3. Should you ask me, Whose slave is he, who is under such confinement? I answer, he is a slave to the most hideous tyrant we can possibly represent to ourselves ; I mean, to sin. For hell's torments being the most abominable thing, sin must of necessity be yet more abominable, inasmuch as these torments are but the effect of it. It is to this the wicked pay their slavish homage, as appears plainly from the words of our Saviour so lately cited : "Whosoever is guilty of sin is a slave to sin ;" John viii. 34. And can a man possibly be oppressed with a more deplorable slavery than this is?

Nor is he a slave to sin only, but, what is still worse, to those who incite him to it, that is,. to the world, the devil, and his own flesh, depraved by sin, and to every disorderly appetite the flesh is the occasion of; for he who is a slave to the son must be a slave to his parents. Now there is none of us but knows, that these three are the parents of sin, and on this account they are styled "the enemies of the soul," because they are so prejudicial to it, as to take it prisoner, and to put it under the power of such a cruel tyrant as sin is.

; 4. But though these three agree in this point, yet there is some kind of a difference in their manner of proceeding ; for the two first make use of the third, which is the flesh, like another Eve, for the deceiving of Adam, or like a spur to drive him on to all manner of mischief. For this reason the apostle calls it sin, as it were by excellence, giving the name of the effect to the cause, 19 N because there is no manner of sin whatever, which it does not tempt us to. The divines, on the same account, term it forties peccati, that is, the bait and the nourishment of sin, because it serves, instead of wool and oil, to keep in and increase the fire of sin. But the name we generally call it by is sensuality, -flesh or concupiscence, which, to speak more plainly, is nothing else, but our sensual appetite, the cause of all our passions, as it is spoiled and corrupted by sin, it being the incentive and provocative, nay, and the very source of all manner of vices. This it is, particularly, that makes our other two enemies employ our sensual appetite as their instrument for the carrying on of the war against us. It was this that gave St. Basil occasion to say, " that our own desires are the chief arms with which the devil lights against us : because the immoderate affection we have for whatever we desire, makes us endeavor to possess it right or wrong, and break through all that lies in our way, though forbid by the law of God; and from hence all sins take their rise and origin ;" St. Bas. Horn. 23. de non adher. reb. saecularibus.

5. This appetite is one of the greatest tyrants the wicked are subject to, and by which, the apostle says, they are made slaves ; and, though he calls them slaves, he does not mean that they have lost that free-will with which they wTere created ; because this never wras nor ever will be lost, as to its essence, though man commit ever so many sins ; but that sin, on the other side, has so weakened this free-will, and on the other lent such forces to the appetite, that the stronger, generally speaking, prevails over the weaker.

Besides, what greater subject of grief can we have than to see man, whose soul is created according to God's own image, who is enlightened from heaven, and has an understanding so subtile as to fly above all created beings, and to contemplate God himself ; it is, I say, a deplorable thing to consider that this soul should take no notice of all these noble qualities, but let herself be governed by the blind impulse of her beastly appetite, which has been corrupted by sin, and hurried on by the devil ? What must a man expect from such a government, and from such directions, but clangers, calamities, and all kinds of unparalleled misfortunes ?

6. I will give you a clear prospect of the deformity of this slavery, by an example which comes home to our present business. Represent to yourself a man married to a woman that is as noble, as beautiful and as prudent as possibly woman can be ; and that this fortunate man should, at the same time, have a servant, a most deformed creature, and a mere sorceress, who, envying her master's happiness, should give him a potion, so to pervert all his senses, that, despising his wife, and shutting her up in some corner of the house, he should give himself over to this lewd servant of his, make her the companion of his bed, and of all his pleas-the sinner's guide. . 147 u res ; should consult her on the management of his affairs and family, and follow her advice in all things ; nay, to please her, should, at her command, squander away his whole estate in entertainments, feasting, revelling and such kind of delights; and should, besides all this, come to such a pitch of madness as to oblige his wife to wait on this wicked woman, and to obey all her commands. Can any one persuade himself a man should ever be guilty of such folly? Who would not be astonished at such madness? What indignation would he be in against this wicked woman, what pity would he take on this poor injured lady, and how would he cry out against this blind and senseless husband ? We should look on this action as base and infamous, and yet it is nothing in comparison of what we are now treating of; for you are to understand that we ourselves have these two different women, to wit, the spirit and the flesh, within our own souls, which the divines, in other terms, call the superior and the inferior part ; the superior part of our soul is that in which reside the will and reason, which is that natural light God bestowed on us at our creation. This reason is so beautiful and noble that it makes man like God, capable of enjoying him, and unites him by a brotherly love to the very angels. It is the noble woman to whom God has married man, that they may live together, and that he may follow its counsel and actions in all things ; that is to say, that he may let himself be guided by that celestial light, which is reason. But as for the inferior part of the soul, it is taken up by the sensual appetite, which we have already spoken of, and which has been given us for no other end but the desiring of things necessary for the support of our lives, and for the preservation of mankind. But this is to be done according to the rule which reason prescribes, as a good steward would do, who makes no provision at all but what his master bids him. This appetite, therefore, is the slave we have all this while been treating ; nor is it fit to be a guide, because it wants the light of reason, and on that account must itself be directed by another. But man, on the contrary, has been so unhappy as to place such an immoderate affection on, and to £;ive himself over entirely to, the satisfying of this wicked woman'u lusts, that he has taken no notice of the suggestions of reason, by which he should have guided himself, but has in all things followed the directions of his appetite, and made it his whole business to satisfy every irregular desire. For we see there are some men so sensual, so unruly, and so abandoned to the desires of their own hearts, that there is scarce any thing they spropose but immediately they, like beasts, pursue it, without any lespect either to the laws of justice or of reason. And what is this but giving themselves up to the flesh, which is the deformed, loathsome slave, and following all those sensual pleasures she hasan inclination to, and despising the advice of that noble and lawful wife, which is our reason ?

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148 the signer's guide.

7. But, what is still more intolerable, they are not satisfied with using this lady so basely, but will force her to serve this wretched slave, and to make it her whole business, day and night, to think of, and to procure whatever may serve for the satisfying of her base desires. For when a man employs all his wit "and senses about nothing in the world but inventing new fashions in his dress, in his buildings, and in his table and diet, for the pleasing of his palate, in the furniture of his house, and in continually thinking of new means and devices for raising up money to compass these things ; what does he else but take the soul off from those spiritual exercises which are more suitable to the excellence of her nature, and make her a mere drudge to that creature who ought to have done the same offices for her ? When a man that is passionately in love with a woman, uses all the wit he has in writing love-letters, and in composing songs and poems, and such other practices as are usual in those cases ; what does he in all this but make the mistress wait on the maid, by employing this divine light in contriving means to satisfy the impure desires of the flesh ? When king David used so many slights to cover the sin he had committed in secret with Bathsheba ; sending for her husband out of the camp, inviting him to supper, making him drunk, and afterwards giving him letters to the camp, with private orders to Joab to put him in the very heat of the engagement, that so the innocent man might be taken out of the way (2 Kings xi.) ; who was contriver of this chain of wickedness but reason and the understanding ? And who was it that tempted them to it but the wicked flesh, to cloak her fault, and to enjoy her delights with more security ? Seneca, though a heathen and a philosopher too, blushed at these things ; and, therefore, used to say, "It is beneath me, who have been born to something that is great, to be a slave to my own flesh ;" Sen. Epist. 65. If we should be astonished at the stupidity of that man so bewitched, how much more reason have we to be concerned at this disorder, which is the occasion of our being deprived of much greater benefits, and of our falling into more deplorable misfortunes ?

8. Now, though this be so frequent and so monstrous a disorder, we take little notice of it, and no one is surprised at it, because the world is so disorderly. " For," as St. Bernard says, " we are not sensible of the stench of our crimes, because the number of them is so great ;" Bern. Ep. ad Fratres de Monte Dei. For, as no one is affronted to be called a Moor in those countries WThere every one is as black as himself; and as no one thinks it a disgrace to be drunk, notwithstanding the filthiness of the sin, where drunkenness is in fashion ; so, this disorder being general, there is scarce any one that looks on it as he ought to do. From what has been said, we may .see how unhappy a slavery this is; and not only that, but what dreadful torments man must expect in punishment of his sins, which have delivered up so noble a creature into the hands of so cruel a tyrant. The author of Ecclesiasticus looked on it as such, when he prayed to God " that he would deliver him from the inordinate desires of sensuality, and from the concupiscence of the flesh ; and that he would not give him over to a shameless and unbridled soul" (Eccl. xxiii. 6) ; as if he begged not to be delivered up into the hands of some cruel tyrant or executioner, looking on his irregular appetite as such.

§ II. — 9. If you would now be acquainted with the power of this tyrant, you may easily gather it, by observing what effects he has wrought in the world in all ages. I will not, to this purpose, represent to you the fictions of the poets, or set before you the example of their famous Hercules, who, after having killed or tamed all the monsters in the world, was himself at last so subdued by the unchaste love of a woman as to lay down his club for a distaff, and to leave his adventures to sit and spin amongst a company of maids in compliance to his haughty mistress's commands. It is a pretty invention of the poets, to show what arbitrary power this passion exercises over us. Nor will I allege the authority of the Holy Scripture in proof of this truth ; nor bring the example of Solomon, a man of such extraordinary wisdom and sanctity at one time, whilst at another he was prostrating himself before his idols, and building temples to them, in complaisance to his concubines ; 3 Kings xi. It is an example, indeed, that comes very home to our present purpose, but we will only take notice of those instances that occur to us daily. Consider, therefore, what dangers an adulteress exposes herself to, for the satisfying of an inordinate appetite. I choose this passion before any of the rest, that by this you may discover the force of the other. She knows that, should her husband surprise her in the crime, she is a dead woman, and that she shall in one moment lose her life, her honor, her riches and her soul, nay, and whatever else she is capable of losing, either in this world or in the next, which is the greatest loss can be sustained. She knows that, besides all this, she shall disgrace her children and her whole family, and that she shall herself find subject of eternal sorrow ; and yet, such is the force of this passion, or rather such is the tyrant, that it makes her break through all these difficulties, and swallow down so many bitter draughts so easily, for the executing all it commands her. Was there ever any master so cruel as to expose even his slave to so much danger, for the performance of his orders ? Can you think of any slavery more hard and miserable than this?

10. This is the state the wicked generally live in, according to the royal prophet's remark, when he says, " They are seated in darkness and in the shadow of death ; they suffer hunger, and are bound down with chains of iron ;" Ps. cvi. 10. What can the prophet means by this darkness, but the dark blindness the wicked live in, who neither know themselves nor God as they ought to do, nor understand what it is they live for, or what is the end of their creation. They are unacquainted with the vanity of what they love, and are not sensible of the slavery with which they are oppressed. And what are the chains that bind them down but the force of those irregular affections, by which their hearts are so close linked to all things they have such an unlawful love for ? And what can this hunger signify but the insatiable desire they have of many things which there is no possibility of obtaining ? Is there any slavery so troublesome as this ?

11. Let us take another example yet of this same passion. Cast your eyes on David's eldest son Ammon, who, as soon as ever he beheld his sister Thamar with a wanton eye, was so blinded, so fettered, and so tormented with this hunger, that he could neither eat, drink nor take any rest ; and this passion cast him into such a dangerous sickness, that he had like to have lost his life. Judge now, how strong those chains of love and fear, with which his heart was tied down, must needs have been, since tliey made so great an impression on all the parts of his body, as to throw him into so violent a distemper ; and that you may not imagine him to be cured by the enjoyment of his desire, consider that he had no sooner satisfied his wish, but his distemper grew more violent, "so that," as the Scripture says, "he hated his sister much worse than he had ever loved her before ;" 2 Kings xiii. 15. Thus the accomplishing of his wicked desire could not free him from his passion, but only turned one into another much worse. Now what tyrant in the world has so many ways of treating his slaves as sin has ?

12. Such is the condition of all those, who are under the tyrannical government of this vice ; for we can scarcely say they are their own masters, since they neither can eat nor drink but when it pleases; they discourse and think of nothing else; it is the subject of their dreams, whilst, at the same time, neither the fear of God, nor the interest of their own souls, nor heaven, hell, death or judgment, nay, very often, neither life itself, nor their honor, which they have such a tender concern. for, are able to turn them out of the road, or to break the chain. What shall I say of the jealousies, suspicions, fears and sudden passions these unhappy wretches are perpetually racked with ? What dangers do they expose themselves to ! And what continual hazards do they run of losing both their lives and souls, for the enjoying of their filthy pleasures ! Can any tyrant exercise so much cruelty on the bodies of his slaves, as this vice does on the very hearts of those that give themselves over to it? For no slave is so much taken up with his master's business, but he has some time, either in day or night, to take a little ease or rest. But such is the nature of this vice, and others like it, that, as soon as ever they take possession of a heart, they grow so sovereign and arbitrary, that man has scarce either power, means, time or wit to do any thing else. So that Ecclesiasticus had a great deal of reason to say, " That wine and women make even wise men fools;" Eccl. xix. 2. Because, let a man be ever so wise, he is as much besotted with this vice as he is with wine, and is as little his own master, so that he can do nothing that becomes a rational creature. The prince of poets, to convince us of this truth, gives us a character of the famous queen Dido, who, at the very moment that she fell in love with iEneas, laid aside all her public employments, and went no further in the building of her city ; the walls and fortifications were carried up no higher ; there was no training up youth in military discipline, no care about securing the haven, or furnishing the arsenal for the defence of their country ; Virg. JEn. Lib. 4. And the reason the poet gives for it is because this tyrant had seized on all the thoughts of this woman, so as to leave her unfit for any thing else but the indulging of this passion, a passion so uncontrollable, and so arbitrary, that when it has once possession of a heart, it takes the power of doing any thing else away from it. O cruel and barbarous vice! the very disturber and destroyer of whole states and kingdoms, the ruin of all that is good and honorable, the plague of virtue, the cloud that hangs over and darkens the wits of ingenious men, the enchantress of the soul, that makes fools of wise men, and makes sots and dotards of old men, that inflames and excites the boiling passions of youth, and that, in fine, is the common bane and destruction of mankind !

13. Nor is it this vice alone that is so tyrannical ; all the rest are, in their different ways, as cruel and as arbitrary. Consider but the proud and ambitious man, who aims at nothing but respect, and walks blindly and darkly in the smoke of honors. See how this passion tyrannizes over him ; with what greediness he catches at glory, what pains he takes to acquire it, directing every action of his life to this end : his servants, his retinue, his dress, his table, his chamber, his furniture, his attendants, his posture, his gait, his mien, his discourse, his looks, in fine, all he does, tends this way, because it is done so as it may gain him most esteem, and procure him the empty puff and blast of honor ; so that, if you look narrowly into him, you will find, that what he does or says is a bait for popular applause and commendation. If we wonder at the folly of Domitian the emperor, for hunting after flies with a bodkin in his hand, when he had nothing else to do, how much more should we admire the folly of the wretched ambitious man, who not only spends some spare time, but runs out his whole life in hunting after the smoke of worldly vanity ? It is this makes the unhappy man do nothing he has a mind to do : he neither dresses himself according to his own fancy, nor goes where he himself would go ; since he very often neglects even going to church, and does not care to converse with virtuous persons, for fear the world, whose slave he is, should reflect upon him. And what is yet worse, this vice makes him live above what he has, and by that means reduces him to a thousand necessities, which ruin his soul, and are very often the eternal destruction of his posterity, who have no other inheritance left them by him, but his debts to discharge, and his follies to imitate. Can such persons as these deserve any easier punishment than that, they say, a certain king used to inflict on an ambitious man, which was, to stifle him with smoke, saying, it was no more than justice that he should be condemned to die by smoke, for having spent all his life in seeking after smoke and wind. What misery can be greater than this ?

14. What shall I say of the greedy covetous man, who is not only a slave to, but even an idolater of, his money? While he serves, adores and obeys in every thing it commands him ; for this he fasts so rigorously, as scarce to allow himself a morsel of bread ; this treasure, in fine, he loves more than he loves God, whom he makes no scruple to offend for the least profit. This is his comfort, his glory, his hope, the continual subject of all his thoughts, and the object of his love ; with it he goes to sleep, with it he rises, employs his whole life about it, and is continually finding out new ways to improve it, neglecting at the same time and forgetting himself and every thing else. Can we call such a man the master of his money, to dispose of it as he has a mind ; or ought we not rather to say, that, instead of his money being a slave to him, he becomes a slave to his money, considering himself, as it were, made for his money, and not his money for him ? Neglecting his belly and his very soul, to give himself entirely to it ?

15. Can there be a harder slavery than this ? For if we call that man a prisoner who is clapped up into a dungeon, or loaded with chains and irons, what better name can we give him who has his soul oppressed and charged with the disorderly affection of what he loves ? For when a man is once come to this degree, he has not any one power of his soul that enjoys a perfect liberty ; he is not his own master, but his slave, whom he has so passionate a love for. For wheresoever his love is, there his heart will be, though still he does not lose his free-wTill. Nor does it signify any thing what chains you are tied down with, if the nobler part of you is made a prisoner ; nor does your consenting to your imprisonment make your confinement less, nay, on the contrary, if it be a true prison, the more voluntary it is, the more dangerous it will be, as we see in poison, which, if pure, is no less hurtful, because it is sweet: certainly there can be no straiter the sinnek's guide. 153 prison than that you are thus confined to, which makes you turn your eyes away from God, truth, honesty, and the laws of justice, and lords it over you at such a rate, that, as a drunken man is not his own master, but a slave to his liquor, so he that is oppressed with this slavery is no longer in his own power, but at the command of his passion, though his free-will is yet remaining Now, if imprisonment be a torment, what greater torment can there be, than that which one of these miserable men endures, by continually desiring what he knows he can never obtain, and yet he cannot forbear or curb his desires, so that he is reduced to such circumstances, that he knows not which way to turn himself. And, being in this perplexity and trouble, he is forced to make use of the words of a certain poet to an ill-natured lewd woman : " I love you and I hate you at the same time ; and if you ask me the reason of it, it is because I can neither live with you nor without you." But if at any time he endeavors to break these chains, and to overcome his passions, he immediately finds such resistance, that he very often despairs of obtaining the victory, and returns to his chains and slavery again. Do not you think, after all this, that we may very well be allowed to call this state a torment and captivity ?

16. If these prisoners had but one chain to hold them, their misery would be much less, for there were some hope of breaking a single bond, or overcoming one enemy alone. But how miserable must we imagine their condition to be, when we consider what a great number of passions, like so many fetters, keep down these unhappy creatures? For man's life lying open to so many necessities, and every necessity exciting some new desire, and adding, as it were, another link to the chain, it follows, that he who has a great many passions must have but very little command of his own heart; but still this is more in some persons than in others ; for some men's apprehension is naturally so tenacious that they can scarce ever put from them any thing that has once taken possession of their imagination ; others are of a melancholy temper, which makes them strong and violent in their desires; and others are mean-spirited, who look on all things, though ever so inconsiderable, as great, and worthy to be coveted, for every little thing seems great to a poor soul ; others are naturally violent in whatever they desire, as generally women are ; " who," as a philosopher observes, " passionately love or hate, because there is no medium in their affections." All these passions exercise continual cruelties on those that are subject to them : and now, if the misery of being bound with but one chain, and of serving only one master, be so great, how miserable must that man's condition be, who is held by so many chains, and has such a great number of masters to command him as the wicked man has ! for every passion and vice he is subject to, is a distinct master, and requires his obedience and submission.

Can there be any greater misery than this ? For if the dignity of man, as man, depends on two things, viz. reason and freewill, what can be more opposite, either to the one or the other, than passion is, which, at the same time blinds the reason and drags away the free-will along with it ? By which you may perceive what prejudice we are apt to receive from the least irregular affection, since it turns a man out of the throne of his majesty, obscures his reason, and perverts his free-will, without which two, man is no longer a reasonable creature, but a mere brute. See, here, the unhappy slavery the wicked are reduced to, as men, that will neither take notice of the laws or inspirations of God, nor the dictates of their own reason, but are hurried away by the impulse of their own passions and appetites.

§ III. Of the Liberty virtuous Men enjoy. — 17. This is the cruel slavery the Son of God came down from heaven to deliver us from ; and it is this liberty and victory Isaias so highly commends, when he says, il Those whom thou hast redeemed shall rejoice in thee, O Lord, as the husbandmen do in time of harvest, and as conquerors do after they have taken a prey, and are dividing the spoils. For thou hast taken away the yoke which oppressed them, and the rod which struck them, and delivered them from the sceptre of this tyrant, who has laid very heavy taxes upon them." Isa. ix. 3, 4. All these names of yoke, of rod, and sceptre, agree very well with the tyrannical power of our passions and appetites, because the devil, who is the prince of this world, makes use of them as very proper instruments to work us into an allegiance to his tyranny, and into a subjection to sin. From this tyranny and subjection the Son of God has delivered us by the superabundance of his grace, which the sacrifice he made of himself on the cross has purchased for us. For which reason the apostle says, " that our old man has been crucified with him" (Rom. vi. 6) ; meaning here, by " the old man," our sensual appetite, which became disorderly by the sin of our first parents. And the reason why our old man has been crucified with him is, because he, by the merit of his passion, has obtained grace N for us, whereby we may subdue this tyrant, and make him suffer the same punishment he has made us to suffer, thus crucifying him who before crucified us, and bringing him into slavery, under whose slavery we have been so long groaning. Thus, what the prophet Isaias foretold in another place, has come to pass : " They shall take those who took them before, and shall bring those that have oppressed them under their subjection;" Isa. xiv. 2. For our sensual appetite, before the reign of grace, tyrannized over our understanding, and made it a slave to all its unlawful desires; but as soon as ever grace came in to its succor, it grew so strong as to prevail against this tyrant, and make it submit to what reason prescribed.

18. This subduing of the appetite to reason has been, in a particular manner, represented to us, by the death of Adonibezech, king of Jerusalem, who was put to death by the children of Israel, after they had first cut off his fingers and toes. This unhappy prince, seeing himself in this condition, and calling to mind the cruelties he had before exercised on others, was heard to say, "Threescore and ten kings, whose fingers and toes I have cut off, have picked up the scraps that have fallen under my table ; and now I see that God deals with me just as I have dealt with them;" Jud. i. 7. After which the Scripture adds, that he was carried in this condition to Jerusalem, and died there. This cruel tyrant is the figure of this world, which, before the Son of God came down from heaven, cut off the hands and feet of almost all men in general, by this means maiming and putting them out of the capacity of serving God, cutting off their hands to hinder them from doing any good, and their feet to prevent them from so much as desiring it; and, besides all this, reducing them to the necessity of living on the poor scraps that fell under his table, that is, the sensual pleasures of the world, wherewith this wicked prince maintains his servants. There is much reason for calling them scraps, and not pieces of bread, because this tyrant is so niggardly, in distributing these crumbs and fragments, that he never gives enough to satisfy their appetite. But after our Saviour came into the world, he made this tyrant undergo the same torments he had put others to before, cutting off his hands and feet, that is, defeating all his forces. The Scripture expressly declares, that Adonibezech died in Jerusalem, because this was the place where our Saviour, by death, destroyed the prince of this world, and where, dying on the cross, he crucified this tyrant, binding him hand and foot, and taking all his power from him. And, therefore, immediately after his most sacred passion, men began to triumph and insult over this tyrant, and so to lord it over the world, the devil and the flesh, with all its concupiscences, that neither all the tortures they could be threatened with on the one side, nor all the pleasures that could be proposed to them on the other, were able to make them commit a mortal sin.

§ IV. Of the Causes whence this Liberty proceeds. — 19. You will ask, perhaps, whence this great victory and liberty proceeds ; to which I answer, that next to God, it proceeds immediately, as I have said already, from his grace, which, by the means of those virtues it inspires, so moderates the heat of our passions, as not to let them get the better of reason. So that as sorcerers can, by certain spells, enchant snakes, that they should do no hurt, without killing them or taking away their venom, so the grace of God charms all the venomous serpents of our passions ; and though it still leaves them their natural being in perfect vigor, yet they can do us no hurt with their poison, because they are not capable, as they were before, to infect our lives. This was meant by the prophet Isaias, when he said, " The sucking child shall sport himself over the hole of an asp, and he that is weaned shall put his hand into the basilisk's den They shall not hurt nor kill any body in all my holy mountain, because the earth shall be as full of knowledge of the Lord as the sea is of the waters that cover it." Isa. xi. 8, 9. It is plain the prophet does not speak here of visible but of invisible serpents, which are nothing but our own passions and bad inclinations, which, wdien once they break out, are enough to corrupt the whole world ; nor does he speak of corporal children, but of the spiritual; and those he calls "sucking children" are such as are but just beginning to serve God, and, therefore," must be fed with milk; but those that are weaned are such as have made a greater progress, and can go alone, and eat bread and stronger meats. The prophet, therefore, speaking of both of them, says of the former, that they shall be glad to see, notwithstanding they are perpetually in the very midst of these invisible serpents, that the grace of God will secure them from receiving any considerable hurt, by not permitting them to consent in any manner to sin. As . for the latter, those I mean, that are already weaned, and have advanced further in the way of God, he says they shall put their hands into the very dens of basilisks, which is as much as to say, that God will preserve them even in their greatest dangers ; so that we see these words of the psalmist verified in them : " You shall walk over the asp and the basilisk, and you shall tread upon the lion and the dragon ;" Ps. xc. 13. These are they who shall receive no harm at all, though they put their hands into a basilisk's den, because these serpents shall be so charmed by the abundance of God's grace, spreading itself over the whole face of the earth, that they should not do any hurt to the children of God.

20. St. Paul explains this much more clearly, and without any kind of metaphor; for after having discoursed very fully of the tyranny our irregular affections and our flesh exercise over us, he cries out at last, "Unhappy man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?" Rom. vii. 24. But he himself immediately answers his own question briefly, and says, " The grace of God which is given us by Jesus Christ our Lord ;" ver. 25. What he means here, by " the body of death," is not this body of ours, that is subject to a natural death, which we all of us look for, but what he himself, in another place, calls " the body of sin" (Rom. vi. 6), that is, our depraved appetite, from which proceed all inordinate affections, which are continually enticing to sin, just as the members do from the body ; and this is the body the apostle says, the grace that is given us through Jesus Christ delivers us from, as from a cruel tyrant.

21. The second, and that a main cause of this liberty, is the greatness of that joy, and of those spiritual consolations, which the virtuous enjoy, as we have approved already. By these all their desires are so fully satisfied, that they easily overcome and dismiss all their irregular appetites; and having found out this source of all that is good and pleasant, they covet no other happiness, as our Saviour himself declared to the Samaritan woman, when he told her, " Whosoever shall drink of the water which I shall give him," which is the grace of God, " shall never thirst again ;" John iv. 13. St. Gregory assures us of the same thing, in one of his Homilies, in these words : " He who is once thoroughly acquainted with the sweetness of a heavenly life, immediately bids adieu to all those things he had a sensual love for before. He forsakes all he is in possession of, he distributes liberally all his treasures, his heart is inflamed with the desire of heaven, there is nothing on earth can please him, and whatever he before thought beautiful and lovely, he now accounts deformed and hideous, because this precious jewel is the only thing that shines and glitters to the eyes of his soul." For when the vessel of our heart is full of this liquor, and the thirst of our soul is quenched with the same, it has no occasion to run after the fleeting and vain pleasures of this life, but lives free from the slavery of all those affections, which base earthly pleasures excited in her ; because where there is no love, there can be no slavery : and thus the heart that has found him, who is the Lord of all things, finds itself to be, in some measure, Lord of all things, there being no other solid good, which it does not meet with in this one good.

22. Add to these- two divine favors, which assist us so much in the regaining of our liberty, the pains virtuous men take to subdue the flesh to the spirit, and to make the passions submit to reason. By this means they gradually mortify their passions, obtain a habit of virtue, and lay aside that hate and violence which used to disturb them before. "For if," as St. Chrysostom says, " the wildest beasts that are, by living amongst men, come, in time, to lose their natural fierceness, and to grow tame and gentle, by observing the same qualities in men ;" which gave a poet occasion to say, that time and custom bring lions under obedience ; what wonder is it, that our passions, if we but accustom them to submit to reason, should, by degrees, become tame and rational, that is, should, in some manner, partake of the quality of the spirit and of reason, and love nothing more than to do as they do ? Now, if this may be done only by use and custom, how much sooner and more efficaciously must it of necessity be effected, when use and custom are backed by grace?

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23. Hence it is, that those who serve God feel very oft; more sensible pleasure and satisfaction, if I may so term it, in their recollection, silence, reading, prayers, meditations, and in such other exercises, than they could find in hunting, gaming and conversation, or in any other worldly recreations and di sion, which they look on as mere torments, insomuch that the flesh itself begins now to hate what it loved before, and to he pleased with what it formerly loathed. All this is so true, u that the inferior part of our souls," as St. Bona venture observes, in the preface of his Incentive to the Love of God, " is very often so delighted in prayer, and in conversing with God, that it is no small torment to it. when there is any, though ever so just a cause, that it obliges it to break off these exercises." And this is what the royal prophet meant, when he said, " I will praise the Lord, because- he has given me understanding, and also because my reins have reproved me" (Ps. xv. 7) ; or, as another translation has it, " have instructed me all the night long." This is, without doubt, a particular favor of the Almighty's grace, because the expositors of the Holy Scriptures understand in this place, by the reins, all the inward affections and motions of man ; which, as we have said already, are the general incentives to sin. But j by virtue of this grace, they are very often so far from stirring us up to sin, as they used to do, or from fighting for the devil, whose service they were engaged in before, that, on the contrary, they forward us in virtue, and, aspiring to Jesus Christ, turn their arms against the common enemy : though this may be seen in all the exercises of a spiritual life, it appears much more plainly in our sorrow and contrition for our sins, wherein the inferior part of the soul has its share, afflicting itself and shedding tears for them. This is the reason of David's saying, " that his reins reproved him in the night-time;" because then," the day being ended, the just are used to examine their consciences, and to bewail whatever they have offended in ; and then it was that he himself, as he says in another place, swept his spirit by this exercise ; Fs. lxxxi. 7. It was in the night, I say, that his reins reproved him, because the sorrow which he felt in this part of his soul, for having offended God, was a continual correction, to keep him from falling into those sins again, which had troubled him so much. On which account he, with a great deal of justice, thanks God, because not only the superior part of his soul, which is the seat of reason, invited him to good, but even the inferior part too, which is used, for the most" part, to encourage us to evil: though all this really true, and one of the greatest benefits we receive from Chr redemption, who redeemed us most fully and gave us perfect liberty, yet we ought not to take occasion from hence to be negligent, nor trust too much to our flesh, be it ever so mortified, during the course of this mortal fife.

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24. These, therefore, arc the chief causes of this extraordinary liberty. Ami, amongst Several other effects it produces, one is the new knowledge we haw of God, and the confirming us in ilic faith and religion we profess; and, as God himself openly dei lares to us, by the prophet Iv/ekiel (ch. xxxiv. 27), saying, " All Inen shall know that 1 am the Lord, when I shall break the chains of their yokes, and shall deliver them from the hands of those that tyrannize over them." We have said already that this yoke was our sensuality, or our inordinate affection for sin, which dwells within our flesh, and which oppresses us and makes us subject to sin. The chains of this yoke are all those bad inclinations by which the devil catches hold of us and draws us after him; now these bad inclinations are so much the more efficacious, as they have been fortified by Yi longer habit. St. Augustine, in his own confessions, had sufficient experience of this; for he says, " I was bound not with another's fetters, but those of my own hard will and iron, which the enemy had in his power, and ot' which he made a chain for me, and tied me down with the same. For my perverse will has been the cause of my vicious desires; I contracte 1 a vicious habit, which, for want of being resisted, grew into a necessity ; with all which, as with so many links that have gone towards the making of the chain, I have been tied down, and reduced to the utmost hardship." Conf. L. 8. c. 5. When a man finds himself, as this saint did, to have been groaning for some time under slavery, and after having made several attempts to get out of it, perceives his escape so difficult, yet, when he addresses himself to God, sees all his chains broken, his passions mortified, himself at liberty and master of his own appetites, with the yoke that he pressed so heavily on his shoulders lying now under his feet, who but God can he imagine has broken his fetters, and eased him of the weight that had so long galled his neck ? What has he to do but to praise God with the royal prophet, and to cry out with him, " O Lord, thou hast broken my chains ; I will offer up a sacrifice of praise to thee, and will cail upon thy holy name:" Ps. cxv. 8.