victory slowly 5. These thoughts will beget in thee a generous though thy spirit and a constant heart to resist and fight seems to be with courage. Therefore, though the victory achieved. comes slowly on, believe firmly that this deferring is either to free thy soul from secret pride, and preserve thee in true humility, or else to perfect thee in virtue, and to teach thee to become a tried soldier, by these long-continued conflicts; or surely, for some other good of thine, which thy Lord then conceals from thee, for thy greater merit and improvement. exhorta 6. Go on, therefore, O my dearly beloved, and enter A final these lists with a cheerful and heroic mind, lest tion. thou seem ungrateful to thy loving Lord God, Who so much cared for thy good that He suffered death for thy sake. And attend carefully to every counsel and command of thy Captain Christ Jesus, that thou mayest totally rout and ruin all thine enemies. For if thou permittest but one only to live and lurk in thy soul, it will be as a moat in thy eye, and as a lance in thy bowels, and prove a perpetual impediment in the progress of so glorious a victory. To him that overcometh I will give to eat of the tree of life (Apoc. ii. 7). Thou shalt fight against them until thou hast utterly destroyed them (1 Kings xv. 18). In omnibus glorificetur Deus. First Treatise. OF THE DISCOVERY OF OUR ENEMIES' AMBUSCADES, ENABLING THE CHRISTIAN WARRIOR TO FORESEE AND AVOID THEM. They prepared a snare for my feet (Psalm lvi. 7); but THE FIRST AMBUSH. SELF-LOVE. 1. THIS, in St. Austin's* opinion, is the root of all sin; and we may fitly add and vouch it to be the Self-love is the root and cause proficiency of perfec cause of all inproficiency in the way of perfec- of all sin tion. For our subtle nature so constantly seeks of all inherself in all her actions and omissions, that in the way even the spiritual man, who treads in the pleasant paths of piety, is subject to be drawn into this dangerous ambush. He will find upon due examination tion. 'If by loving himself man is lost, surely by denying himself he is found. The first ruin of man was the love of himself. For if he had not loved himself, if he had preferred God to himself, he would have been willing to be ever subject unto God, and would not have been turned unto the neglect of His will, and the performing of his own will. For this is to love one's self, to wish to do one's own will. Prefer to this God's will; learn to love thyself by not loving thyself. For that we may know that it is a vice to love one's self, the Apostle speaks thus: Men shall be lovers of themselves (2 Tim. iii. 2). And can he who loves himself have any sure trust in himself? No; for he begins to love himself by forsaking God, and is driven away from himself to love those things which are outside of himself; and to such a degree that when the said Apostle saith, Men shall be lovers of themselves, he immediately adds: covetous.' St. Augus. Hom. in N. T. xcvi. See also De Lib. Arbit. iii. § 48; Confessiones, lib. iii. cap. viii. some sinister intention and self-interest creeping in and corrupting his sincerest endeavours; and perceive, unless highly illuminated, that there is more of private commodity than pure and perfect charity in his most transcendant and heroic exercises.* 2. Who is not generally more diligent in the per Few are found free from it. formance of his duty for the fear of hell and hope of heaven than for the sole and substantial love of his Creator? Who hath not rather some small clause and secret condition of self-interest in his actions than the only fulfilling of God's holy will, and the following of His divine inspirations? Whom shall we find, though they be never so great pretenders to perfection, so totally disentangled from the net of selflove, that they neither hover after human respects and praises nor look upon rewards or punishments, nor overvalue their own ways and exercises, nor solace themselves with the sweets of sensible devotion, nor pride themselves upon their high-towering contemplations and raptures into God's immediate perfections; nor, finally, dress up devotion after the pattern of their own passions, and so fall in love with their own conceptions, and make to themselves in Bethel golden calves, instead of the cherubim in Jerusalem? Whose will is so truly divested of all self as to remain untouched, unmoved, undisquieted, resolute, and resigned in all temporal chances and changes, and in all spiritual dryness, desolation, dereliction, and affliction whatsoever ? * Read chapter ii. of the Conflict. † 3 Kings xii. 28. |