My God, my God, the God of order, but yet not of ambition, who assignest
place to every one, but not contention for place, when shall it be thy
pleasure to put an end to all these quarrels for spiritual precedences?
When shall men leave their uncharitable disputations, which is to take
place, faith or repentance, and which, when we consider faith and works?
The head and the hand too are required to a perfect natural man;
counsel and action too, to a perfect civil man; faith and works too, to
him that is perfectly spiritual. But because it is easily said, I
believe, and because it doth not easily lie in proof, nor is easily
demonstrable by any evidence taken from my heart (for who sees that, who
searches those rolls?) whether I do believe or no, is it not therefore,
O my God, that thou dost so frequently, so earnestly, refer us to the
hand, to the observation of actions? There is a little suspicion, a
little imputation laid upon over-tedious and dilatory counsels. Many
good occasions slip away in long consultations; and it may be a degree
of sloth, to be too long in mending nets, though that must be done. _He
that observeth the wind shall not sow, and he that regardeth the clouds
shall not reap_;[286] that is, he that is too dilatory, too
superstitious in these observations, and studies but the excuse of his
own idleness in them; but that which the same wise and royal servant of
thine says in another place, all accept, and ask no comment upon it, _He
becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand, but the hand of the
diligent maketh rich_;[287] all evil imputed to the absence, all good
attributed to the presence of the hand. I know, my God (and I bless thy
name for knowing it, for all good knowledge is from thee), that thou
considerest the heart; but thou takest not off thine eye till thou come
to the hand. Nay, my God, doth not thy Spirit intimate that thou
beginnest where we begin (at least, that thou allowest us to begin
there), when thou orderest thine own answer to thine own question, _Who
shall ascend into the hill of the Lord_? thus, _He that hath clean
hands, and a pure heart_?[288] Dost thou not (at least) send us first to
the hand? And is not the work of their hands that declaration of their
holy zeal, in the present execution of manifest idolators, called a
consecration of themselves,[289] by thy Holy Spirit? Their hands are
called all themselves; for even counsel itself goes under that name in
thy word, who knowest best how to give right names: because the counsel
of the priests assisted David,[290] Saul says the hand of the priest is
with David. And that which is often said by Moses, is very often
repeated by thy other prophets, _These and these things the Lord
spake_,[291] and _the Lord said_, and _the Lord commanded_, not by the
counsels, not by the voice, but by the _hand of Moses_, and by the _hand
of the prophets_. Evermore we are referred for our evidence of others,
and of ourselves, to the hand, to action, to works. There is something
before it, believing; and there is something after it, suffering; but in
the most eminent, and obvious, and conspicuous place stands doing. Why
then, O my God, my blessed God, in the ways of my spiritual strength,
come I so slow to action? I was whipped by thy rod, before I came to
consultation, to consider my state; and shall I go no farther? As he
that would describe a circle in paper, if he have brought that circle
within one inch of finishing, yet if he remove his compass he cannot
make it up a perfect circle except he fall to work again, to find out
the same centre, so, though setting that foot of my compass upon thee, I
have gone so far as to the consideration of myself, yet if I depart from
thee, my centre, all is imperfect. This proceeding to action, therefore,
is a returning to thee, and a working upon myself by thy physic, by thy
purgative physic, a free and entire evacuation of my soul by confession.
The working of purgative physic is violent and contrary to nature. O
Lord, I decline not this potion of confession, however it may be
contrary to a natural man. To take physic, and not according to the
right method, is dangerous.[292] O Lord, I decline not that method in
this physic, in things that burthen my conscience, to make my confession
to him, into whose hands thou hast put the power of absolution. I know
that "physic may be made so pleasant as that it may easily be taken; but
not so pleasant as the virtue and nature of the medicine be
extinguished."[293] I know I am not submitted to such a confession as is
a rack and torture of the conscience; but I know I am not exempt from
all. If it were merely problematical, left merely indifferent whether we
should take this physic, use this confession, or no, a great physician
acknowledges this to have been his practice, to minister to many things
which he was not sure would do good, but never any other thing but such
as he was sure would do no harm.[294] The use of this spiritual physic
can certainly do no harm; and the church hath always thought that it
might, and, doubtless, many humble souls have found, that it hath done
them good. _I will therefore take the cup of salvation, and call upon
thy name._[295] I will find this cup of compunction as full as I have
formerly filled the cups of worldly confections, that so I may escape
the cup of malediction and irrecoverable destruction that depends upon
that. And since thy blessed and glorious Son, being offered, in the way
to his execution, a cup of stupefaction,[296] to take away the sense of
his pain (a charity afforded to condemned persons ordinarily in those
places and times), refused that ease, and embraced the whole torment, I
take not this cup, but this vessel of mine own sins into my
contemplation, and I pour them out here according to the motions of thy
Holy Spirit, and any where according to the ordinances of thy holy
church.