CHAPTER VIII.
Shewing the excellency and greatness of a devout spirit, and proving that a contrary spirit, is an indication of great ignorance and stupidity.
I HAVE now finished what was intended; I have explained the nature of christian devotion, and shewn that it belongs to all orders, and more especially to those whose fortunes set them above the common level of mankind. I have endeavoured to point out to you, the chief causes of the general indevotion of the professing christian world; and have shewn in various characters, how poor, how miserable they live, who are strangers to a life wholly devoted to God. I shall only add a word or two by way of conclusion, to prove that fervent devotion is the noblest temper of the greatest and noblest souls; and that a want of devotion, wherever it is, either amongst the learned or unlearned, is founded in gross ignorance, and in the greatest blindness and insensibility that can happen to a rational creature.
And here, I suppose it will be granted on all hands, that it is a sign of a great and noble mind for a man to be full of reverence and duty to his parents, to have the truest love and honour for his friend, and to excel in the highest instances of gratitude to his benefactor. Are not these tempers, in the highest degree, signs of the most exalted and perfect minds?
And yet what is devotion, but the highest exercise of these tempers, of duty, reverence, love, honour, and gratitude, to the amiable, glorious parent, friend and benefactor of all mankind? So long, therefore, as duty to parents, love to friends, and gratitude to benefactors, are thought great and honourable tempers; devotion, which is nothing else but duty, love, and gratitude to God, must have the chief place amongst our highest virtues.
Again; we know how our blessed Lord acted in a human body; it was “his meat and drink to do the will of his Father which is in heaven.” And if any number of heavenly spirits were to leave their habitations in the light of God, and be for a while united to human bodies, they would certainly tend towards God in all their actions, and be as heavenly as they could, in a state of flesh and blood.
They would act in this manner, because they know that God is the only good of all spirits; and that whether they were in the body or out of the body, in heaven or on earth, they must have every degree of their greatness and happiness from God alone. All human spirits therefore, the more exalted they are, and the more they know their divine original, and the nearer they come to heavenly spirits, by so much the more will they live to God in all their actions, and make their whole life a state of devotion.
A devout man makes a true use of his reason; he sees through the vanity of the world, discovers the corruption of his nature, and the blindness of his passions. He lives by a law which is not visible to vulgar eyes; he enters into the world of spirits, he compares the greatest things, sets eternity against time; and chuses rather to be forever great in the presence of God when he dies, than to have the greatest share of worldly pleasures whilst he lives. There is nothing, therefore, that shews so great a genius, nothing that so raises us above vulgar spirits, nothing that so plainly declares an heroic greatness of mind, as great and fervent devotion.
When you suppose a man to be a saint, or all devotion, you have raised him as much above all other conditions of life, as a philosopher is above an animal.