And as the wisest bishop in the world is he who lives in the greatest heights of holiness, who is most exemplary in all the exercises of a divine life; so the wisest youth, the wisest woman, whether married or unmarried, is she that lives in the highest degrees of Christian holiness, and all the exercises of a divine and heavenly life.
CHAP. IX.
Shewing how great devotion fills our lives with the greatest peace and happiness that can be enjoyed in this world.
1.SOME people will perhaps object, that this living unto God in all that we do, is too great a restraint upon human life; and that, by depriving ourselves of so many innocent pleasures, we shall render our lives, dull, uneasy, and melancholy.
*It will produce just the contrary effect. Instead of making our lives dull and melancholy, it will render them full of content and strong satisfactions; as by these rules we only change the childish satisfactions of our vain and sickly passions, for the solid enjoyments, and real happiness of a sound mind.
For as there is no true foundation for comfort in life, but in the assurance that a wise and good God governeth the world: so the more we find out God in every thing, the more we apply to him in every place, the more we look up to him in all our actions, the more we conform to his will, the more we act according to his wisdom, and imitate his goodness, by so much the more do we enjoy God, and increase all that is happy and comfortable in human life.
And it is plain, he that is endeavouring to subdue all those passions of pride, envy, and ambition, which religion opposes, is doing more to make himself happy, even in this life, than he that is contriving means to indulge them.
*For these passions are the causes of all the disquiets of human life: they are the dropsies and fevers of our minds, vexing them with false appetites, and restless cravings after such things as we do not want, and spoiling our taste for those things which are our proper good.
2. *Do but imagine that you some where or other saw a man, that proposed reason as the rule of all his actions; that had no desires but after such things as nature wants, and religion approves; that was as pure from all the motions of pride, envy, and covetousness, as from thoughts of murder; that in this freedom from worldly passions, he had a soul full of divine love, wishing and praying that all men may have what they want of worldly things, and be partakers of eternal glory.