то THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS PRINCESS HER HIGHNESS ROYAL MARY PRINCESS OF GREAT BRITAIN, DOWAGER OF ORANGE, &c. MADAM, ALTHOUGH none of the subjects of these nations can, in propriety of speaking, be a stranger to the royal family, from whom every single person receives the daily emanations of many blessings, yet besides this, there is much in your royal highness by which your princely person is related to all amongst us that are or would be excellent. For where virtue is in her exaltation, to that excellent person all that are or would be thought virtuous do address themselves, either to be directed or encouraged, for example or for patronage, for the similitude of affection or likeness of design; and therefore, madam, although it is too great a confidence in me something a stranger to make this address to so high-born and great a princess; yet when I considered that you are the sister of my king and the servant of my God, I know there was nothing to be expected but serenity and sweetness, gentleness and goodness, royal favours and princely graces; and therefore in such fruitful showers I have no cause to fear that my fleece shall be dry, when all that is round about is made irriguous with your princely influence. I shall therefore humbly hope that your royal highness will first give me pardon, and then accept this humble oblation from him who is equally your servant, for your great relations and for your great excellencies. For I remember with what pleasure I have heard it told, that your highness's court hath been in all these late days of sorrow a sanctuary to the afflicted, a chapel for the religious, a refectory to them that were in need, and the great defensative of all men and all things that are excellent; and therefore it is but duty that by all the acknowledgments of religion that honour should be paid to your royal highness, which so eminent virtues perpetually have deserved. But because you have long ['religion,' A.] dwelt in the more secret recesses of religion, and that for a long time your devotion hath been eminent, your obedience to the strictest rules of religion hath been humble and diligent, even up to a great example, and that the service of God hath been your great care and greatest employment, your name hath been dear and highly honourable amongst the sons and daughters of the church of England, and we no more envy to Hungary the great name of S. Elizabeth, to Scotland the glorious memory of S. Margaret, to France the triumph of the piety of S. Genovese, nor S. Katharine to Italy, since in your royal person we have so great an example of our own, one of the family of saints, a daughter to such a glorious saint and martyr, a sister to such a king, in the arms of whose justice and wisdom we lie down in safety, having now nothing to employ us, but in holiness and comfort to serve God, and in peace and mutual charity to enjoy the blessings of the government under so great, so good a king. But royal madam, I have yet some more personal ground for the confidence of this address; and because I have received the great honour of your reading and using of divers of my books, I was readily invited to hope that your royal highness would not reject it, if one of them desired upon a special title to kiss your princely hand, and to pay thanks for the gracious reception of others of the same cognation. The style of it is fit for closets, plain and useful; the matter is of the greatest concernment, a rule for the usage of the greatest solennity of religion. For as the eucharist is by the venerable fathers of the church called the queen of mysteries,' so the worthy communicating in this is the most princely conjugation of graces in the whole rosary of christian religion; and therefore the more proportioned and fitted for the handling of so princely a person, whom the beauty of the body, and the greatness of birth, and excellency of religion, do equally contend to represent excellent and illustrious in the eyes of all the world. Madam, it is necessary that you be all that to which these excellent graces and dispositions do design you: and to this glorious end, this manual may if you please add some moments; the effecting of which is all my design, except only that it is intended, and I humbly pray that it may be looked upon, as a testimony of that greatest honour which is paid you by the hearts and voices of all the religious of this church, and particularly of, madam, your highness' most humble and most devoted servant, JEREMY DUNENSIS. b['Genovefa,' 'Geneviève.'-Acta sanctt. in Januar. iii.] THE INTRODUCTION. WHEN S. Joseph and the blessed Virgin mother had for a time lost their most holy Son, they sought Him in the villages and the highways, in the retinues of their kindred and the caravans of the Galilean pilgrims; but there they found Him not. At last, almost despairing, faint and sick with travail and fear, with desires and tedious expectations, they came into the temple to pray to God for conduct and success; knowing and believing assuredly that if they could find God, they should not long miss to find the holy Jesus: and their faith deceived them not: for they sought God, and found Him that was God and man in the midst and circle of the doctors. But being surprised with trouble and wonder, they began a little to expostulate with the divine Child; why He would be absent so long, and leave them (as it must needs be when He is absent from us) in sorrow and uncertain thoughts. This question brought forth an answer which will be for ever useful to all that shall enquire after this holy Child. For as they complained of His absence, so He reproved their ignorance, How is it that ye have so fondly looked for Me, as if I were used to wander in unknown paths without skill, and without a guide? why did ye enquire after Me in highways and village fields? Ye never knew Me wander, or lose My way, or abide but where I ought: why therefore did ye not come hither to look for Me? did ye not know that I ought to be in My Father's houseb?' that is, There where God is worshipped, where He loves to dwell, where He communicates His blessing and holy influences, there and there only we are sure to meet our dearest Lord. For this reason, the place of our address to God and holy conver • ['travel,' B.] So the Syriac interpreter renders the Greek ἐν τοῖς τοῦ πατρός μου, in the places of My Father,' [?]. !" iis que patris mei sunt, so the Arabic In negotis [ في الذي لابي] version patris mei, in My Father's business,' so Castalio, ['Mihi agenda esse Mei Patris negotia,'] Piscator, [dass ich seyn muss in dem das meines Vaters ist,] and our English Bibles. But the second reddition is more agreeable with the words of the Greek; and the first is more consonant to the use of that phrase in the New testament. So John xix. 27, S. John received the mother of our Lord, els rà Idia, recepit eam in domum suam, so Beza and our English translation, he took her to his own house.' And thus S. Chrysostom uses the same phrase, serm. lii. in Genesin, [§ 1. tom. iv. p. 507 B.]— Ποῦ ἀπελαύνεις τὸν δίκαιον; οὐκ οἶσθα ὅτι ὅπου ἂν αὐτὸν ἀπελθεῖν συμβαίνῃ, ἐν τοῖς τοῦ δεσπότου τοῦ ἑαυτοῦ εἶναι αὐτὸν ἀvάyk, 'Whither do you drive the just man? Do ye not know that wherever he sets his foot, he is within his Father's house or territory?' : sation with Him, He is pleased to call His house; that with confidence we may expect to meet Him there when we go to worship. And when the solemnities of religion were confined to the tabernacle, He therefore made it to be like a house of use and dwelling, that in that figure He might tell us where His delight and His abode would be and therefore God furnished the tabernacle with the utensils of a prophet's room at least, a table and a candlestick; and the table must have dishes and spoons, bowls and covers belonging to it; the candlesticks must have lamps, and the lamps must be continually burning. And besides this, the house of God must have in it a continual fire; the fire must not go out by night nor day; and to this the prophet alludes: God hath His fire in Sion, and His hearth or furnace in Jerusalem.' And after all; there must be meat in His house too; and as this was done by the sacrifices of old, so by the Lord's supper in the New testament; so that now it is easy to understand the place and the reason of Christ's abode, even in His Father's house; there where His Father dwells, and loves to meet His servants, there we are sure to find the Lord. For as God descended and came into the tabernacled invested with a cloud, so Christ comes to meet us clothed with a mystery: He hath a house below as well as above; here is His dwelling and here are His provisions, here is His fire and here His meat; hither God sends His Son, and here His Son manifests Himself: the church and the holy table of the Lord, the assemblies of saints, and the devotions of His people, the word and the sacrament, the oblation of bread and wine and the offering of ourselves, the consecration and the communion, are the things of God and of Jesus Christ, and he that is employed in these is there where God loves to be, and where Christ is to be found; in the employments in which God delights, in the ministries of His own choice, in the work of the gospel and the methods of grace, in the economy of heaven and the dispensations of eternal happiness. And now that we may know where to find Him, we must be sure to look after Him: He hath told us where He would be, behind what pillar, and under what cloud, and covered with what veil, and conveyed by what ministry, and present in what sacrament: and we must not look for Him in the highways of ambition and pride, of wealth or sensual pleasures; these things are not found in the house of His Father,' neither may they come near His dwelling. But if we seek for Christ, we shall find Him in the methods of virtue and the paths of God's commandments, in the houses of prayer and the offices of religion, in the persons of the poor and the retirements of an afflicted soul: we shall find Him in holy reading and pious meditation, in our penitential sorrows and in the time of trouble, in pulpits and upon altars, in the word and in the sacraments. If we come hither as we ought, we are sure to find our beloved, Him whom our soul longeth after. : Sure enough Christ is here; but He is not here in every manner, and therefore is not to be found by every enquirer, nor touched by every hand, nor received by all comers, nor entertained by every guest. He that means to take the air must not use his fingers but his mouth and he that receives Christ must have a proper, that is, a spiritual instrument, a purified heart, consecrated lips, and a hallowed mouth, a tongue that speaks no evil, and a hand that ministers to no injustice, and to no uncleanness. For a disproportionate instrument is an undecency, and makes the effect impossible both in nature and morality. Can a man bind a thought with chains, or carry imaginations in the palm of his hand? can the beauty of the peacock's train or the estrich plume be delicious to the palate and the throat? does the hand intermeddle with the joys of the heart, or darkness that hides the naked make him warm? does the body live as does the spirit, or can the body of Christ be like to common food? Indeed the sun shines upon the good and bad, and the vines give wine to the drunkard as well as to the sober man; pirates have fair winds and a calm sea at the same time when the just and peaceful merchant hath them. But although the things of this world are common to good and bad; yet sacraments, and spiritual joys, the food of the soul and the blessing of Christ, are the peculiar right of saints: and the rites of our religion are to be handled by the measures of religion, and the things of God by the rules of the Spirit; and the sacraments are mysteries, and to be handled by mystic persons, and to be received by saints; and therefore whoever will partake of God's secrets must first look into his own; he must pare off whatsoever is amiss, and not without holiness approach to the holiest of all holies; nore eat of this sacrifice with a defiled head, nor come to this feast without a nuptial garment, nor take this remedy without a just preparative. For though in the first motions of our spiritual life, Christ comes alone and offers His grace, and enlivens us by His spirit, and makes us to begin to live, because He is good, not because we are; yet this great mysterious feast and magazine of grace and glorious mercies, is for those only that are worthy, for such only who by their co-operation with the grace of God, are fellow-workers with God in the laboratories of salvation. The wrestler that Clemens of Alexandria tells us of, addressing himself to his contention, and espying the statue of Jupiter Pisæus, prayed aloud, "If all things, O Jupiter, are rightly prepared on my part, if I have done all that I could do, then do me justice, and give me victory." And this is a * ['not,' B.] παρεσκεύασται, ἀπόδος φέρων δικαίως τὴν f Strom. vii. 7. p. 860.] Εἰ πάντα, νίκην ἐμοί. εἶπεν, ὦ Ζεῦ, δεόντως μοι πρὸς τὸν ἀγῶνα |