A Following Holy Life. Kenneth Stevenson

an excellent religion and devotion. But the holy Virgin, although she was engaged sometimes in an active life, and in the exercise of an ordinary and small economy and government or ministries of a family, yet she arrived to her perfections by the means of a quiet and silent piety, the internal actions of love, devotion, and contemplation; and instructs us, that not only those who have opportunity and powers of a magnificent religion, or a pompous charity, or miraculous conversion of souls, or assiduous and effectual preachings, or exterior demonstrations of corporal mercy, shall have the greatest crowns, and the addition of degrees and accidental rewards; but the silent affections, the splendours of an internal devotion, the unions of love, humility, and obedience, the daily offices of prayer and praises sung to God, the acts of faith and fear, of patience and meekness, of hope and reverence, repentance and charity, and those graces which walk in a veil and silence, make great ascents to God, and as sure progress to favour and a crown, as the more ostentatious and laborious exercises of a more solemn religion. No man needs to complain of want of power or opportunities for religious perfections: a devout woman in her closet, praying with much zeal and affections for the conversion of souls, is in the same order to a “shining like the stars in glory,” as he who by excellent discourses puts it into a more forward disposition to be actually performed. And possibly her prayers obtained energy and force to my sermon, and made the ground fruitful, and the seed spring up to life eternal. Many times God is present in the still voice and private retirements of a quiet religion, and the constant spiritualities of an ordinary life, when the loud and impetuous winds, and the shining fires of a more laborious and expensive actions, are profitable to others only, like a tree of balsam, distilling precious liquor for others, not for its own use.

      II.54–5

      Considerations concerning the circumstances of the interval between the conception and the nativity

      When the holy Virgin had begun her journey she made haste over the mountains, that she might not only satisfy the desires of her joy by a speedy gratulation, but lest she should be too long abroad under the dispersion and discomposing of her retirements; and therefore she hastens to an enclosure, to her cousin’s house, as knowing that all virtuous women, like tortoises, carry their house on their heads, and their chapel in their heart, and their danger in their eye, and their souls in their hands, and God in all their actions. And indeed her very little burden, which she bare, hindered her not but she might make haste enough; and as her spirit was full of cheerfulness and alacrity, so even her body was made airy and vegete, for there was no sin in her burden to fill it with natural inconveniences. And there is this excellency in all spiritual things, that they do no disadvantage to our persons, nor retard our just temporal interests: and the religion by which we carry Christ within us, is neither so peevish as to disturb our health, nor so sad as to discompose our just and modest cheerfulness, nor so prodigal as to force us to needs and ignoble trades; but recreates our body by the medicine of holy fastings and temperance, fills us full of serenities and complacencies by the sweetnesses of a holy conscience and joys spiritual, promotes our temporal interests, by the gains and increases of the rewards of charity, and by securing God’s providence over us while we are in the pursuit of the heavenly kingdom. And as in these dispositions she climbed the mountains with much facility, so there is nothing in our whole life of difficulty so great, but it may be managed by those assistances we receive from the holiest Jesus, when we carry Him about us; as the valleys are exalted, so the mountains are made plain before us.

      II.58–9

      Considerations upon the birth of our Blessed Saviour Jesus Christ

      Here then are concentred the prodigies of greatness and goodness, of wisdom and charity, of meekness and humility, and march all the way in mystery and incomprehensible mixtures; if we consider Him in the bosom of His Father, where He is seated by the postures of love and essential felicity; and in the manger, where love also placed Him, and an infinite desire to communicate His felicities to us. As he is God, His throne is in the heaven, and He fills all things by His immensity: as He is man, He is circumscribed by an uneasy cradle, and cries in a stable. As He is God, He is seated upon a super-exalted throne; as man, exposed to the lowest estate of uneasiness and need. As God clothed in a robe of glory, at the same instant when you may behold and wonder at His humanity, wrapped in cheap and unworthy cradle-bands. As God, He is encircled by millions of angels; as man, in the company of beasts. As God, He is the eternal Word of the Father, eternal, sustained by Himself, all-sufficient, and without need: and yet He submitted Himself to a condition imperfect, inglorious, indigent, and necessitous. And this consideration is apt and natural to produce great affections of love, duty, and obedience, desires of union and conformity to His sacred person, life, actions, and laws; that we resolve all our thoughts, and finally determine all our reason and our passions and capacities, upon that saying of St. Paul, “He that loves not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed.” [1 Cor. 16.22]

      II.68

      The great and glorious accidents happening about the birth of Jesus

      The wise men . . . “fell down and worshipped Him,” after the manner of the easterlings when they do veneration to their kings, not with an empty Ave and gay blessing of fine words, but “they bring presents and come into His courts;” for “when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto Him gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh.” And if these gifts were mysterious, beyond the acknowledgment of Him to be the king of the Jews, and Christ, that should come into the world; frankincense might signify Him to be acknowledged a God, myrrh to be a man, and gold to be a king: unless we choose by gold to signify the acts of mercy; by myrrh, the chastity of minds and purity of our bodies, to the incorruption of which myrrh is especially instrumental; and by incense we intend our prayers, as the most apt presents and oblations to the honour and service of this young king. But however the fancies of religion may represent variety of ideas, the act of adoration was direct and religious, and the myrrh was medicinal to His tender body: the incense possibly no more than was necessary in a stable, the first throne of His humilty: and the gold was a good antidote against the present indigencies of His poverty: presents such as were used in all the Levant (especially in Arabia and Saba, to which the growth of myrrh and frankincense were proper) in their addresses to their God and to their king; and were instruments with which, under the veil of flesh, they worshipped the eternal Word; the wisdom of God, under infant innocency; the almighty power, in so great weakness; and under the lowness of human nature, the altitude of majesty and the infinity of divine glory.

      II.86–7

      Considerations upon the apparition of the angels to the shepherds

      But the angels also had other motions: for besides the pleasures of that joy, which they had in beholding human nature so highly exalted, and that God was man, and man was God; they were transported with admiration at the ineffable counsel of God’s predestination, prostrating themselves with adoration and modesty, seeing God so humbled, and man so changed, and so full of charity, that God stooped to the condition of man, and man was inflamed beyond the love of seraphim, and was made more knowing than cherubim, more established than thrones, more happy than all the orders of angels. The issue of this consideration teaches us to learn their charity, and to exterminate all the intimations and beginnings of envy, that we may as much rejoice at the good of others as of ourselves: for then we love good for God’s sake, when we love good wherever God has placed it: and that joy is charitable which overflows our neighbours’ fields when ourselves unconcerned in the personal accruements; for so we are “made partakers of all that fear God,” when charity unites their joy to ours, as it makes us partakers of their common sufferings.

      And now the angels, who had adored the holy Jesus in heaven, come also to pay their homage to Him upon earth; and laying aside their flaming swords, they take into their hands instruments of music, and sing, “Glory be to God on high:” first signifying to us that the incarnation of the holy Jesus was a very great instrument of the glorification of God, and those divine perfections in which He is chiefly pleased to communicate Himself to us were in nothing manifested so much as in the mysteriousness of this work: secondly; and in vain doth man satisfy himself with complacencies and ambitious designs upon earth, when he sees before him God in the form of a servant, humble, and poor, and crying, and an infant full of need and weakness.

      II.88

      Considerations