have all aspired to be like me, and are fallen into the greatest infelicities. Behold, I will go towards man in such a form, that whosoever from henceforth would become like me, shall be so, and be a gainer by it. And for this cause the Son of God came from heaven, and made himself a poor humble person, and, by all the actions of his life, commented upon the present discourse: Learn of me, for I am meek and humble of heart"."" Blessed be that mercy and bounty which moved Almighty God to condescend to that so great appetite we had of being like him; for now we may be like unto God, but it must be by humility, of which he hath given us an example powerful as miracles, and great as our own pride and misery.

4. And, indeed, our blessed Lord, knowing that examples are like maps and perfect schemes, in which the whole continent may at once be represented to the eye to all the purposes of art and benefit, did, in the latter end of his life, draw up the dispersions and larger harvest of his precepts, binding them in the bundle of great examples, and casting them into actions as into sums total: for so this act of washing the feet of his own ministers, and then dying for them, and for all his enemies, did preach the three great sums of evangelical perfection with an admirable energy and abbreviature; humility, and charity, and sufferings, being to Christianity as the body, and the soul, and the spirit, are to the whole man. For no man brings a sad funeral into the theatre to make his spectators merry, nor can well preach chastity in the impurity of the Bordelli, or persuade temperance when himself is full of wine and luxuryf, and enters into the baths to boil his undigested meat, that he may return to his second supper, and breathes forth impure belchings together with his homily; a poor Eremite, or a severely-living philosopher, into whose life his own precepts have descended, and his doctrine is mingled with his soul, mingles also effect and virtue with homilies, and incorporates his doctrine in the hearts of his disciples. And this the holy Jesus did in his own person, bearing the burden first upon his own shoulders, that we may, with better alacrity, undergo what our blessed Lord bears with us, and

e Matt. xi. 29.

f Turgidus hic epulis, atque albo ventre lavatur,

Gutture sulphureas lentè exhalante Mephites.-Pers. Sat. 3.

for us. But that we may the better understand what our blessed Lord designed to us in this lecture, let us consider the proper acts of humility which integrate the virtue.

5. The first is, "Christ's humble man thinks meanly of himself:" and there is great reason every man should. For his body is but rottenness and infirmity covered with a fair mantle, a dunghill overcast with snow and if we consider sadly, that from trees and plants come oil, balsam, wine, spices, and aromatic odours, and that from the sinks of our body no such sweet or salutary emanations are observed, we may at least think it unreasonable to boast our beauty, which is nothing but a clear and well-coloured skin, which every thing in the world can spoil; nor our strength, which an ague tames into the infirmities of a child, and in which we are excelled by a bull; nor any thing of our body, which is nothing but an unruly servant of the soul, marked with characters of want and dependence, and begging help from all the elements, and, upon a little disturbance, growing troublesome to itself by its own impurities. And yet there is no reason in respect of the soul for any man to exalt himself above his brother; because all reasonable souls are equal; and that one is wise, and another is foolish or less learned, is by accident and extrinsic causes: God at first makes all alike; but an indisposed body, or an inopportune education, or evil customs, superinduce variety and difference. And if God discerns a man from his brother by distinction of gifts, it alters not the case; still the man hath nothing of himself that can call him excellent: it is as if a wall, upon which the sun reflects, should boast itself against another that stands in the shadow. Greater glory is to be paid to God for the discerning gifts; but to take any of it to ourselves, and rise higher than our brother, or advance our own opinion, is as if a man should be proud of being in debt, and think it the greater excellency that he is charged with heavier and more severe accounts.

6. This act consists not in declamations and forms of satire against ourselves, saying, I am a miserable, sinful creature; I am proud, or covetous, or ignorant: for many

8 Auferantur omnia figmenta verborum, cessent simulati gestus, verum humilem patientia ostendit.-S. Hier.

:

men say so, that are not willing to be thought so. Neither is humility a virtue made up of wearing old clothes, or doing servile and mean employments by voluntary undertaking, or of sullen gestures, or demiss behaviour, and artifice of lowly expressions for these may become snares to invite and catch at honour; and then they are collateral designs of pride, and direct actions of hypocrisy. But it consists in a true understanding of our own condition, and a separating our own nothing from the good we have received, and giving to God all the glory, and taking to ourselves all the shame and dishonour due to our sinful condition. He that thinks himself truly miserable, and vilified by sin, hates it perfectly; and he that knows himself to be nothing, cannot be exalted in himself: and whatsoever is besides these two extremes of a natural nothing and a superadded sin, must be those good things we have received, which, because they derive from God, must make all their returns thither. But this act is of greater difficulty in persons pious, full of gifts, and eminent in graces, who, being fellow-workers together with God, sometimes grow tacitly, and without notice, given to confide in themselves, and with some freer fancy ascribe too much of the good action to their own choice and diligence, and take up their crowns, which lie at the foot of the throne, and set them upon their own heads. For a sinner to desire to be esteemed a sinner, is no more humility, than it is for the son of a ploughman to confess his father; but, indeed, it is hard for a man to be cried up for a saint, to walk upon the spire of glory, and to have no adherence or impure mixtures of vanity grow upon the outside of his heart. All men have not such heads as to walk in great heights, without giddiness, and unsettled eyes: Lucifer, and many angels, walking upon the battlements of heaven, grew top-heavy, and fell into the state of devils; and the father of the Christian Eremites, St. Antony, was frequently attempted by the devil, and solicited to vanity, the devil usually making fantastic noises to be heard before him, "Make room for the saint and servant of God;" but the good man knew Christ's voice to be a low base of humility, and that it was the noise of hell that invited to complacencies and vanity; and therefore took the

h S. Hier. in Vita S. Anton.

example of the apostles, who, in the midst of the greatest reputation and spiritual advancements, were dead unto the world, and seemed to live in the state of separation. For, the true stating our own question, and knowing ourselves, must needs represent us set in the midst of infinite imperfections, laden with sins, choked with the noises of a polluted conscience, persons fond of trifles, neglecting objects fit for wise men, full of ingratitude, and all such things, which in every man else we look upon as scars and deformities, and which we use to single out, and take one alone as sufficient to disgrace and disrepute all the excellencies of our neighbour; but, if we would esteem them with the same severity in ourselves, and remember with how many such objections our little felicities are covered, it would make us charitable in our censures, compassionate and gentle to others, apt to excuse, and as ready to support their weaknesses, and in all accidents and chances to ourselves to be content and thankful, as knowing the worst of poverty and inconvenience. to be a mercy, and a splendid fortune, in respect of our demerits. I have read, that "when the duke of Candia had voluntarily entered into the incommodities of a religious poverty and retirement, he was one day spied, and pitied by a lord of Italy, who, out of tenderness, wished him to be more careful and nutritive of his person. The good duke answered, Sir, be not troubled, and think not that I am ill provided of conveniences; for I send a harbinger before, who makes my lodgings ready, and takes care that I be royally entertained. The lord asked him, who was his harbinger? He answered, 'The knowledge of myself, and the consideration of what I deserve for my sins, which is eternal torments; and when, with this knowledge, I arrive at my lodging, how unprovided soever I find it, methinks it is ever better than I deserve."" The sum of this meditation consists in believing, and considering, and reducing to practice those thoughts, that we are nothing of ourselves, that we have nothing of our own, that we have received more than ever we can dis charge, that we have added innumerable sins, that we can call nothing our own but such things which we are ashamed to own, and such things which are apt to ruin us. If we do nothing contrary to the purpose and hearty persuasion of such thoughts, then we think meanly of ourselves; and, in

order to it, we may make use of this advice, to let no day pass, without some sad recollection and memory of somewhat which may put us to confusion, and mean opinion of ourselves; either call to mind the worst of our sins, or the indiscreetest of our actions, or the greatest of our shame, or the uncivilest of our affronts-any thing to make us descend lower, and kiss the foot of the mountain. And this consideration, applied also to every tumour of spirit as soon as it rises, may possibly allay it.

7. Secondly, "Christ's humble man bears contumelies evenly and sweetly, and desires not to be honoured by others;" he chooses to do those things that deserve honour and a fair name; but then eats not of those fruits himself, but transmits them to the use of others, and the glories of God. This is a certain consequence of the other; for he that truly disesteems himself, is content that others should do so too; and he who, with some regret and impatience, hears himself scorned or undervalued, hath not acquired the grace of humility: which Serapion, in Cassian, noted to a young person, who perpetually accused himself with the greatest semblances of humility, but was impatient when Serapion reproved him*. "Did you hope that I would have praised your humility, and have reputed you for a saint? It is a strange perverseness, to desire others to esteem highly of you for that in which to yourself you seem most unworthy." He that inquires into the faults of his own actions, requiring them that saw them to tell him in what he did amiss, not to learn the fault, but to engage them to praise it, cozens himself into pride, and makes humility the instrument. And a man would be ashamed, if he were told that he used stratagems for praise; but so glorious a thing is humility, that pride, to hide her own shame, puts on the other's vizor; it being more to a proud man's purposes to seem humble, than to be so. And such was the cynic whom Lucian derided, because that one searching his scrip, in expectation to have found in it mouldy bread, or old rags, he

Ama nesciri et pro nihilo reputari. — Gerson.

* Appetere de humilitate laudem humilitatis non est virtus, sed subversio. Quid euim perversum magìs aut indignius, quam ut indè velis haberi melior, unde tibi videris deterior.- S. Bernard.

Est qui nequiter humiliat se, et interiora ejus sunt plena dolo.- Ecclus, xii. 11.