66 this also gives our reason, and is a perfection of obedience not communicable to the duties we owe to man. For God only is Lord of this faculty, and, being the fountain of all wisdom, therefore commands our understanding, because he alone can satisfy it. We are bound to obey human laws, but not bound to think the laws we live under, are the most prudent constitutions in the world. But God's commandments are not only a lantern to our feet, and a light unto our paths," but a rule to our reason, and satisfaction to our understandings; as being the instruments of our address to God, and conveyances of his grace, and manuductions to eternity. And therefore St. John Climacus defines obedience to be "An unexamined and unquestioned motion, a voluntary death and sepulture of the will, a life without curiosity, a laying aside our own discretion in the midst of the riches of the most excellent understandings." 8. And certainly there is not in the world a greater strength against temptations, than is deposited in an obedient understanding; because that only can regularly produce the same affections, it admits of fewer degrees, and an unfrequent alteration. But the actions proceeding from the appetite, as it is determined by any other principle than a satisfied understanding, have their heightenings and their declensions, and their changes and mutations, according to a thousand accidents. Reason is more lasting than desire, and with fewer means to be tempted; but affections and motions of appetite, as they are procured by any thing, so may they expire by as great variety of causes. And therefore, to serve God by way of understanding, is surer, and in itself [unless it be by the accidental increase of degrees] greater, than to serve him upon the motion and principle of passions and desires; though this be fuller of comfort and pleasure than the other. When Lot lived amongst the impure Sodomites, where his righteous soul was in a continual agony, he had few exterior incentives to a pious life, nothing to enkindle the sensible flame of burning desires toward piety; but in the midst of all the discouragements of the world, nothing was left him but the way and precedency of a truly-informed reason and conscience. Just so is the way of those wise souls, who live in the midst of "a crooked and perverse generation:" where piety is out of countenance, where auste rity is ridiculous, religion under persecution, no examples to lead us on; there the understanding is left to be the guide, and it does the work the surest; for this makes the duty of many to be certain, regular, and chosen, constant, integral, and perpetual: but this way is like the life of an unmarried or a retired person, less of grief in it, and less of joy. But the way of serving God with the affections, and with the pleasures and entertainments of desires, is the way of the more passionate and imperfect, not in a man's power to choose or to procure; but comes by a thousand chances, meeting with a soft nature, credulous or weak, easy or ignorant, softened with fears, or invited by forward desires. 9. Those that did live amidst the fervours of the primitive charity, and were warmed by their fires, grew inflamed by contact and vicinity to such burning and shining lights. And they therefore grew to high degrees of piety, because then every man made judgment of his own actions by the proportions, which he saw before him, and believed all descents from those greater examples to be so many degrees from the rule. And he that lives in a college of devout persons, will compare his own actions with the devotion and customs of that society, and not with the remissness of persons he hears of in story, but what he sees and lives with. But if we live in an age of indevotion, we think ourselves well assoiled if we be warmer than their ice; every thing, which is above our example, being eminent and conspicuous, though it be but like the light of a glow-worm, or the sparkling of a diamond, yet, if it be in the midst of darkness, it is a goodly beauty. This I call the way of serving God by desires and affections: and this is altered by example, by public manners, by external works, by the assignment of offices, by designation of conventions for prayer, by periods and revolutions of times of duty, by hours and solemnities; so that a man shall owe his piety to these chances, which, although they are graces of God, and instruments of devotion, yet they are not always in our power; and therefore they are but accidental ministries of a good life, and the least constant or durable. But when the principle of our piety is a conformity of our understanding to God's laws; when we are instructed what to do, and therefore do it, because we are satisfied it is most excellent to obey God; this will support our piety against objections, lead it on in despite of disadvantages: this chooses God with reason, and is not determined from without. And as it is in some degree necessary for all times, so it is the greatest security against the change of laws and princes, and religions and ages: when all the incentives of affection and exterior determinations of our piety shall cease, and perhaps all external offices, and "the daily sacrifice," and piety itself, shall fail from the face of the land; then the obedience, founded in the understanding, is the only lasting strength is left us to make retreat to, and to secure our conditions. Thus, from the composition of the will and affections with our exterior acts of obedience to God, our obedience is made willing, swift, and cheerful; but from the composition of the understanding, our obedience becomes strong, sincere, and persevering; and this is that which St. Paul calls " our reasonable service." 10. Fourthly: To which if we add, that our obedience be universal, we have all the qualifications, which make the duty to be pious and prudent. The meaning is, that we obey God in all his sanctions, though the matter be in common account small and inconsiderable, and give no indulgence to ourselves to recede from the rule, in any matter whatsoever. For the veriest minute of obedience is worth our attention, as being by God esteemed the trial of our obedience in a greater affair. "He that is unjust in a little, will be unjust in a greater," said our blessed Saviour. And since to God all måtter is alike, and no more accrues to him in an hecatomb than in a piece of gum, in an ascetic severity than in a secular life, God regards not the matter of a precept, but the obedience, which in all instances is the same; and he that will prevaricate, when the matter is trifling, and, by consequence, the temptations to it weak and impotent, and soon confuted, will think he may better be excused, when the temptations are violent and importunate; as it commonly happens in affairs of greater importance. He that will lie to save sixpence, will not stick at it, when a thousand pound is the purchase; and possibly there is more contempt and despite done to the divine authority, when we disobey it in such particulars, wherein the obedience is most easy, and the Luke, xvi. 10. temptations less troublesome. I do not say there is more injustice or more malice in a small disobedience than in a greater; but there is either more contempt, or more negligence and dissolution of discipline, than in the other. 11. And it is no small temptation of the devil, soliciting of us not to be curious of scruples and grains, nor to disturb our peace for lighter disobediences; persuading us that something must be indulged to public manners, something to the civilities of society, something to nature, and to the approaches of our passions, and the motions of our first desires; but that "we be not over-righteous." And true it is, that sometimes such surreptions and smaller indecencies are therefore pardoned, and lessened almost to a nullity, because they dwell in the confines of things lawful and honest, and are not so notorious as to be separated from permissions by any public, certain, and universal cognizance; and therefore may pass upon a good man, sometimes without observation. But it is a temptation, when we think of neglecting them by a predetermined incuriousness, upon pretence they are small. But this must be reduced to more regular conclusions. 12. First: Although smaller disobediences, expressed in slight misbecoming actions, when they come by surprise and sudden invasion, are, through the mercies of God, dashed in the very approach, their bills of accusation are thrown out, and they are not esteemed as competent instruments of separation from God's love; yet when a smaller sin comes by design, and is acted with knowledge and deliberation, (for then it is properly an act of disobedience,)" malitia supplet defectum ætatis," the malice of the agent heightens the smallness of the act, and makes up the iniquity. To drink liberally once, and something more freely than the strict rules of Christian sobriety and temperance permit, is pardoned the easier, when without deliberation and by surprise the person was abused, who intended not to transgress a minute, but by little and little was mistaken in his proportions: but if a man by design shall estimate his draughts and his good fellowship, and shall resolve upon a little intemperance, thinking, because it is not very much, it is therefore none at all, that man hath mistaken himself into a crime; and although a little wound upon the finger is very curable, yet the smallest prick upon the heart is mortal: so is a design and purpose of the smallest disobedience in its formality, as malicious and destructive, as in its matter it was pardonable and excusable. 13. Secondly: Although every lesser disobedience, when it comes singly, destroys not the love of God; (for, although it may lessen the habit, yet it takes not away its natural being, nor interrupts its acceptation, lest all the world should in all instants of time be in a damnable condition;) yet when these smaller obliquities are repeated, and no repentance intervenes, this repetition combines and unites the lesser, till they be concentred, and by their accumulation make a crimeƒ : and therefore a careless reiterating, and an incurious walking in misbecoming actions, is deadly and damnable in the return, though it was not so much at the setting forth. Every idle word is to be accounted for, but we hope in much mercy; and yet he that gives himself over to immoderate talking, will swell his account to a vast and mountainous proportion, and call all the lesser escapes into a stricter judgment. He that extends his recreation an hour beyond the limits of Christian prudence, and the analogy of its severity and employment, is accountable to God for that improvidence and waste of time; but he that shall mis-spend a day, and because that sin is not scandalous like adultery, or clamorous like oppression, or unusual like bestiality, or crying for revenge like detaining the portion of orphans, shall therefore mis-spend another day, without revocation of the first by an act of repentance and redemption of it, and then shall throw away a week, still adding to the former account upon the first stock, will at last be answerable for a habit of idleness, and will have contracted a vain and impertinent spirit. For since things, which in their own kind are lawful, become sinful by the degree; if the degree be heightened by intention, or become great, like a heap of sand by a coacervation of the innumerable atoms of dust, the actions are as damnable as any of the natural daughters and productions of hell, ƒ Quæ humanæ fragilitati, quamvis parva, tamen crebra subrepunt, si collecta contra nos fuerint, ità nos gravabunt et oppriment, sicut unum aliquod grande peccatum.· S. Aug. lib. 1. hom. 50. Idem lib. de Pœnit. Peccata venialia si multiplicentur, decorem nostrum ità exterminant, ut à cœlestis sponsi amplexibus nos separent. Β Γλώσση ματαία ζημία προστρίβεται. — Esch. Prom. 329. |