A Following Holy Life. Kenneth Stevenson

of mercy, hath writ His commandments in so large characters, and engraven them in such tables, that no man can want the records, nor yet skill to read the hand-writing upon this wall, if he understands what he understands, that is, what is placed in his own spirit. For God was therefore desirous that human nature should be perfected with moral not intellectual excellencies, because these only are of use and compliance with our present state and conjunction, If God had given to eagles an appetite to swim, or to the elephant strong desires to fly, He would have ordered that an abode in the sea and the air respectively should have been proportionable to their manner of living; for so God hath done to man, fitting him with such excellencies which are useful to him in his ways and progress to perfection. And man hath great use and need of justice, and all the instances of morality serve his natural and political ends; he cannot live without them, and be happy: but the filling the rooms of the understanding with airy and ineffective notions is just such an excellency as it is in a man to imitate the voice of birds; at his very best, the nightingale shall excel him, and it is of no use to that end which God designed him in the first intentions of creation.

      In pursuance of this consideration, I have chosen to serve the purposes of religion by doing assistance to that part of theology which is wholly practical; that which makes us wiser therefore because it makes us better.

      II.1–2

      ‘Preface’ – Christianity and Natural Law

      For certain it is, Christianity is nothing else but the most perfect design that ever was to make a man be happy in his whole capacity: and as the law was to the Jews, so was philosophy to the gentiles, a schoolmaster to bring them to Christ, to teach them the rudiments of happiness, and the first and lowest things of reason; that when Christ was come, all mankind might become perfect; that is, be made regular in their appetites, wise in their understandings, assisted in their duties, directed to, and instructed in, their great ends. And this is that which the apostle calls “being perfect men in Christ Jesus;” perfect in all the intendments of nature, and in all the designs of God: and this was brought to pass by discovering, and restoring, and improving the law of nature and by turning it all into religion.

      For the natural law being a sufficient and a proportionate instrument and means to bring a man to the end designed in his creation, and this law being eternal and unalterable, (for it ought to be as lasting and as unchangeable as the nature itself, so long as it was capable of a law,) it was not imaginable that the body of any law should make a new morality, new rules and general proportions, either of justice, or religion, or temperance, or felicity; the essential parts of all these consisting in natural proportions, and means toward the consummation of man’s last end, which was first intended and is always the same. It is, as if here were a new truth in an essential and a necessary proposition. For although the instances may vary, there can be no new justice, no new temperance, no new relations, proper and natural relations, and intercourses, between God and us, but what always were; in praises and prayers, in adoration and honour, and in the symbolical expressions of God’s glory and our needs.

      II.20

      On how Christ perfects Natural Law

      Thus the holy Jesus perfected and restored the natural law, and drew it into a system of propositions, and made them to become of the family of religion. For God is so zealous to have man attain to the end to which He first designed him, that those things which He hath put to the natural order to attain that end, He hath bound fast upon us, not only by the order of things by which it was that he that prevaricated did naturally fall short of felicity, but also by bands of religion; He hath now made Himself a party, and an enemy to those that will not be happy. Of old, religion was but one of the natural laws, and the instances of religion were distinct from the discourses of philosophy. Now, all the law of nature is adopted into religion, and by our love and duty to God we are tied to do all that is reason, and the parts of our religion are but pursuances of the natural relation between God and us. And beyond all this, our natural condition is, in all senses, improved by the consequents and adherences of this religion: for although nature and grace are opposite, that is, nature depraved by evil habits, by ignorance, and ungodly customs, is contrary to grace, that is, to nature restored by the gospel, engaged to regular living by new revelations, and assisted by the Spirit; yet it is observable that the law of nature and the law of grace are never opposed. “There is a law of our members,” saith St. Paul; that is an evil necessity introduced into our appetites by perpetual evil customs, examples, and traditions of vanity; and there is a law of sin, that answers to this; and they differ only as inclination and habit, vicious desires and vicious practices. Bt then contrary to these are, first “a law of my mind,” which is the law of nature and right reason, and then the law of grace, that is, of Jesus Christ, who perfected and restored the first law, and by assistances reduced it into a law of holy living: and these two differ as the other; the one is in order to the other, as imperfection and growing degrees and capacity are to perfection and consummation. The law of the mind had been so rased and obliterate, and we, by some means or other, so disabled from observing it exactly, that until it was turned into the law of grace, (which is a law of pardoning infirmities, and assisting us in our choices and elections,) we were in a state of deficiency from the perfective state of man to which God intended us.

      II. 28–9

      Exhortation to the imitation of Christ

      I consider, that the imitation of the life of Jesus is a duty of that excellency and perfection, that we are helped in it, not only by the assistance of a good and great example, which possibly might be too great, and scare our endeavours and attempts; but also by its easiness, compliance, and proportion to us. For Jesus, in His whole life, conversed with men with a modest virtue, which, like a well kindled fire fitted with just materials, casts a constant heat; not like an inflamed heap of stubble, glaring with great emissions, and suddenly stooping into the thickness of smoke. His piety was even, constant, unblamable, complying with civil society, without affrightment of precedent, or prodigious instances of actions greater than the imitation of men. For if we observe our blessed Saviour in the whole story of His life, although He was without sin, yet the instances of His piety were the actions of a very holy, but of an ordinary life; and we may observe this difference in the story of Jesus from ecclesiastical writings of certain beatified persons, whose life is told rather to amaze us and to create scruples, than to lead us in the evenness and serenity of a holy conscience.

      II.41

      Considerations upon the Annunciation and the Conception: The Incarnation

      And if we consider the reasonableness of the thing, what can be given more excellent for the redemption of man than the blood of the Son of God? And what can more ennoble our nature, than that by the means of His holy humanity it was taken up into the cabinet of the mysterious Trinity? What better advocate could we have for us, than He that is appointed to be our judge? And what greater hopes of reconciliation can be imagined, than that God, in whose power it is to give an absolute pardon, hath taken a new nature, entertained an office, and undergone a life of poverty, with a purpose to procure our pardon?

      II.52

      On the Annunciation

      The holy Virgin, when she saw an angel and heard a testimony from heaven of her grace and piety, was troubled within herself at the salutation and the manner of it: for she had learned, that the affluence of divine comforts and prosperous successes should not exempt us from fear, but make it the more prudent and wary, lest it entangle us in a vanity of spirit; God having ordered that our spirits should be affected with dispositions in some degrees contrary to exterior events, that we be fearful in the affluence of prosperous things, and joyful in adversity; as knowing that this may produce benefit and advantage; and the changes that are consequent to the other are sometimes full of mischiefs, but always of danger. But her silence and fear were her guardians; that, to prevent excrescences of joy; this, of vainer complacency.

      And it is not altogether inconsiderable to observe, that the holy Virgin came to a great perfection and state of piety by a few, and those modest and even, exercises and external actions. St. Paul travelled over the world, preached to the gentiles, disputed against the Jews, confounded heretics, writ excellently learned letters, suffered dangers, injuries, affronts, and persecutions to the height of wonder, and by these violences of life,