Miscellanea spiritualia: or, Devout essaies: composed by the Honourable Walter Montagu Esq.

§. III.

The variableness of the Vulgar upon Events, and a prudent conduct proposed.

THe Athenians were a people so affected with curiosi••y and novelty, as rather then they would want new Religions, they would have even unknown gods; so as their Liberties did not onely reach to the making of new Religions, but new gods: therefore it is no wonder if their Poets were their Priests, which moved S. Paul to argue * 1.1 with them out of their Authorities. It was no wonder this people, who had a several god presiding over every Humane action, should judge the equity of all causes by Events; insomuch as when S. Paul preached to them one God, and his single Providence as the orderer and contriver of all productions and mutations, they thought this an abridge∣ment of the priviledge of their Reason, to be enjoyned a subscription to one supreme Providence, without any pri∣vate satisfaction to their discourse in the occurrences of this life: For when he told them, That by Gods works man could but feel out as it were by palpation in the dark the notion of the Deity, and could not expect to reade the reason of his ad∣ministration by any light, but that of Faith; this seemed to them babling, and talking idlely in S. Paul.

Neither is it any wonder that people undetermined in Re∣ligion, should be so superstitious in Successes, as to make some Religion out of them; for where Religion hath been loosest, Fortune always passed for a Deity; and it is not strange that they who worship Fortune, should sacrifice their Reason to Successes, for then truly mens private Fortunes become their Religions. But where the knowledge and worship is resolved and uniform, the Divine Providence is erected in stead of Fortunes Altar, our Reason is offered up

as an Holocaust totally consumed, and resigned to this or∣der, and the fat of the Sacrifice is the evacuation of all our own judgements, in the event of things which do wholly transcend our Reason.

Yet do I not pretend we should be wholly unmoved or unaffected with happy Successes, but in such cases we ought to look upon them, as they are simply in themselves mercies, not respectively, as we judge them sentences in our Cause: for in adversity the matter doth not declare Gods meaning, when somtimes it is intended to purge & improve, somtimes determinately to punish us; therefore the matter of misery may be disliked, but not Gods meaning in it So prosperous Successes are sometimes meant as approbations, and often as derelictions to the desires of our hearts; wherefore the matter of them may be affected, but the meaning of them not peremptorily concluded.

Hence it is, that as in our enemies we may hate the sin, and not love the man the worse, so in our temporal advan∣tages, we may be joyed with the success, and yet not like the cause the better, which is to have an equal disposition in them: For the choyce of our Cause must rest upon that im∣moveable Centre of the right and justice thereof: which when by our best and most disinteressed Reason we con∣ceive fixed and setled, nothing that doth not better our Rea∣son, can evidence more to us the goodness of our Cause: and uncertain Natural Events have not that vertue of improving our Reason; they may more easily weaken it, if we study by the lines and editions of Natural Accidents, which are so false to the nature of Moral causes.

Man is not set so hard a task, as to work to fit all Events with sutable Reasons to them: It was a strange exaction of Nebuchadnezzar upon his Magi, to declare to him not onely the meaning, but the very dream, as if they had been the infusers of it. They who search for Humane Reasons pro∣portionate to the events of all actions, do, me thinks, as wilde a thing; for they adventure to interpret Gods Actions

and Mysteries by their own Dreams, since our ratiocina∣tion upon the secrets of Divine Order, is but an excur∣sion of Fancy, which is of the same nature as a Dream in Religion.

It seems therefore rather an indulgence to our weakness, then an injunction against our liberties, to be forbid to press into that light where we shall be oppressed by the majesty of it: For, What is man (saith the wisest of men) that he should fol∣low his Maker? and when he had applyed his heart to finde out the reason of all things, he confesseth, He had counted one * 1.2 by one to finde out the account, and yet his soul sought and found it not: So that his return upon his adventure, may well be our disswasion from the attempt, and a strong motive for us to rest upon this anchor of the Prophet, In the path of thy * 1.3 judgement, O Lord, we have patiently expected thee.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Acts 17.
• * 1.2

  Eccles. 7. 28.
• * 1.3

  Isa. 26. 8.