the manner should be as miraculous as the message itself was glorious. For the angel told her, that this should not be done by any way, which our sin and the shame of Adam had unhallowed, by turning nature into a blush, and forcing her to a retirement from a public attesting the means of her own preservation; but the whole matter was from God, and so should the manner be: for "the angel said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."

7. When the blessed Virgin was so ascertained that she should be a mother and a maid, and that two glories, like the two luminaries of heaven, should meet in her, that she might in such a way become the mother of her Lord that she might with better advantages be His servant; then all her hopes and all her desires received such satisfaction, and filled all the corners of her heart so much, as indeed it was fain to make room for its reception. But she, to whom the greatest things of religion and the transportations of devotion were made familiar by the assiduity and piety of her daily practices, however she was full of joy, yet she was carried like a full vessel, without the violent tossings of a tempestuous passion or the wrecks of a stormy imagination: and, as the power of the Holy Ghost did descend upon her like rain into a fleece of wool, without any obstreporous noises or violences to nature, but only the extraordinariness of an exaltation; so her spirit received it with the gentleness and tranquillity fitted for the entertainment of the spirit of love, and a quietness symbolical to the holy guest of her spotless womb, the Lamb of God; for she meekly replied, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according unto thy word: and the angel departed from her," having done his message. And at the same time the Holy Spirit of God did make her to conceive in her womb the immaculate Son of God, the Saviour of the world.

Ad SECTION I.

Considerations upon the annunciation of the blessed Virgin Mary, and the conception of the holy Jesus.

1. THAT which shines brightest presents itself first to the eye; and the devout soul, in the chain of excellent and precious things which are represented in the counsel, design, and first beginnings of the work of our redemption, hath not leisure to attend the twinkling

quæ ventre beato

Gaudia matris habens cum virginitatis honore,

Nec primam similem visa es, nec habere sequentem;

Sola sine exemplo placuisti fœmina Christo.

Sedul. [Carm. Pasch., lib. ii. lin. 66. p. 203.]

of the lesser stars, till it hath stood and admired the glory and eminencies of the divine love manifested in the incarnation of the Word eternal. God had no necessity in order to the conservation or the heightening His own felicity, but out of mere and perfect charity and the bowels of compassion sent into the world His only Son, for remedy to human miseries, to ennoble our nature by an union with divinity, to sanctify it with His justice, to enrich it with His grace, to instruct it with His doctrine, to fortify it with His example, to rescue it from servitude, to assert it into the liberty of the sons of God, and at last to make it partaker of a beatifical resurrection.

2. God, who in the infinite treasures of His wisdom and providence could have found out many other ways for our redemption than the incarnation of His eternal Son, was pleased to choose this, not only that the remedy by man might have proportion to the causes of our ruin, whose introduction and intromission was by the prevarication of man; but also that we might with freer dispensation receive the influences of a Saviour with whom we communicate in nature. Although Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, were of greater name and current, yet they were not so salutary as the waters of Jordan to cure Naaman's leprosy. And if God had made the remedy of human nature to have come all the way clothed in prodigy, and every instant of its execution had been as terrible, affrighting, and as full of majesty, as the apparitions upon mount Sinai; yet it had not been so useful and complying to human necessities as was the descent of God to the susception of human nature, whereby (as in all medicaments) the cure is best wrought by those instruments which have the fewest dissonances to our temper, and are the nearest to our constitution. For thus the Saviour of the world became human, alluring, full of invitation and the sweetnesses of love, exemplary, humble, and medicinal.

3. 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? For now, though, as the righteous judge, He will judge the nations righteously; yet, by the susception

b Cum inter nos et Deum discordiam peccando fecimus, tamen ad nos Deus legatum suum prior misit, ut nos ipsi, qui peccavimus, ad pacem Dei rogati veniamus.-S. Greg. [vol. iv. par. 2. col. 847. Sub nomine Alulfi de expos.

Nov. Test. in 2 Cor. cap. xv.]

Quod sperare nullus audebat: quod si forte in mentem alicujus incidisset, poterat æstimare se in blasphemiam incurrisse.-S. Primasius. [In Rom. v. p. 21 b.]

of our nature, and its appendent crimes, He is become a party; and, having obliged Himself as man, as He is God He will satisfy, by putting the value of an infinite merit to the actions and sufferings of His humanity. And if He had not been God, He could not have given us remedy; if He had not been man, we should have wanted the excellency of example.

4. And till now, human nature was less than that of angels; but, by the incarnation of the Word, was to be exalted above the cherubims: yet the archangel Gabriel, being dispatched in embassy to represent the joy and exaltation of his inferior, instantly trims his wings with love and obedience, and hastens with this narrative to the holy Virgin. And if we should reduce our prayers to action, and do God's will on earth, as the angels in heaven do it, we should promptly execute every part of the divine will, though it were to be instrumental to the exaltation of a brother above ourselves; knowing no end but conformity to the divine will, and making simplicity of intention to be the fringes and exterior borders of our garments.

5. When the eternal God meant to stoop so low as to be fixed to our centre, He chose for His mother a holy person and a maid, but yet affianced to a just man, that He might not only be secure in the innocency, but also provided for in the reputation of His holy mother: teaching us, that we must not only satisfy ourselves in the purity of our purposes and hearty innocence, but that we must provide also things honest in the sight of all men, being free from the suspicion and semblances of evil; so making provision for private innocence and public honesty: it being necessary, in order to charity and edification of our brethren, that we hold forth no impure flames or smoking firebrands, but pure and trimmed lamps, in the eyes of all the world.

6. And yet her marriage was more mysterious; for as, besides the miracle, it was an eternal honour and advancement to the glory of virginity, that He chose a virgin for His mother, so it was in that manner attempered, that the Virgin was betrothed, lest honourable marriage might be disreputed and seem inglorious by a positive rejection from any participation of the honour. Divers of the old doctors, from the authority of Ignatius, add another reason, saying, that the blessed Jesus was therefore born of a woman betrothed and under the pretence of marriage, that the devil, who knew the Messias was to be born of a virgin, might not expect Him there, but so be ignorant of the person till God had served many ends of providence upon Him.

7. The angel, in his address, needed not to go in inquisition after a wandering fire, but knew she was a star fixed in her own orb: he found her at home; and lest that also might be too large a

ὁ ̓Αγαθῷ δ' οὐδεὶς περὶ οὐδένος οὐδέ ποτε ἐγγίνεται φθόνος. — Hierocl. in Pythag. [p 20.]

e Origen. Hom. vi. in Luc. [tom. ii. p. 938.] Hieron. Comment. in 1 Matth. [tom. v. col. 849.] S Basilius, et alii.

circuit, she was yet confined to a more intimate retirement; she was in her oratory, private and devout. There are some curiosities so bold and determinate, as to tell the very matter of her prayerf, and that she was praying for the salvation of all the world, and the revelation of the Messias, desiring she might be so happy as to kiss the feet of her who should have the glory to be His mother. We have no security of the particular; but there is no piety so diffident as to require a sign to create a belief that her employment at the instant was holy and religious; but in that disposition she received a grace which the greatest queens would have purchased with the quitting of their diadems, and hath consigned an excellent document to all women, that they accustom themselves often to those retirements where none but God and His angels can have admittance. For the holy Jesus can come to them too, and dwell with them, hallowing their souls, and consigning their bodies to a participation of all His glories; but recollecting of all our scattered thoughts and exterior extravagances, and a receding from the inconveniences of a too free conversation, is the best circumstance to dispose us to a heavenly visitation.

8. 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.

9. 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, action, and patience, obtained the crown of 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 S. Bernard. [vid. Hom. iv. In laud. Virg. Matr. col. 34.]

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 ostentous 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 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.

THE PRAYER.

O eternal and almighty God, who didst send Thy holy angel in embassy to the blessed Virgin mother of our Lord, to manifest the actuating Thine eternal purpose of the redemption of mankind by the incarnation of Thine eternal Son; put me, by the assistances of Thy divine grace, into such holy dispositions, that I may never impede the event and effect of those mercies which in the counsels of Thy predestination Thou didst design for me. Give me a promptness to obey Thee to the degree and semblance of angelical alacrity; give me holy purity and piety, prudence and modesty, like those excellencies which Thou didst create in the ever-blessed Virgin, the mother of God: grant that my employment be always holy, unmixed with worldly affections, and, as much as my condition of life will bear, retired from secular interests and disturbances; that I may converse with angels, entertain the holy Jesus, conceive Him in my soul, nourish Him with the expresses of most innocent and holy affections, and bring Him forth and publish Him in a life of piety and obedience, that He may dwell in me for ever, and I may for ever dwell with Him, in the house of eternal pleasures and glories, world without end. Amen.