Ralph Cudworth (1618-1688): Obedience to the Divine Will

The learned and pious Dr. Cudworth says:

 “The highest mystery of a divine life here and of perfect happiness hereafter, consisteth in nothing but mere obedience to the divine will. Happiness is nothing but that inward sweet delight that will arise from the harmonious agreement between our wills and God’s will. There is nothing contrary to God in the whole world, nothing that fights against him, but SELF-WILL. This is the strong castle that we all keep garrisoned against heaven in every one of our hearts, which God continually layeth siege unto; and it must be conquered and demolished before we can conquer heaven. It was by reason of this self-will that Adam fell in Paradise; that those glorious angels, those morning stars, kept not their first station, but dropped down from heaven like falling stars, and sunk into this condition of bitterness, anxiety, and wretchedness, in which they now are. They all entangled themselves with the length of their own wings; they would needs will more and otherwise, than God would will in them. And going about to make their wills wider, and to enlarge them into greater amplitude, the more they struggled they found themselves the faster pinioned, and crowded up into narrowness and servility, insomuch that now they are not able to use any wings at all; but inheriting the serpent’s curse, can only creep with their bellies on the earth. Now our only way to recover God and happiness again, is, not to soar up with our understandings, but to destroy this self-will of ours. And then we shall find our wings to grow again, our plumes fairly spread, and ourselves raised aloft into the free air of perfect liberty, which is perfect happiness.”

— From Cudworth’s Criterion of the true knowledge of Christ; a sermon preached before the English House of Commons, March 31, 1647 quoted in The Life of Faith, Part 2, Chapter 9.

The Loss of Our Own Will

It is not sufficient, that the lower principles of our nature are brought into subjection; it is not sufficient to possess affections purified and sanctified; God requires, in addition to these results and evidences of the rectification of our inward nature, the subjection of the will; an equally important and perhaps still more difficult work. One of the results of the highest Christianity, a Christianity far different from and far above that which is merely nominal, or which is but little better than nominal, is the LOSS OF OUR OWN WILLS. It is not meant by this, that we may not have a will different from that of our fellow-men, nor is it meant, that we may not have a strong, energetic will; but that we ought not to have, and that as Christians, who aim at the highest results of the divine life, we cannot have a will of our own, in distinction from and at variance with the divine will.

In this last sense, he, who approaches nearest to an annihilation of his own will, approaches nearest to the state of entire sympathy and harmony with the Divine Mind. The prostration of our own will, in such a sense that it shall not in any respect oppose itself to the will of God, seems to be the completion or consummation of those various processes, by which the inward spirit is purified. When the will in its personal or self-interested operation is entirely prostrated, so that we can say with the Savior, “Lo, I come to do thy will,” then the wall of spiritual separation is taken away, and the soul may be said, through the open entrance, to find a passage, as it were, into God himself, and to become one with Him, in a mysterious but holy and glorious union. Then and not till then, can it be truly said that the warfare against God has ceased, and a perfect reconciliation taken place, enabling those who have arrived at this blessed state to exclaim with the Savior, (perhaps in a modified but still in a true and most important sense,) “I AND MY FATHER ARE ONE.”

— from The Life of Faith, Part 2, Chapter 9.

The Inward Christ

The outward word is good and true,
But inward power alone makes new; 
Not even Christ can cleanse from sin, 
Until He comes and works within.

It was for this HE could not stay,
But hasten'd up the starry way;
And keeps from outward sight apart,
That men may seek him in the heart.

CHRIST IN THE HEART! If absent there,
Thou canst not find Him anywhere;
CHRIST IN THE HEART! Oh friends, begin,
And build the throne of Christ within.

And know from this, that He is thine,
And that thy life is made divine,
When Holy Love shall have control,
And rule supremely in the soul.

— Christ in the Soul (1872)  LXXXIII.

Poetry: Divine Justice Amiable

Reflections on
the Life of
Madame Jeanne de la Mothe Guyon.

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Her poetical writings. Justice of God amiable.

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It is about this time that we find the first mention of her attempts at poetry. Poetry is the natural expression of strong feeling. She felt, and she wrote. It is possible that she had made attempts of this kind before; but I find nothing said of it. Voltaire, who goes out of his appropriate sphere of judgment in discrediting her religious pretensions, speaks lightly also of her effusions in verse. It would require a more intimate knowledge of French poetical diction than I profess to have, to give an opinion of her poetry, so far as the expression is concerned. But I do not hesitate to say, with great confidence, that this portion of her writings, with some variations; undoubtedly, exhibits in a high degree the spirit of poetry. There is thought in it; there is feeling. The highest kind of thought, the deepest feeling. The following poem, translated by Mr. Cowper, whom some critics, I think, would not place below Voltaire, either as a writer or judge of poetry, may be regarded as expressive, in some particulars, of her religious experience at this time ; and is probably to be referred, in its origin, to this period of her life. It indicates a deep sense of her unworthiness, and a humble and approving resignation to God's will, under the heaviest inflictions of His providence.

Smallpox & Sorrow

Reflections on
the Life of
Madame Jeanne de la Mothe Guyon.

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Attacked by the smallpox. Treatment experienced from her stepmother. Death of her youngest son. Her feelings.

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The first thing [God] did was to smite her beauty with that dreadful scourge of the human race, the small-pox. The summer was over; her ear no longer listened to the waters of the Loire; the festivities of St Cloud and Paris had passed away. On the 4th of October, 1670, (she is particular to mark the month and the day,) the blow came upon her like lightning from heaven. This dreadful disease was not then shorn of its terrors by that merciful Providence, which directed the philosophic mind of Jenner in the discovery of its wonderful preventive. And she was thus smitten when she was a little-more than twenty-two years of age, — a period of life when beauty of person does not cease to be prized. When it was discovered that the hand of the Lord was thus upon her, her friends, not excluding those in all probability who had endeavored to lead her into the follies of fashionable life, exhibited great emotion. They came around her bedside, and almost forgetting that her life was in danger, deplored in feeling language the mysterious and fatal attack, which was thus made upon charms which had been so much celebrated.

Full Consecration: The Second Death

Reflections on
the Life of
Madame Jeanne de la Mothe Guyon.

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Renewed consecration, in which she gives up all without reserve.

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And here, I think, we may mark a distinct and very important crisis in the history of her spiritual being. Taught by sad experience, she saw the utter impossibility of combining the love of the world with the love of God. "From this day, this hour, if it be possible, I will be wholly the Lord's. The world shall have no portion in me." Such was the language of her heart ; such her solemn determination. She formed her resolution after counting the cost, — a resolution wbich was made in God's strength and not in her own; which, in after life, was often smitten by the storm and tried in the fire; but, from this time onward, so far as we know anything of her history, was never consumed, — was never broken. She gave herself to the Lord, Not only to be his in the ordinary and mitigated sense of the terms, but to be his wholly, and to be his forever; to be his in body and in spirit; to be his in personal efforts and influence; to be his in all that she was and in all that it was possible for her to be. There was no reserve.

Advice from a Stranger

Reflections on
the Life of
Madame Jeanne de la Mothe Guyon.

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[She attends] religious services at the church of Notre Dame in Paris. On her way thither she has an extraordinary interview with a person unknown. His advice to her.

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It was at this period of her personal history, that [Madame Guyon] began to have a more distinct and realizing perception of what is implied in a sanctified life. Some portions of her reading, as well as her personal experience, had been favorable to this result. In the Life of Madame de Chantal, which she had read with great interest, she found the doctrine of holiness, so far as it may be supposed to consist in a will subjected to God, and in a heart filled with love, illustrated in daily living and practice, as well as asserted as a doctrine. The writings of Francis de Sales are characterized, in distinction from many other devout writings of the period in which he lived, by insisting on continual walking with God, on the entire surrender of the human will to the divine, and on the existence of pure love. The writings of this devout and learned man seem to have been her constant companions through life. The Imitation of Christy generally ascribed to Thomas a Kempis, Another of the works with which she was familiar, is animated by the same spirit of high Christian attainment. All these writers, in different ways and under different forms of expression, agree in strenuously teaching, that the whole heart, the whole life should be given to God; and that in some true sense this entire surrender, not excluding, however, a constant sense of demerit and of dependence on God, and the constant need of the application of Christ's blood, is in reality not less practicable than it is obligatory.