21. The third branch of the divine life is _purity_, a neglect of worldly enjoyments and accommodations, and a resolute enduring of all such troubles as we meet with in the doing of our duty. Now surely if ever any person was wholly dead to all the pleasures of the natural life, it was the blessed Jesus; who seldom tasted them when they came in his way, but never stept out of his road to seek them. Though he allowed others the comforts of wedlock, and honoured marriage with his presence, yet he chose the severity of a virgin life: and though he supplied the want of wine with a miracle, yet he would not work one for the relief of his own hunger in the wilderness. So gracious was he in allowing others such gratifications, as himself thought good to abstain from, and supplying not only their pressing necessities, but also their less considerable wants. We many times hear of our Saviour’s sighs, and groans, and tears, but never that he laughed, so that through his whole life he answered that character given of him by the prophet, _A man of sorrows, and acquainted with griefs_. Nor were the troubles of his life other than matters of choice: for never did there any appear on the stage of the world with greater advantages to have raised himself to the highest secular felicity. He who could bring together such a prodigious number of fishes into his disciples net, and at another time receive that tribute from a fish which he was to pay to the temple, might easily have made himself the richest person in the world; nay, without any money, he could have maintained an army powerful enough to have jostled _Cæsar_ out of his throne, having oftner than once fed several thousands with a few loaves and small fishes: but to shew how small esteem he had of all the enjoyments in the world, he chose to live in so poor and mean a condition, that _though the foxes had holes, and the birds of the air had nests, yet he, who was Lord of all things, had not where to lay his head_. He did not frequent the courts of princes, nor affect the acquaintance of great ones; but being reputed the son of a carpenter, he had fishermen, and other such poor people, for his companions, and lived at such a rate as suited with the meanness of that condition.
_His humility._
22. And thus I am brought unawares to speak of his _humility_, the last branch of the divine life, wherein he was a most eminent pattern to us, that we might _learn of him to be meek and lowly in heart_. I shall not now speak of that infinite condescension of the eternal Son of God, in taking our nature upon him; but only reflect on his lowly deportment while he was in the world. He had none of those sins and imperfections, which may justly humble the best of men; yet he was so entirely swallowed up with a deep sense of the infinite perfections of God, that he appeared as nothing in his own eyes, I mean so far as he was a creature. He considered those eminent perfections which shined in his blessed soul as not his own, but the gifts of God; and therefore assumed nothing to himself for them, but with the profoundest humility renounced all pretences to them. Hence did he refuse that ordinary compellation of _good Master_, from one, who, it seems, was ignorant of his divinity: _Why callest thou me good? There is none good but God only._ As if he had said, “The goodness of any creature (and such only thou takest me to be) is not worthy to be named or taken notice of; it is God alone who is originally and essentially good.” He never made use of his miraculous power for vanity or ostentation: he would not gratify the curiosity of the _Jews_ with a sign from heaven, some prodigious appearance in the air; nor would he follow the advice of his countrymen and kindred, who would have had all his great works performed in the eyes of the world, for gaining him the greater fame. When his charity had prompted him to the relief of the miserable, his humility made him many times enjoin the concealment of the miracle; and when the glory of God, and the design for which he came into the world, required the publication of them, he ascribed the honour of all to his Father, telling them, _That of himself he was able to do nothing_.
23. I cannot insist on all the instances of humility in his deportment towards men; his withdrawing himself when they would have made him a king; his subjection, not only to his blessed Mother, but to her husband, during his younger years, and his submission to all the indignities and affronts which his rude and malicious enemies put upon him: the history of his holy life, recorded by those who conversed with him, is full of such passages as these; and indeed the serious and attentive study of it, is the best way to get right measures of humility, and all the other parts of religion, which I have been endeavouring to describe.