Complete. From the “Holy State.”
TO describe a holy state without a virtuous lady therein were to paint out a year without a spring; we come therefore to her character.
She sets not her face so often by her glass as she composeth her soul by God’s Word,—which hath all the excellent qualities of a glass indeed.
1. It is clear; in all points necessary to salvation, except to such whose eyes are blinded.
2. It is true; not like those false glasses some ladies dress themselves by. And how common is flattery, when even glasses have learned to be parasites!
3. It is large; presenting all spots cap-a-pie behind and before, within and without.
4. It is durable; though in one sense it is broken too often (when God’s laws are neglected), yet it will last to break them that break it, and one tittle thereof shall not fall to the ground.
5. This glass hath power to smooth the wrinkles, cleanse the spots, and mend the faults it discovers.
She walks humbly before God in all religious duties. Humbly; for she well knows that the strongest Christian is like the city of Rome, which was never besieged but it was taken; and the best saint without God’s assistance would be as often foiled as tempted. She is most constant and diligent at her hours of private prayer. Queen Catharine Dowager never kneeled on a cushion when she was at her devotions; this matters not at all; our lady is more careful of her heart than of her knees, that her soul be settled aright.
She is careful and most tender of her credit and reputation. There is a tree in Mexicana which is so exceedingly tender that a man cannot touch any of its branches but it withers presently. A lady’s credit is of equal niceness; a small touch may wound and kill it; which makes her very cautious what company she keeps. The Latin tongue seems somewhat injurious to the feminine sex, for whereas therein amicus is a friend, amica always signifies a sweetheart; as if their sex in reference to men were not capable of any other kind of familiar friendship but in way to marriage,—which makes our lady avoid all privacy with suspicious company.
Yet is she not more careful of her own credit than of God’s glory; and stands up valiantly in the defense thereof. She hath read how, at the coronation of King Richard II., Dame Margaret Dimock, wife to Sir John Dimock, came into the court and claimed the place to be the king’s champion by the virtue of the tenure of her manor of Scrinelby in Lincolnshire, to challenge and defy all such as opposed the king’s right to the crown. But if our lady hears any speaking disgracefully of God or religion, she counts herself bound by her tenure (whereby she holds possession of grace here and reversion of glory hereafter) to assert and vindicate the honor of the King of Heaven, whose champion she professeth to be. One may be a lamb in private wrongs, but in hearing general affronts to goodness they are asses which are not lions.
She is pitiful and bountiful to people in distress. We read how a daughter of the Duke of Exeter invented a brake or cruel rack to torment people withal, to which purpose it was long reserved, and often used in the Tower of London, and commonly called (was it not fit so pretty a babe should bear her mother’s name?) the Duke of Exeter’s Daughter. Methinks the finding out of a salve to ease poor people in pain had borne better proportion to her ladyship than to have been the inventor of instruments of cruelty.
She is a good scholar, and well learned in useful authors. Indeed, as in purchases a house is valued at nothing, because it returns no profit and requires great charges to maintain it, so, for the same reasons, learning in a woman is but little to be prized. But as for great ladies, who ought to be a confluence of all rarities and perfections, some learning in them is not only useful, but necessary.
In discourse, her words are rather fit than fine, very choice and yet not chosen. Though her language be not gaudy, yet the plainness thereof pleaseth,—it is so proper and handsomely put on. Some, having a set of fine phrases, will hazard an impertinency to use them all, as thinking they give full satisfaction, for dragging in the matter by head and shoulders, if they dress it in quaint expressions. Others often repeat the same things, the Platonic year of their discourses being not above three days long, in which term all the same matter returns over again, threadbare talk, ill suiting with the variety of their clothes.
She affects not the vanity of foolish fashions, but is decently appareled according to her state and condition. He that should have guessed the bigness of Alexander’s soldiers by their shields left in India would much over-proportion their true greatness. But what a vast overgrown creature would some guess a woman to be, taking his aim by the multitude and variety of clothes and ornaments which some of them use,—insomuch as the ancient Latins called a woman’s wardrobe mundus, a world; wherein notwithstanding was much terra incognita, then undiscovered, but since found out by the curiosity of modern fashion-mongers. We find a map of this world drawn by God’s spirit, Is. iii. 18, wherein one and twenty women’s ornaments (all superfluous) are reckoned up, which at this day are much increased. The moons, there mentioned, which they wore on their heads, may seem since grown to the full in the luxury of after ages.
She is contented with that beauty which God hath given her. If very handsome, no whit the more proud, but far the more thankful; if unhandsome, she labors to better it in the virtues of her mind, that what is but plain cloth without may be rich plush within. Indeed, such natural defects as hinder her comfortable serving of God in her calling may be amended by art; and any member of the body being defective, may thereby be lawfully supplied. Thus glass eyes may be used, though not for seeing, for sightliness. But our lady detesteth all adulterate complexions, finding no precedent thereof in the Bible save one, and her so bad that ladies would blush through their paint to make her the pattern of their imitation. Yet are there many that think the grossest fault in painting is to paint grossly (making their faces with thick daubing not only new pictures, but new statues), and that the greatest sin therein is to be discovered.
In her marriage she principally respects virtue and religion, and next that, other accommodations, as we have formerly discoursed of. And she is careful in match, not to bestow herself unworthily beneath her own degree to an ignoble person, except in case of necessity. Thus the gentlewomen in Champagne in France, some three hundred years since, were enforced to marry yeoman and farmers, because all the nobility in that country were slain in the wars, in the two voyages of King Louis to Palestine; and thereupon ever since, by custom and privilege, the gentlewomen of Champagne and Brie ennoble their husbands and give them honor in marrying them, how mean soever before.
Though pleasantly affected, she is not transported with court delights,—as in their stately masques and pageants. By degrees she is brought from delighting in such masques, only to be contented to see them, and at last, perchance, could desire to be excused from that also.
Yet in her reduced thoughts she makes all the sport she hath seen earnest to herself; it must be a dry flower indeed out of which this bee sucks no honey; they are the best Origens who do allegorize all earthly vanities into heavenly truths. When she remembereth how suddenly the scene in the masque was altered (almost before moment itself could take notice of it), she considereth how quickly mutable all things are in this world, God ringing the changes on all accidents, and making them tunable to his glory; the lively representing of things so curiously that Nature herself might grow jealous of Art in outdoing her, minds our lady to make sure work with her own soul, seeing hypocrisy may be so like to sincerity. But oh! what a wealthy exchequer of beauties did she there behold, several faces most different, most excellent (so great is the variety even in bests), what a rich mine of jewels, above ground, all so brave, so costly! To give court masques their due, of all the bubbles in this world they have the greatest variety of fine colors. But all is quickly ended; this is the spite of the world,—if ever she affordeth fine ware, she always pincheth it in the measure, and it lasts not long. But oh! thinks our lady, how glorious a place is heaven, where there are joys forevermore. If a herd of kine should meet together in fancy and define happiness, they would place it to consist in fine pastures, sweet grass, clear water, shadowy groves, constant summer; but if any winter, then warm shelter and dainty hay, with company after their kind, counting these low things the highest happiness, because their conceit can reach no higher. Little better do the heathen poets describe heaven, paving it with pearl, and roofing it with stars, filling it with gods and goddesses, and allowing them to drink (as if without it no poet’s paradise) nectar and ambrosia; heaven indeed being pœtarum dedecus, the shame of poets, and the disgrace of all their hyperboles falling as far short of truth herein as they go beyond it in other fables. However, the sight of such glorious earthly spectacles advantageth our lady’s conceit by infinite multiplication thereof to consider of heaven.
She reads constant lectures to herself of her own mortality. To smell a turf of fresh earth is wholesome for the body; no less are thoughts of mortality cordial to the soul. “Earth thou art, to earth thou shalt return.”
The sight of death when it cometh will neither be so terrible to her, nor so strange, who hath formerly often beheld it in her serious meditations. With Job she saith to the worm, “Thou art my sister.” If fair ladies scorn to own the worms their kindred in this life, their kindred will be bold to challenge them when dead in their graves; for when the soul (the best perfume of the body) is departed from it, it becomes so noisome a carcass, that, should I make a description of the loathsomeness thereof, some dainty dames would hold their noses in reading it.
To conclude; we read how Henry, a German prince, was admonished by revelation to search for a writing in an old wall, which should nearly concern him, wherein he found only these two words written, Post sex, after six. Whereupon Henry conceived that his death was foretold, which after six days should ensue; which made him pass those days in constant preparation for the same. But finding the six days passed without the effect he expected, he successively persevered in his godly resolutions six weeks, six months, six years, and on the first day of the seventh year the prophecy was fulfilled, though otherwise than he interpreted it; for thereupon he was chosen Emperor of Germany, having before gotten such a habit of piety that he persisted in his religious course forever after. Thus our lady hath so inured herself “all the days of her appointed time to wait till her change cometh,” that, expecting it every hour, she is always provided for that than which nothing is more certain or uncertain.
