find outward things a danger and disturbance, it comes from our appropriating to ourselves what is God's.

6. The friends of God find the truth unknown to others. Wherefore, beloved children, the masters of Paris diligently read the books and turn over the leaves; this is something; this is pretty well. But these men read the true living book, where all is life.

7. Know that shouldest thou let thyself be stabbed a thousand times a day, and come to life again; shouldest thou let thyself be strung to a wheel, and eat thorns and stones; with all this, thou couldest not overcome sin of thyself. But sink thyself into the deep unfathomable mercy of God, and Christ will give it thee out of his great kindness, and free goodness, and love, and compassion.

8. Wouldest thou master the flesh? Lay upon it the curb and fetters of love. With that thou wilt overcome it easiest of all, and with love thou wilt load it heaviest of all,

9. We must seek God by Himself; and this foretaste of the great, true wedding, many people would fain have, and complain that it cannot be. And if they experience no wedding when they pray, and find not God's presence in spiritual exercises, it vexes them; they say they have no experience of God; and they grow weary of their painstaking and praying. This a man should never do; for God was present though we perceived Him not. He went secretly to the wedding; and, where God is, there is the wedding; and He cannot be away from it. Where a man simply thinks of Him, and seeks Him alone, there God must, of necessity, be, either sensibly or in a hidden

manner.

PETRARCH.

BORN 1304-DIED 1374.

1. If tears become any one when dying, it is him whom laughter did not become when living; seeing he saw that which makes death a thing to be wept, ever at hand, and suspended above his head. How closely did this weeping follow upon that laughter!

2. To the eternal tribunal of the just Judge our appeal is safe. He will rescind the unjust judgment.

3. In all good studies I delighted; but was specially given to philosophy and poetry, which even, however, I neglected in process of time, being delighted with the Holy Scriptures, in which I perceived a hidden sweetness which I once despised. Poetry I reserved as for ornamental purposes alone.

4. As truth is immortal, so a lie lasts not; feigned things are soon discovered, as the hair that is combed and set with great diligence is ruffled with a little blast of wind. The craftiest lie cannot stand before the truth; everything that is covered is soon uncovered; shadows pass away; and the native colour of things remains. No man can live long under water; he must needs come forth and shew the face which he concealed.

5. Desire and strive to die well, which cannot be without living well. The rest commit to God, who brought you into this world unasked, but who, when you are about

to leave it, will not introduce you to His kingdom unsought.

6. Impatient of disease, do you wish for death? Foolish and proud! Allow Him who made your body to determine all things concerning it. Only the use of it, not lordship over it, have you received; and that only for a short time. Think you that you are lord of your clayey mansion? You are but a tenant. He who made all things, He is its Lord.

7. To many, liberty is servitude; to others, servitude is liberty. The yoke of care is worse than the yoke of men; yet he who has shaken off the one, bears the other patiently!

8. Where you are is of no moment, but only what you are doing there. It is not the place that ennobles you, but you the place; and this only by doing that which is great and noble.

9. You fear to die in your sins? But who is to blame but yourself? Who compelled you to sin? Who forbade you to have it washed away? Who hinders your repentance, however late? Carry not your sins away with you. There is still time; and He still lives who takes them away and blots them out, who casts them behind His back, and removes them from you as far as the east is from the west.

WICLIFFE.

BORN 1324-DIED 1384.

1. Have a remembrance of the goodness of God: how He made thee in His own likeness, and how Jesus Christ, both God and man, died so painful a death upon the cross, to buy man's soul out of hell, even with His own heart's blood, and to bring it to the bliss of heaven.

2. Bethink thee heartily of the wonderful kindness of God, who was so high and so worshipful in heaven, that He should come down so low, and be born of the maiden, and become our brother, to buy us again, by his hard passion, from our thraldom to Satan.

3. See the great kindness which God hath shewn for thee, and thereby learn thy own great unkindness; and thus thou shalt see that man is the most fallen of creatures, and the unkindest of all creatures that God ever made. It should be full sweet and delightful to us to think thus on this great kindness and this great love of Jesus Christ.

4. We are predestinated that we may obtain divine acceptance and become holy; having received that grace through Christ's taking human nature, whereby we are rendered finally pleasing to God. And it appears that this grace, which is called the grace of predestination, or the charity of final perseverance, cannot by any means fail.

5. That shall be a dreadful doom and a fearful DoomsFor Christ, who shall be Judge there, is now meek

man.

as a lamb, and ready to bow to mercy; but there He will be stern as a lion to all that are damnable, and shall doom according to righteousness. Before this stern Doomsman all men and women shall yield reckoning of all their living on earth.

6. Have mind that when thou wert a child of wrath and of hell, for the sin of Adam, Christ laid his life to pledge, to bring thee out of that prison; and He gave not as ransom for thee either gold or silver, or any other jewel, but his own precious blood that ran out of his heart. This should move all Christian men to have mind of God, and to worship Him in thought, word, and deed.

7. The Father defendeth every soul that is true to Him from the power of the fiend (devil) who would overset it; and granteth it through His grace to be an heir of heaven.

8. Christ teacheth us in this prayer to ask the dreadful time of doom, in which the kingdom of God shall fully

come.

D