XXXIII. The brethren in Egypt (saith St. Augustine, epist. 1211,) are reported to have many prayers, but every of them very short, as if they were darts thrown out with a kind of sudden quickness, lest that vigilant and erect attention of mind, which in prayer is very necessary, should be wasted or dulled through continuance, if their prayers were few and long. But that which St. Augustine doth allow they condemn. Those prayers whereunto devout minds have added a piercing kind of brevity, as well in that respect which we have already mentioned, as also thereby the better to express that quick and speedy expedition, wherewith ardent affections, the very wings of prayer, are delighted to present our suits in heaven, even sooner than our tongues can devise to utter them, they in their mood of contradiction spare not openly to deride, and that with so base terms as do very ill beseem men of their gravity2. Such speeches are scandalous, they savour not of God in him that useth them, and unto virtuously disposed minds they are grievous corrosives. Our case were miserable, if that wherewith we most endeavour to please God were in his sight so vile and despicable as men’s disdainful speech would make it.
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Footnotes
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[Al. 130. § 20. t. ii. p. 389. “Dicuntur fratres in Ægypto crebras quidem habere orationes, sed eas tamen brevissimas, et raptim quodammodo jaculatas, ne illa vigilanter erecta, quæ oranti plurimum necessaria est, per productiores moras evanescat atque hebetetur intentio.”] ↩
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T. C. lib. i. 138. [al. 108. “Concerning the form there is also to be misliked: a great cause whereof is the following of the form used in popery; against which I have before spoken. For whilst that service was set in many points as a pattern of this, it cometh to pass, that instead of such prayers as the primitive churches have used, and those that be reformed now use, we have divers short cuts and shreddings, which may be better called wishes than prayers.” Whitg. Def. 499. marg. “These are unseemly terms for godly prayers, be they never so short.” And 500. “Will you still more and more utter your contempt against God, against His Church, against a most pure and godly kind of public prayer and service, and that with such unreverent speeches? But I omit them: it is enough to have noted them in the margent, for they are confutation to themselves.”] And [T. C.] lib. iii. 210. 211. ↩