Let our conduct not fall away from the Spirit, but let us, who have begun to be spiritual and heavenly, have only spiritual and heavenly thoughts and actions, for the Lord God Himself hath said, They that honor Me I will honor; and he that despiseth Me shall be despised. The blessed Apostle has likewise in his Epistle set forth: Ye are not your own, with a great price ye are bought. Glorify and

in your body.

possess God IV. After this we say, Hallowed be Thy name; not as wishing for God to be made holy by our prayers, but asking of Him, for His name to be kept holy in us. By whom indeed could God be sanctified, who Himself sanctifies? But seeing He Himself has said, Be ye holy, for I also am holy, it is this that we ask and request, that we who have been sanctified in baptism, may persevere such as we have begun. For this we daily make petition: since we need a daily sanctification, in order that we, who sin day by day, may cleanse afresh our offenses by a continual sanctification. What that sanctification is which God's good pleasure confers on us, the Apostle in these words expresses: Neither fornicators, nor idolators, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you; but ye are washed, but ye are justified, but ye are sanctified, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the Spirit of our God. He says that we are sanctified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the Spirit of our God. We pray that this sanctification may remain in us: and as our Lord and Judge warns the man to whom He had given healing and fresh life, to sin no more lest a worse thing should come upon him, we make petition with continual prayers, by day and by night we make our request, that the sanctification and renewed life, which is obtained from God's grace, may be preserved by His protection.

V. It follows in our prayer, Thy kingdom come. We here entreat that the kingdom of God may be manifested unto us, in the same way that we ask that His name may be hallowed in us. For when is God's kingdom not? or when begins with Him that which both ever has been, and will be ever? We pray for the coming of that our kingdom which has been promised to us by God, and was gained by the blood and passion of Christ; that we who have continued His subjects in the life below may afterward reign in Christ's kingdom, according to his own promise and word: Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you, from the beginning of the world. The kingdom of God, dearest brethren, may stand for

Christ Himself, whom we day by day wish to come, and for whose advent we pray, that it be quickly manifested to us. As He is our Resurrection, because in Him we rise again; so may He be called the kingdom of God, because we are to reign in Him. Rightly we ask for God's kingdom, that is, for the heavenly, because there is a kingdom of this earth besides. He, however, who has renounced the world, is superior to its honors and its kingdom; and hence he who dedicates himself to God and to Christ, longs.not for the kingdom of earth, but for the kingdom of heaven. Need have we of continual supplication and prayer, that we perish not from the heavenly kingdom, as the Jews perished to whom it had aforetime been promised, as the Lord has taught and assured us; Many, saith He, shall come from the east and from the west, and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. He shows that the Jews were children of the kingdom before, so long as they held on to be God's children; but when they lost their concern in the name of Father, they lost that in the kingdom also. Thus Christians being now admitted to address God in prayer as our Father, make petition also that His kingdom may come to us.

VI. We further go on to say, Thy will be done, as in heaven so in earth not in order that God may do His own will, but that we may be enabled to do what He wills should be done by us. For who resists God, so that He can not do His own will? Yet since we are resisted by the Devil, so that our disposition and conduct does less submit itself to God in all points, we pray and desire that the will of God may be done in us; and that it may be done in us, we stand in need of that will, that is, of God's aid and protection; for no man is strong by his own strength, but is safe in the indulgence and pity of God. Furthermore the Lord, manifesting the infirmity of that human nature which He bare, says, Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me; and yielding to His disciples the example of doing not their own will but that of God, He added, Yet not My will but Thine be done. And in another place He says, I came down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him that sent Me. If then the Son was obedient in doing His Father's will, how much more ought the servant to be obedient, in doing the will of his Lord; even as John also in his Epistle thus exhorts and instructs us; Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world; if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, is lust of the flesh, and lust of the eyes, and pride of life,

which is not of the Father, but is of the lust of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God, abideth forever, like as God also abideth forever. Would we abide eternally, we must do the will of God who is eternal.

VII. The will of God is what Christ has done and taught: it is humility in conduct, it is steadfastness in faith, scrupulousness in our words, rectitude in our deeds, mercy in our works, governance in our habits; it is innocence of injuriousness, and patience under it, preserving peace with the brethren, loving God with all our heart, loving Him as our Father, and fearing Him as our God; accounting Christ before all things, because he accounteth nothing before us, clinging inseparably to His love, being stationed with fortitude and faith at His cross; and when the battle comes for His name and honor, maintaining in words that constancy which makes confession, in torture that confidence which joins battle, and in death that patience which receives the crown. This it is, to endeavor to be co-heir with Christ; this it is to perform the commandment of God, and fulfill the will of the Father.

VIII. It is our prayer that the will of God may be done both. in heaven and in earth; each of which bears toward the accomplishment of our health and salvation. Having a body from the earth, and a spirit from heaven, we are both earth and heaven; in both, that is, both in body and spirit, we pray that God's will may be done. Flesh and spirit have a strife between them, a daily encounter from their mutual quarrel, so that we can not do the things that we would, because the spirit seeks things heavenly and divine, the flesh desires things earthly and temporal. Hence it is our earnest prayer, that by God's help and aid, a peace may be established between these two, that by the doing of God's will, both in the spirit and flesh, that soul may be preserved which has been born again through Him. This the Apostle Paul, in distinct and manifest words sets forth: The flesh, saith he, lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh and these are contrary the one to the other, so that you can not do the things that ye would. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these, adulteries, fornications, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, murders, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, drunkenness, reveling, and such like; of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in times past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But he fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, magnanimity, goodness, faith, kindness, continence, chastity. For this cause we make it our daily, yea, our unceasing petition, that God's will in us may be done, both

in heaven and earth; for this is the will of God, that the earthly should give way to the heavenly, that spiritual and divine things should become supreme.

IX. It may, moreover, be thus understood, dearest brethren, that as the Lord commands and admonishes us to love even our enemies, and to pray too for those who persecute us, we should make petition for those who still are earth, who have not yet begun to be heavenly, that in their instance also God's will may be done, which Christ fulfilled in the saving and renewing of man's nature. the disciples are called by Him as no longer earth, but the salt of the earth, and the Apostle says that the first man is from the dust of the earth, but the second from Heaven; agreeably hereto do we, who ought to be like God our Father, who makes His sun to rise on the good and on the evil, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust, so frame our prayer and petition by the admonition of Christ, as to make entreaty for the salvation of all; that as in heaven, that is ir us, through our faith God's will has been done, so that we are of heaven; so in earth, that is in unbelievers, God's will may be done, so that those who are yet of earth under the first birth, may become of heaven, by being born of water and of the Spirit.

X. As the prayer proceeds, we offer request and say, Give us this day our daily bread. This may be understood both in the spiritual and in the simple meaning, seeing that either purport contains a divine aid, for the advancing of our salvation. For Christ is the bread of life, and this bread belongs not to all men, but to us; and as we say Our Father, because the Father of the understanding and believing, so we speak of our bread, because Christ is the bread of us, who appertain to His body. This bread we pray that it be given us day by day, lest we who are in Christ, and who daily receive the Eucharist for food of salvation, should by the admission of any grievous crime, and our being, therefore, shut out from communion, and forbidden the heavenly bread, be separated from the body of Christ, according as Himself preaches and forewarns: I am the bread of life which came down from Heaven. If any man eat of My bread, he shall live forever. But the bread that I will give is My flesh, for the life of the world. Seeing, therefore, that He says that if any man eat of His bread he shall live forever; it follows, that while it is manifest that those do thus live, who appertain to His body and receive the Eucharist by right of communication, so also is it matter both for our fears and prayers, that none of us by being forbidden. communion be separated from the body of Christ, and so remain far from salvation, as Himself threatens and declares: Unless ye eat the

flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye shall have no life in you. Hence, then, we pray that our bread, that is Christ, may be given to us day by day; that we who abide in Christ and live in Him, may not draw back from His sanctification and His body.

XI. It may likewise bear this meaning, that we who have re nounced the world, and rejected its riches and pomps, through the faith of spiritual grace, should ask for ourselves no more than food and sustenance, as the Lord instructs and tells us, Whosoever forsak. eth not all that he hath, can not be my disciple. But he who has begun to be a disciple of Christ, forsaking all things after the commandment of his Master, has but his food to ask for to-day, without indulging excessive longings in his prayer, as the Lord again prescribes and teaches; Take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself; sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Justly, therefore, does the disciple of Christ make peti. tion for to-day's provision, since he is forbidden to take thought for to-morrow. It were a self-contradicting and incompatible thing, for us, who pray that the kingdom of God may quickly come, to be looking unto long life in the world below. Thus, also, the blessed apostle instructs us, forming and establishing the steadfastness of our hope and faith; We brought nothing into this world, and neither can we carry any thing out. Having, therefore, food and raiment, let us herewith be content. But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil, while some coveted after, they have made shipwreck from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. He teaches us that not only are riches despicable, but are also dangerous; that in them is the root of seductive evils, misleading the blindness of the human heart by a concealed deception. Wherefore also God judges that rich fool, whose thoughts were for his earthly stores, and who boasted himself in the multitude of his abundant gatherings; Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee; then, whose shall those things be which thou hast provided? The fool made merry in his stores, even that night when he was to die; and while life was ceasing from his hand, life's multiplied provision still employed his thought. The Lord, on the other hand, teaches us that he becomes the perfect and accomplished Christian, who, by selling all he has, and giving to the poor, stores up for himself a treasure in heaven. That man, He says, it is, that can follow Him, and imitate the glory of the passion of the Lord; who, unimpeded and close-girt, involved in no shackle of worldly possessions, is enabled in unrestraint and freedom himself to