Читать книгу A Golden Treatise of Mental Prayer - St. Peter de Alcántara - Страница 4

PROLOGUE.

spend their days in rigorous penance, watching, fasting, and prayer, and finally to renounce all the seeming pleasures, for true there are none,* which the flattering world could afford unto them.

These things are daily put in practice by many, who profess the gospel of Christ. For, where Catholic religion flourisheth, we see divers monasteries of men and women, filled with religious souls, who consecrate themselves a perpetual sacrifice to the Almighty.

How many religious do we see honored with priestly function, an office requiring more than human purity,✝ and a burthen scarcely

*Consalatio mundi villis, et ad nihilum utilis, et quod magis metuendutn est, verse et salubris consolationis impedimentum. D. Ber. in ser. vir. Natui sic se habent universa sub sole, ut nihil sit in eis vere jucundum omnis siquidem Jaboris remediura, alterius laboris initium est. Idemin sermone de primordiiset mediis noviss. Vide plura apud Hieron. Platum de bono Stat. Relig. 1. 3. cap. 1.

✝Quo non oportet esse puriorem tali fruentum sa- crificio? quo solari radio non splendidiorem manum carnem hanc dividentem ? Os quod igni spiritali re- pletur, linguam quae tremendo nimis sanguine rubescit. Sic D. Chrys. hom. 83. in Matt. And Pope Gelasius, writing to Bishop Alpidius, doth excellently set down