A Companion to the Temple; Or, a Help to Devotion in the Use of the Common Prayer Volume 1 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: that this Trinity is holy and unmixed, blessed by the angels, glorious in the eyes of all faithful people; once more, therefore, let us cry, Have Mercy: it is not a vain repetition, for mercy is so necessary for usm, and this holy importunity is so pleasing to Godn, that we ought to repeat this request often, and to beg it with a fervency not to be denied. And we may also have two advantages by this repetition; first, that if there be any misery or sin which lies upon us, and which we could not properly refer to any of the Persons in particular, we may now produce that here before the whole blessed Trinity. Secondly, if through negligence or wandering thoughts we let slip any of the former address, we may make some amends for our carelessness, and retrieve what we lost by a devout oblation of this general request, which I wish you to present with a hearty devotion; for a good beginning is not only an omen, but a cause of our good proceeding0 in the next part, to which we now go on, reserving the paraphrase till the end, that the whole Litany may appear paraphrased all together. 209 SECTION II. OF THE DEPRECATIONS. $. I. When we have craved audience, and opened our way to the throne of grace by the foregoing humble and importunate invocation, we proceed to make our more particular requests; and because the evils which are inflicted on us, or impendent over us, domost affect us, we must first desire to be delivered from them, before we can with a serene mind petition for good things. The first step towards felicity being freedom from evil, the first part of Litany is for deliverance, which is properly called Deprecation, that is, a supplication for the removal of some grievous things, which some make the first of those kinds of prayer prescribed by St. Paul in that directi...