CHAPTER IV
[an instruction with certain obsecrations TO THEM THAT SHALL Die]
Saint Gregory saith that all the action and work of our Lord Jesu Christ ought to be our instruction, and therefore every good Christian person disposed well to die ought to do, after his manner and possibility, in his last end like as did our Lord when He died on the cross.
Now it is so that our Lord did five things principally hanging on the cross. He adored and prayed. He wept, He cried. He commended His soul to God, and He yielded to Him His spirit. Thus semblably every sick man, constituted in the article of[1] death, ought to adore and pray; — at least in his heart, if he may not speak. For as saith Saint Isidore : It availeth more to pray with heart, in silence and without speaking, than by words only without taking heed of the thought.
Secondly he ought to weep, not with his bodily eyes only, but with the tears of his heart, in repenting verily himself.
Thirdly he ought strongly to cry from the depths of his heart, and not by voice. For God beholdeth more the desire of the heart than the sound of the voice. Also to cry with the heart is none other thing,
- ↑ placed at the point of.
