Page:Imitation-of-christ-1901.djvu/262

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248
Of Examination before Communion.

CHAPTER VII.

OF THOROUGHLY SEARCHING OUR OWN CONSCIENCE, AND OF HOLY PURPOSE OF AMENDMENT.

ABOVE all things, with very great humility and with reverential supplication, with a full faith and a dutiful regard for God's honour, God's priest ought to come to celebrate and to receive this holy sacrament.

Examine diligently thy conscience, and to the utmost of thy power purify it with true contrition and humble confession; so as there may be nothing in thee, that may be burdensome unto thee, or that may breed in thee remorse of conscience, and hinder thy free access to the throne of grace.

Be grieved at the recollection of all thy sins in general, and in particular bewail and lament thy daily transgressions.

And if thou hast time, confess unto God in the secret of thine heart the wretchedness of thy disordered passions.

2. Lament and grieve, that thou art yet so carnal and worldly, so unmortified in thy passions, so full of the motions of concupiscence:

So unwatchful over thy outward senses, so often entangled with many vain fancies:

So much inclined to outward things, so negligent in things inward and spiritual:

So prone to laughter and unbridled mirth, so indisposed to tears and compunction: