taking only what others give it; so I, in all that is not sin, will permit myself to be governed by my superiors, obeying them in all that they shall command me, high or low, sweet or bitter, easy or difficult, without replying, contradicting, or resisting anything; without any self-will to choose this or that; but as one dead to my own will I will follow the will of others, taking with humility whatever they give me. These are the purposes that I must draw out of this consideration of death, encouraging myself to put them in practice; seeing it is not much for fifty years (which perhaps shall not be fifty days) to anticipate death in this manner, for the assurance of eternal life; by which for fifty thousand millions of years I shall possess the riches of Almighty God, I shall enjoy His pleasures, and I shall have perfect liberty, free from all misery. Oh, happy death to which succeeds so happy a life!
Colloquy. — O sweet Jesus, whose life was a continual death, to give us example of a holy and perfect life, grant me that in imitation of Thee I may live and die naked of all earthly things, mortified to delights, and obedient to all human creatures for Thy love: hold me always as dead to all that is visible, that my life be " hidden with" Thee "in God," [1] world without end! Amen.
POINT III.
1. The third point is, to consider the journey of the body towards the grave; pondering first, that I shall be carried in a coffin, or upon a bier on other men's shoulders to church; and that he who but awhile before walked the streets, looking on every side, and entered into the church, noting all that passed, goes now upon other men's feet, blind, deaf and dumb, himself the object of lamentation for his sad lot. And therefore to suppress the wantonness of
- ↑ Col. iii. 8.
