so we should esteem every little part of the day and time that we have Him within us; seeing in each part of it He is able to do us great favours if, with a devout and thankful mind, we dispose ourselves to receive them, especially as this sacrament (as St. Dionysius [1] says) is the consummation, fulfilling, and perfection of all the other, and the most effectual means that Almighty God has given us for our perfection. And seeing we have Him present to communicate it unto us, there is reason to enlarge the vessel of the heart to receive it. To this end we are here to exercise with greatest fervour the three acts of thanksgiving that were set down in the 34th meditation, spending the time not so much in new considerations, seeing those that are set down are sufficient, as in new affections, and canticles of praise and thanksgiving in this form ensuing.
POINT I.
1. First, I am greatly to quicken my faith of the presence of this our Lord that is within me, beholding the invisible as if I did visibly behold Him, and briefly pondering that He is the same Lord of whom I conceived so great excellences when I prepared myself to communicate. And seeing where the king is there is the court, I may imagine (as St. Gregory [2] says) that He is environed with thousands of the courtiers of heaven, in whose company, prostrate in spirit before His feet, and wondering that so great a God is harboured in so humble a place, I will break out first into affections of humility, of reverence, and of my own confusion, sometimes saying with St. Peter, " Depart from me," and go forth from this wretched little ship, " for I am a sinful man, O Lord." [3] And sometimes with St. Eliza-
