THE PARADISE
OF
THE CHRISTIAN SOUL.
PART I.
FOR SUNDAY.
Litanies, Prayers, Thanksgivings, various Meditations on, and Expositions of, the Lord’s Prayer, with other Pious Exercises addressed to the most Holy Trinity, beginning with a Colloquy between Christ and Man , in which we an taught to pray with earnestness, devotion , and advantage, and the mind is awakened to pious affections towards God.
CHAPTER I.
COLLOQUY BETWEEN CHRIST AND MAN ON THE RIGHT USE OF PRAYER.
§ I. The necessity and profit of prayer
CHRIST. Man that is born of woman lives but for a short time, and is filled many miseries. But he is more miserable still, if, amidst those very miseries, he knows not that he is wretched, and poor, and naked, and weak; so that he neither searches for the remedies that would cure him, nor places his help in God. If thou art thus ignorant, my son, withdraw with me a little space from the crowd of men. I will lead thee in to a lonely place, and there speak to thee in thy heart. Thou wilt then, perchance, acknowledge thy misery and thy nakedness.
Remember then, O man, with that it is I who made thee, and not thou thyself; and that I created thee to my own image when thou wert not. When thou wert lost, I redeemed thee myself, not with the gold, or the silver, or the precious stones, that perish, but with my own blood, which I shed for thee, And why? That thou mightest praise my name, and serve me in this life, and reign with me hereafter for ever.
See, then, to what dangers
