Selected quad for the lemma: heart_n
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A95817
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The Christian education of children according to the maxims of the Sacred Scripture, and the instructions of the fathers of the church / written and several times printed in French, and now translated into English.; De l'education chrestienne des enfans. English
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Varet, Alexandre-Louis, 1632-1676.
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1678
(1678)
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Wing V108; ESTC R203876
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133,498
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455
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as a disorderly love for Play or an Envy or criminal Jealousy against their Brethren or their Companions you are to endeavour by making them see the disorder of that passion to induce them to demand of God to cure them and to desire of him to render them more prudent more moderate and more charitable When they ask of you a new Coat or Garment or any thing of like nature teach them to demand it first of God in making them rightly understand that it is from him you have the Money wherewith to buy it and that if you refuse them it is because they have not yet prayed enough Finally it is in this manner that by causing them to make reflections upon all the little arts they frequently employ to obtain what they desire or to avoid the chastisement they have deserved whether it be by protesting they will be more obedient or by making a thousand blandishments you must strive to make them conceive how they ought either to demand pardon of God for their faults or obtain of him what they desire 'T is true that in order to this it is necessary you should use towards children a kinde of sweet speech and such words as are insinuating perswasive affectionate tender and in brief full of a certain unction whereof very few persons are capable You must not tell them these things in a dry and harsh manner nor with authority and command but with love and by making your self as it were a little one with them and you must gain their heart to render them capable of an exercise which is totally of the heart and whereof no one is capable who hath not his heart fixed on God however clear sighted and sufficient he may otherwise be But how should the greatest part of Mothers employing themselves only in worldly affairs and having their heart divided between so many cares be capable to instill into their children this holy practise of Prayer especially since they themselves most commonly can only reade in their Primmers what Prayers they finde there without ever having applied themselves to joyn thereunto the Interiour Prayer which is the Soul and the Essence of Prayer Yet it is this Interiour prayer which is the most precious and most necessary food of Piety There 's nothing whereby more to establish ones self in the gust of the things of God and in the disgust of the things of the World Without this exercise all other exercises of Piety and Vocal Prayer it self are but dryness and languishments and one acquits himself of Vocal prayer rather out of custom and by a simple conviction of the spirit than by love This made a famous Authour say that one ought never to divide prayer into Mental and Vocal as if one could with piety pray Vocally Bellarm. de Orat. ch 2. separating it from the Mental prayer Not but that Vocal prayer is very profitable when it is well performed and accompanied with attention It excites us to recollect our selves and to raise our thoughts to God It advertises us and instructs us what feelings we ought to have in our hearts and serves us as St. S. Aug. Ep. 121. ad Probam Augustin notes to represent to our selves what we ought to ask of God But it must be an expression of the affections and of the dispositions of our soul and proceed from the abundance of our heart My heart rejoyced says the prophet and my tongue hath expressed the feelings of my joy Psalm 25. My heart and my flesh says he elsewhere have joyntly testified to God the joy which I take in him It is just that we being bound to honour God according to the Body as well as according to the spirit we should adore him and pray to him by our words and by our voice at the same time we adore him by our thoughts and by the application of our heart But this heart must of necessity be pure and to be pure it must be employed upon God thereby to make the worship of the Body and the exteriour homage which we render him to be reasonable and holy Vocal Prayer therefore ought not to be considered but as far forth as the Prayer of the heart conducts purifies and sanctifies it and as far forth as it is joyned to it to raise it up to the throne of God But on the contrary this Prayer of the heart which is made in silence and in Recollection is all alone very profitable and very holy and sometimes it is even more profitable to particular persons than if there were joyned to it the recital of Vocal Prayers or then if the noise and the elevation of the Voice were there employed because one testifies to God more Faith and because we address our selves to him in a manner more conformable to that which he is and to that which he demands of us by adoring him and entertaining him only with our thought and with our heart then if we make use of Words God is a spirit says our Saviour and he desires such Adorers as adore him in spirit He sufficiently understands our desires and our demands although we express them but by our sole thought so that we sometimes make our selves better understood of God by elevating our selves to him with all the fervour and with all the extent of our heart when we are fully recollected and when we employ nothing that is exteriour and sensible than if we joyn together in our Prayer the heart and the voice because that may diminish our attention which generally speaking must be greater and more compleat when one hears nothing without and when oue suspends all the use of sense and of speech Why say St. Ambrose S. Ambr. l. 6. de Sacrum c. 4. should we rather pray in Recollection and in secret than in making a noise with our Voice Hear the reason which we will only draw from an example which is ordinary among men If you will present a Prayer to some person who hath a very quick hearing you do not believe that you need to cry out aloud but you content your self to speak to him in the tone of an indifferent voice and we only raise our voice to make our selves understood by such as are hard of hearing 'T is not therefore reasonable to think that God hears none but such as strive to speak very loud Such a fancy is injurious to his Omnipotence But he who prays in silence gives a singular proof of his Confidence and of his Faith He acknowledges that God penetrates and sounds the heart and he testifies by praying to him in this sort that he doubts not but that he hears his prayer before he hath explicated it by Words One might wonder S. Aug. ep Prob. says St. Augustin in a letter he writ to a holy Dame touching Prayer that God although he knows what is necessary for us before we ask it of him will nevertheless have us ask it if we did not know
that what he thus ordains us to do is not that he may know our will since that cannot be concealed from him but to enflame our desires by the instance of our prayers and to render us capable to receive that which he is ready to grant us For by how much his Presents are great and magnificent by so much our hearts are little and limited to receive them Therefore the Scripture says Open your Hearts Now these so excellent and so sublime Goods which the Eye hath not seen because they are not colours which the Ear hath not heard because they are not sounds and which are not elevated in the heart of man because the heart of man ought on the contrary elevate it self towards them these Goods I say shall be communicated unto us with so much more aboundance by how much we have believed with more Faith hoped with more Confidence desired with more Ardour 'T is therefore by a continual Desire founded upon Faith Hope and Charity that we pray without intermission But if at certain hours and certain times we employ Words in prayer 't is only to animate us by those exteriour signs to conceive these holy affections to make us observe what progress they have made in our heart and to excite us to encrease them For the effect of our prayer is by so much greater by how much the ardour of our desires hath been greater So that when the Apostle says Pray without ceasing he intends only that we should desire without ceasing to obtain that happy life which is no other than the eternal blisse of him who alone can give it us If then we demand this of God incessantly we pray incessantly But because the cares and Incumbrances of the World cool sometimes our desires we recall at certain hours of the day our spirit to prayer and we re-place before our Eyes by the Words which we address to God this last end whether we ought to tend by our desires for fear lest that which begins to fall into Tepidity should pass into a Coldness and proceed in the end to be totally extinguished if it be not re-inkindled by frequent prayers This being so it cannot be bad or unprofitable to employ much time in prayer when our leasure permits it that is when it hinders us not from acquitting our selves of other laudable and necessary things to which our duty obliges us although in these very occupations we ought always to pray by the activity of our desires For it is to be observed that it is not one and the same thing to pray along time or to pray with many words as some imagine but that there is a difference between a long and continual desire since it is written That our Lord passed over the night in Prayer and that he prayed very long And there is reason to believe that he would induce us thereby to imitate his example he who prayed so perfectly to his Father in the time of his mortal life and who hears us so mercifully with his Father in eternity They say that our Brethren the Hermits of Egypt make frequent Prayers but very short and that they only lift up their hearts to God from time to time by lively and ardent prayers without staying too long upon them for fear lest this application and this fervour of spirit so necessary in prayer should relent or be dissipated if this prayer were too continual This also gives us to understand that as we ought not to weary and blunt our spirit by forcing our selves to entertain it in this fervour when it begins to slacken so we ought not to hasten to interrupt it when we feel it continues Because if on the one side one ought to bannish from prayer the superfluity of Words one ought on the other side to sustain it by continual desires and demands so long as the spirit perseveres in its application and in its fervour For to speak too much in prayer is to employ superfluous Words to ask a thing necessary and to pray much is by holy and continual motions of the heart to press him to whom we pray to render himself favourable to our demands But oftentimes this passes more in sighing than in speaking Discourses have not so great a part as tears and then it is that he whose eternal word made all things makes it appear that they are not the temporal Words of men which are pleasing to him but their sighs and tears 'T is then Sister this prayer of the heart and this entertainment with God which is done in silence in recollection in the disengagement from all exteriour things and by the interiour sighs and affections of the soul that Christian Mothers ought to make their Children love and practise 'T is a Yoak which is good for them to bear from their youth and as soon as they begin to make use of their understanding and their reason 'T is a Yoak which replenishes the Soul with comfort and sweetness 'T is a Yoak which sustains and strengthens and renders them who bear it capable to raise up themselves above themselves and above all earthly objects And do not alledge to me S. Chrysost says St. John Chrysostom that Children are not capable of this fervour of this recollection and of this application which Prayer requires since we have in Scripture the examples of several children and of many young people who have by the means of Prayer drawn upon them very great blessings Samuel was but twelve years old when God called him in the Temple Samuel and discovered to him the designes he had upon the house of Heli. Solomon was very young when he made that admirable Prayer which moved God to render him the wisest and the most powerful Prince that ever was Finally Solomon Daniel Daniel was no more than eight or nine years of age when by a feeling of piety he refused to eat the Meats presented to him from the table of King Nabuchodonosor and by the means of Fasting and Prayer he merited those extraordinary gifts which rendred him at the age of twelve years the deliverer of the chaste Susanna and afterwards the Miracle of his age Nor must Mothers alledge their domestick affairs and the cares of their family to dispense themselves from following their Prayers since we see in that little Collection of Pietie now newly printed Recuil de piete that a Princess of our days prescribed to her self a method of praying three times every day Marg. de Portug Dutchess of Parma to wit half an hour in the Morning half an hour at mid day and half an hour in the Evening For if persons of that condition and so much engaged in the world as Princes are have the fidelity to apply themselves to this Exercise and acknowledge the need and the fruit thereof what a lesson should not this Example give to all other persons who have more leasure and liberty and with what ardour should all