Page 276
The PRAYER.
O Holy and Eternal Jesu, who didst for our sake fast forty days and forty nights, and hast left to us thy example, and thy prediction, that in the days of thy absence from us we thy servants and children of thy Bride-chamber should fast; teach us to do this act of discipline so, that it may become an act of Religion. Let us never be like Esau, valuing a dish of meat above a blessing; but let us deny our appetites of meat and drink, and accustom our selves to the yoak, and subtract the fuel of our Lusts, and the incentives of all our unworthy desires: that our bodies being free from the intemperances of nutriment, and our spirits from the load and pressure of appetite, we may have no desires but of thee; that our outward man daily de∣caying by the violence of time, and mortified by the abatements of its too free and unnecessary support; it may by degrees resign to the intire dominion of the Soul, and may pass from vanity to Piety, from weakness to ghostly strength, from darkness and mixtures of impurity to great transparences and clarity in the society of a beatified Soul, reigning with thee in the glories of Eternity, O Holy and Eternal Jesu.