Thou
shalt not take from me the blessed message of my Bible, that there
is a man in heaven in the midst of the throne of God. Thou shalt
not take from me the blessed message of the Athanasian Creed, that
in Christ the manhood is taken into God. Thou shalt not take from
me the blessed message of Holy Communion, which declares that the
very human flesh and blood of him who died on the Cross is now
eternal in the heavens, and nourishes my body and soul to
everlasting life. Thou shalt not, under pretence of voluntary
humility and will-worship, tempt me to go and pray to angels or to
saints, or to the Blessed Virgin, because I choose to fancy them
more tender, more loving and condescending, more loving, more human,
than the Lord himself, who gave himself to death for me. If the
Lord God, the Son of the Father, is not ashamed to be man for ever
and ever, I will not be ashamed to think of him as man; to pray to
him as man; to believe and be sure that he can be touched with the
feeling of my infirmities; to entreat him, by all that he did and
suffered as a man, to deliver me from those temptations which he
himself has conquered for himself; and to cry to him in the
smallest, as well as in the most important matters--'By the mystery
of thy holy incarnation; by thine agony and bloody sweat; by thy
cross and passion; by thy precious death and burial; by thy glorious
resurrection and ascension;' by all which thou hast done, and
suffered, and conquered, as a man upon this earth of ours, good
Lord, deliver us!
SERMON XXXVI.
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