Village books

{217}
_Third Lesson._
But he, who after the example of the Baptist, with constancy had
conceived in a perfect heart that the zeal of righteousness should be
purified, studied also to imitate him in the garb of penitence. For
casting off the fine linen which hitherto he had been accustomed to use,
whilst the soft delicacies of kings pleased him, he was clothed on his
naked body with a most rough hair shirt. He added, moreover, hair
drawers, that he might the more effectually mortify the flesh, and make
the spirit live. But these, as also the other exercises of his spiritual
life, very few indeed being aware of it, he removed from the eyes and
knowledge of men by superadding other garments, because he sought glory
not from man, but from God. Even then the man of virtue entering upon
the justifications of God, began to be more complete in abstinence, more
frequent in watching, longer in prayer, more anxious in preaching. The
pastoral office intrusted to him by God, he executed with so great
diligence, as to suffer the rights neither of the clergy nor of the
Church to be in any degree curtailed.
* * * * *
There seems here also to be another commencement, for the next lesson is
called the First.
_Lesson First._
So large a grace of compunction was he wont to possess, between the
secrets of prayer or the solemnities of masses, that with eyes trained
to weeping he would be wholly dissolved in tears; and in the office
{218} of the altar his appearance was as though he was witnessing the
Lord's passion in the flesh.


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