CHAPTER V.

_Of the examining our conscience, and purpose of amendment._

_The voice of the Beloved._

ABOVE all things, the minister of God ought to come to celebrate and receive this sacrament with great humility of heart, and lowly reverence, and a pious intending the honour of God.

Examine diligently thy conscience; so that there be nothing that may breed in thee remorse of conscience, and hinder thy free access.

And, if thou hast time, confess unto God in the secret of thy heart, all the miseries of thy disordered passions.

2. Lament and grieve, that thou art yet so worldly, so unmortified as to thy passions;

So unwatchful over thy outward senses, so often entangled with vain imaginations;

So negligent and cold in prayer, so undevout in celebrating, so dry in receiving;

So quickly distracted, so seldom wholly recollected;

So suddenly moved to anger, so apt to take displeasure against another;

So prone to judge, so severe to reprehend;

*So often purposing much good, and yet performing little.

3. These and other thy defects being confessed, with full resignation, and with thy whole will, offer up thyself a perpetual sacrifice to the honour of my name, on the altar of thy heart, faithfully committing thy body and soul unto me;

That so thou mayst come worthily to celebrate this sacrifice, and to receive profitably the sacrament of my body.

4. For a man hath no other oblation than to offer himself unto God in the holy communion.

And whensoever he shall come to Me for pardon and grace, as I live, saith the Lord, who willeth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he be converted and live, I will not remember his sins any more, but they shall all be forgiven him.