nesses of piety. To discern thy body, Lord, it is to devote more cares, more attention, and more circumspection toward worthily receiving thee, than to all the other actions of life. To discern thy body, Lord, it is to respect the temples in which thou art worshipped, the ministers who serve thee, and our bodies which receive thee. Let every man examine himself, let him thereupon listen to the testimony of his own conscience; and this is the second preparation, a prudent faith, which makes us to prove ourselves; — let a man examine himself.
Reflection II. — I know that we are unacquainted with our own heart; that the mind of man is not always informed of what takes place in man; that the passions seduce, examples harden, and prejudices drag us away; that our inclinations are always victorious over our lights; that the heart is never in the wrong; that, to examine one's self, is frequently only to harden one's self in error. Such is man, O my God! delivered up to his own understanding: he is continually deceived, and nothing appears to his eyes but under fictitious colours; he but imperfectly knows thee; he hardly knows himself; he comprehends nothing in all that surrounds him; he takes darkness for light; he wanders from error to error; he quits not his errors when he returns to himself: the lights alone of thy faith can direct his judgment, open the eyes of his soul, become the reason of his heart, teach him to know himself, lay open the folds of self-love, expose all the artifices of the passions, and exalt him to that spiritual man, who conceives and judges of all. By the rules of faith, then, my brethren, must we examine ourselves; all human doctrines, the compromises of custom, the examples of the multitude, our own understanding, all are deceitful guides;if ever it was of importance not to be deceived, it surely is in a conjuncture where sacrilege is the consequence of mistake.
But upon what shall we examine ourselves? Upon what! Upon the holiness of this sacrament, and upon our own corruption. It is the body of Jesus Christ, it is the bread of angels, it is the Lamb without stain, who admits none around his altar but those who either have not defiled their garments or who have purified them in the blood of penitence. And what art thou, forward soul, whom I see approaching with so much confidence? Bringest thou there thy modesty, thy innocence? Hast thou always possessed the vessel of thy body in honour and in holiness? Hath thy heart not been dragged through the filth of a thousand passions? In the sight of God, is not thy soul that blackened brand of which the prophet speaks, which impure flames had blasted and consumed from thine earliest years, and which is no longer but a shocking vestige of their fury? Art thou not totally covered with shameful wounds? Is there a spot upon thy body free from the mark of some crime? Where wilt thou place the body of the Lamb? What! it shall rest upon thy tongue; that pure and immaculate body upon a tomb which had never exhaled but infection and stench; that body immolated with so much gentleness upon the
