DISCOURSE XV.-Of the Excellency and Advantages of bearing Christ's Yoke, Considerations of some Preparatory Acci- dents before the Entrance of Jesus into his Considerations upon the Washing of his Disciples' Feet by Jesus, and his Sermon DISCOURSE XIX.-Of the Institution and Reception of the Holy Sacrament of the Considerations upon the Accidents happen- ing on the Vespers of the Passion Considerations upon the Accidents happen- TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE AND VIRTUOUS LADY, THE LADY FRANCES, COUNTESS OF CARBERY. MADAM, SINCE the Divine Providence hath been pleased to bind up the great breaches of my little fortune by your charity and nobleness of a religious tenderness, I account it an excellent circumstance and handsomeness of condition, that I have the fortune of St. Athanasius, to have my persecution relieved and comforted by an honourable and excellent lady. And I have nothing to return for this honour done to me, but to do as the poor paralytics and infirm people in the gospel did, when our blessed Saviour cured them-they went and told it to all the country, and made the vicinage full of the report, as themselves were of health and joy. And although I know the modesty of your person and religion had rather do favours than own them; yet give me leave to draw aside the curtain and retirement of your charity: for I had rather your virtue should blush, than my unthankfulness make me ashamed. Madam, I intended by this address not only to return you spirituals for your temporals, but to make your noble usages of me and mine to become, like your other charities, productive of advantages to the standers-by. For although the beams of the sun reflected from a marble, return not home to the body and fountain of light; yet they that VOL. III. B walk below feel the benefit of a doubled heat. So whatever reflections or returns of your favours I can make, although they fall short of what your worth does most reasonably challenge, and can proceed but towards you with forward desires and distant approaches; yet I am desirous to believe that those who walk between us may receive assistances from this intercourse, and the following papers may be auxiliary to the enkindling of their piety, as to the confirming and establishing yours. For although the great prudence of your most noble Lord, and the modesties of your own temperate and sweeter dispositions, become the great endearments of virtue to you; yet because it is necessary that you make religion the business of your life, I thought it not an impertinent application, to express my thankfulness to your honour by that which may best become my duty and my gratitude, because it may do you the greatest service. Madam, I must beg your pardon, that I have opened the sanctuary of your retired virtues; but I was obliged to publish the endearments and favours of your noble Lord and yourself towards me and my relatives. For as your hands are so clasped, that one ring is the ligature of them both; so I have found emanations from that conjuncture of hands with a consent so forward and apt, that nothing can satisfy for my obligations, but my being, in the greatest eminency of thankfulness and humility of person, Madam, Your Honour's most obliged And most humble Servant, JER. TAYLOR. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE AND VIRTUOUS LADY, THE LADY ALICE, COUNTESS OF CARBERY. MADAM, By the Divine Providence, which disposes all things wisely and charitably, you are, in the affections of your noblest Lord, successor to a very dear and most excellent person, and designed to fill up those offices of piety to her dear pledges, which the haste which God made to glorify and secure her would not permit her to finish. I have much ado to refrain from telling great stories of her wisdom, piety, judgment, sweetness, and religion; but that it would renew the wound, and make our sins bleed afresh at the memory of that dear saint: and we hope that much of the storm of the Divine anger is over, because he hath repaired the breach by sending you to go on upon her account, and to give countenance and establishment to all those graces which were warranted and derived from her example. Madam, the nobleness of your family, your education, and your excellent principles, your fair dispositions, and affable comportment, have not only made all your servants confident of your worthiness and great virtues, but have disposed you so highly and necessarily towards an active and a zealous religion, that we expect it should grow to the height of a great example-that you may draw others after you, as the eye follows the light in all the angles of its re |