The Philobiblon [34]
steadfastness of faith, loftiness of hope, and the widest charity to all men. That He may turn our haughty will to lament its faults, that it may deplore its past most vain elations, may retract its most bitter indignations, and detest its most insane delectations. That His virtue may abound in us, when our own is found wanting, and that He who freely consecrated our beginning by the sacrament of baptism, and advanced our progress to the seat of the Apostles without any desert of ours, may deign to fortify our outgoing by the fitting sacraments. That we may be delivered from the lust of the flesh, that the fear of death may utterly vanish and our spirit may desire to be dissolved and be with Christ, and existing upon earth in body only, in thought and longing our conversation may be in Heaven. That the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation may graciously come to meet the prodigal returning from the husks; that He may receive the piece of silver that has been lately found and transmit it by His holy angels into His eternal treasury. That He may rebuke with His terrible countenance, at the hour of our departure, the spirits of darkness, lest Leviathan, that old serpent, lying hid at the gate of death, should spread unforeseen snares for our feet. But when we shall be summoned to the awful judgment-seat to give an account on the testimony of conscience of all things we have done in the body, the God-Man may consider the price of the holy blood that He has shed, and that the Incarnate Deity may note the frame of our carnal nature, that our weakness may pass unpunished where infinite loving-kindness is to be found, and that the soul of the wretched sinner may breathe again where the peculiar office of the Judge is to show mercy. And further, let our students be always diligent in invoking the refuge of our hope after God, the Virgin Mother of God and Blessed Queen of Heaven, that we who for our manifold sins and wickednesses have deserved the anger of the Judge, by the aid of her ever-acceptable supplications may merit His forgiveness; that her pious hand may depress the scale of the balance in which our small and few good deeds shall be weighed, lest the heaviness of our sins preponderate and cast us down to the bottomless pit of perdition. Moreover, let them ever venerate with due observance the most deserving Confessor Cuthbert, the care of whose flock we have unworthily undertaken, ever devoutly praying that he may deign to excuse by his prayers his all-unworthy vicar, and may procure him whom he hath admitted as his successor upon earth to be made his assessor in Heaven. Finally, let them pray God with holy prayers as well of body as of soul, that He will restore the spirit created in the image of the Trinity, after its sojourn in this miserable world, to its primordial prototype, and grant to it for ever to enjoy the sight of His countenance: through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. THE END OF THE PHILOBIBLON OF MASTER RICHARD DE AUNGERVILLE, SURNAMED DE BURY, LATE BISHOP OF DURHAM THIS TREATISE WAS FINISHED IN OUR MANORHOUSE OF AUCKLAND ON THE 24TH DAY OF JANUARY, IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD ONE THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY-FOUR, THE FIFTY-EIGHTH YEAR OF OUR AGE BEING EXACTLY COMPLETED, AND THE ELEVENTH YEAR OF OUR PONTIFICATE DRAWING TO AN END; TO THE GLORY OF GOD. AMEN.
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