20.
CHAPTER XX
AN EXHORTATION TO SCHOLARS TO REQUITE US
BY PIOUS PRAYERS
TIME now clamours for us to terminate this
treatise which we have composed concerning
the love of books; in which we have endeavoured
to give the astonishment of our contemporaries the
reason why we have loved books so greatly. But
because it is hardly granted to mortals to accomplish
aught that is not rolled in the dust of vanity, we
do not venture entirely to justify the zealous love
which we have so long had for books, or to deny
that it may perchance sometimes have been the
occasion of some venial negligence, albeit the object
of our love is honourable and our intention upright.
For if when we have done everything, we are
bound to call ourselves unprofitable servants; if
the most holy Job was afraid of all his works; if
according to Isaiah all our righteousness is as filthy
rags, who shall presume to boast himself of the perfection
of any virtue, or deny that from some circumstance
a thing may deserve to be reprehended, which
in itself perhaps was not reprehensible. For good
springs from one selfsame source, but evil arises in
many ways, as Dionysius informs us. Wherefore to
make amends for our iniquities, by which we acknowledge
ourselves to have frequently offended the Creator
of all things, in asking the assistance of their
prayers, we have thought fit to exhort our future
students to show their gratitude as well to us as to
their other benefactors in time to come by requiting
our forethought for their benefit by spiritual retribution.
Let us live when dead in their memories, who
have lived in our benevolence before they were born,
and live now sustained by our beneficence. Let
them implore the mercy of the Redeemer with unwearied
prayer, that the pious Judge may excuse our
negligences, may pardon the wickedness of our sins,
may cover the lapses of our feebleness with the cloak
of piety, and remit by His divine goodness the
offences of which we are ashamed and penitent.
That He may preserve to us for a due season of
repentance the gifts of His good grace, 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.
