Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Of Sitting After Prayer.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter
XVI.—Of Sitting After Prayer.
Again, for the custom which some have of sitting
when prayer is ended, I perceive no reason, except that which children
give.8857
| 8857 i.e. that they have
seen it done; for children imitate anything and everything
(Oehler). | For what if that Hermas,8858
| 8858 [Vol. II. p. 18
(Vision V.), this Series. Also, Ib. p. 57, note 2. See
Routh’s quotation from Cotelerius, p. 180, in Volume before
noted.] | whose writing is generally inscribed with
the title The Shepherd, had, after finishing his prayer, not sat
down on his bed, but done some other thing: should we maintain that
also as a matter for observance? Of course not. Why, even as it is the
sentence, “When I had prayed, and had sat down on my bed,”
is simply put with a view to the order of the narration, not as a model
of discipline. Else we shall have to pray nowhere except where
there is a bed! Nay, whoever sits in a chair or on a
bench, will act contrary to that writing. Further:
inasmuch as the nations do the like, in sitting down after adoring
their petty images; even on this account the practice deserves to be
censured in us, because it is observed in the worship of idols. To this
is further added the charge of irreverence,—intelligible
even to the nations themselves, if they had any sense. If, on the one
hand, it is irreverent to sit under the eye, and over against the eye,
of him whom you most of all revere and venerate; how much more, on the
other hand, is that deed most irreligious under the eye of the
living God, while the angel of prayer is still standing
by8859
unless we are
upbraiding God that prayer has wearied us!E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
