Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Rules for Visits, Exorcisms, and How People are to Assist the Sick, and to Walk in All Things Without Offence.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XII.—Rules for Visits, Exorcisms, and How People are
to Assist the Sick, and to Walk in All Things Without
Offence.
Moreover, also, this is comely and useful, that a
man “visit orphans and widows,”409
and
especially those poor persons who have many children. These
things are, without controversy, required of the servants of God, and
comely and suitable for them. This also, again, is suitable and
right and comely for those who are brethren in Christ, that they should
visit those who are harassed by evil spirits, and pray and pronounce
adjurations410
over them,
intelligently, offering such prayer as is acceptable before God;
not with a multitude of fine words,411
| 411 Lit.
“elegant and numerous words.” | well prepared
and arranged, so that they may appear to men eloquent and of a good
memory. Such men are “like a sounding pipe, or a
tinkling cymbal;”412
and they bring no
help to those over whom they make their adjurations; but they speak
with terrible words, and affright people, but do not act with true
faith, according to the teaching of our Lord, who hath said:
“This kind goeth not out but by fasting and
prayer,”413
offered
unceasingly and with earnest mind. And let them holily ask and
beg of God, with cheerfulness and all circumspection and purity,
without hatred and without malice. In this way let us approach a
brother or a sister who is sick, and visit them in a way that is right,
without guile, and without covetousness, and without noise, and without
talkativeness, and without such behaviour as is alien from the fear of
God, and without haughtiness, but with the meek and lowly spirit of
Christ. Let them, therefore, with fasting and with prayer make
their adjurations, and not with the elegant and well-arranged and
fitly-ordered words of learning, but as men who have received the gift
of healing from God, confidently, to the glory of God. By414
your fastings and prayers and perpetual watching, together with your
other good works, mortify the works of the flesh by the power of the
Holy Spirit. He who acts thus “is a temple of the Holy
Spirit of God.”415
Let this man
cast out demons, and God will help him. For it is good that a man
help those that are sick. Our Lord hath said: “Cast
out demons,” at the same time commanding many other acts
of healing; and, “Freely ye have received, freely
give.”416
For such
persons as these a goodly recompense is laid up by God, because
they serve their brethren with the gifts which have been given them by
the Lord. This is also comely and helpful to the servants of God,
because they act according to the injunctions of our Lord, who hath
said: “I was sick, and ye visited Me, and so
on.”417
And this is
comely and right and just, that we visit our neighbours for the sake of
God with all seemliness of manner and purity of behaviour; as the
Apostle hath said: “Who is sick, and I am not sick? who is
offended, and I am not offended?”418
But all these things are spoken in
reference to the love with which a man should love his neighbour.
And in these things let us occupy ourselves,419
without giving offence, and let us not do anything with partiality or
for the shaming of others, but let us love the poor as the servants of
God, and especially let us visit them. For this is comely before
God and before men, that we should remember the poor, and be lovers of
the brethren and of strangers, for the sake of God and for the sake of
those who believe in God, as we have learnt from the law and from the
prophets, and from our Lord Jesus Christ, concerning the love of the
brotherhood and the love of strangers: for ye know the words
which have been spoken concerning the love of the brotherhood and the
love of strangers;420
| 420 Beelen here omits, as
spurious, the words, “because this same thing is pleasant and
agreeable to you: because ye are all taught of God.” | powerfully are the
words spoken to all those who do them.
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
