A PASTORAL LETTER, FROM THE BISHOP OF BATH AND WELLS, TO HIS CLERGY, CONCERNING THEIR BEHAVIOUR DURING LENT. [Printed for Charles Brome, 1688.] A PASTORAL LETTER, &c. "All Glory be to God." REV. BROTHER, The time of Lent now approaching, which has been anciently and very Xtianly set apart, for penitential humiliation of soul and body, for fasting and weeping and praying, all which you know are very frequently inculcated in Holy Scripture as the most effectual means we can use, to avert those judgments our sins have deserved; I thought it most agreeable to that character which, unworthy as I am, I sustain, to call you and all my brethren of the clergy to mourning; to mourning for your own sins, and to mourning for the sins of the nation. In making such an address to you as this, I follow the example of St. Cyprian, that blessed Bishop and Martyr, who from his retirement wrote an excellent epistle' to his clergy, most worthy of your serious perusal, exhorting them, by publick prayers and tears to appease the anger of God, which they then actually felt, and which we may justly fear. Remember that to keep such a fast as God has chosen, it is not enough for you to afflict your own soul, but you must also according to your ability, "deal your bread to the hungry'" and the rather, because we have not only usual objects of charity to relieve, but many poor Protestant strangers are now fled hither for sanctuary, whom as brethren, as members of Christ, we should take in and cherish. That you may perform the office of a publick intercessour the more assiduously, I beg of you to say daily in your closet, or in your family, or rather in both, all this time of abstinence, y 51st Psalm, and the other prayers which follow it in the Commination. I could wish also that you would frequently read and meditate on the Lamentations of Jeremy, which holy Gregory Nazienzen was wont to doe2, and the reading of which melted him into the like lamentations as affected the prophet himself when he pen'd them. But your greatest zeal must be spent for the publick prayers, in the constant and devout use of which, the publick safety, both of Church and State, is highly concerned: be sure then to offer up to God every day the Morning and Evening Prayer, offer it up in your family at least, or rather as far as your circumstances may possibly permit, offer it up in the Church, especially if you live in a great town, and say over the Litany every morning during the whole of lent. This I might enjoin you to doe, on your canonical 1 Isa. lviii. 5. 7. › Orat. xii. |