by William Page, Chaplain to Walter, Bishop of Winchester, dedicated to the Bishop, and printed by the Printer to the University of Oxford. In his dedication he says,

"I must confesse to the glory of God and mine own comfort, that I have profitted more in the course of Christianity by the perusal of this one small book of devotion, than by turning over many volumes of controversies. For I found in it great motives to self-deniall, humility, obedience, and devotion; to humility in ourselves, to obedience towards superiors, to devotion towards God.

"Because the Authour thereof was too much addicted to one side, I made bold to leave out that which might offend any Christian palate, and have endeavoured that it should look with an equall and impartiall eye upon all good Christians. And it were to be wished that we had more bookes in this kind, and that we did especially apply ourselves to such kinde of books; for men now adaies are immoderately wedded to their own opinions, they labour to dispute well, not to live well, and delight more in books of controversy to strengthen them on that side they are, then in books of devotion to teach them what each good Christian should be."

The pious translator of 1677, who entitled it

3 The Imitation of Christ, written in Latin by Thomas à Kempis, and the translations of it corrected and amended. Printed at Oxford, 1639, by Leonard Lichfield, printer to the famous Universitie, for Edw. Forrest.

"The Christian's Pattern, or a Divine treatise of the Imitation of Christ," appears, from his Preface, to have entered truly into the spirit of à Kempis. I may mention his Frontispiece also, since some decry all such emblems as if they appealed too much to the senses. It is a burning heart, with wings, upon an Altar, with a Cross, (around which the serpent is entwined as dead), arising out of the heart; and above, the Pelican feeding its young ones with its own Blood, and rays of light shining down from the

יהוה Name

In 1714, it was paraphrased by Dean Stanhope. Even among the Presbyterians, Dr. Chalmers edited the three first books, omitting the fourth on the Holy Eucharist. I need not mention a later edition, by one rightly beloved. A few years ago, there was published a Companion to the Christian's pattern, by Thos. à Kempis.

"This production," the translator says, "is distinct from the well-known Imitation of Christ,' and may be considered as a supplement to it, containing, in a small compass, the most excellent passages which are to be found in the other works of Thos. à Kempis."

I do not mean by producing this list, to say that these Editors proceeded in the same way as myself, or to justify the details of any thing which I have done. I only mean, that the principle of "adapt

* Translated from the German of Tersteegen by Samuel Jackson, Esq., 1831.

ing" books from other portions of the Christian Church, has been, ever since the Reformation, recognized and acted upon in the English Church; that it has not been thought a privilege of the English Church to be "totus teres atque rotundus in itself, and to have no need of the other portions of the body of Christ; or that whereas, through other portions of the Western Church, whatsoever God gives in one portion, belongs to all the rest, we alone were complete in ourselves, and could not profit by any practical experience, or knowledge of God's word, or fruits of meditation, or fervour of piety, which God, Who "distributeth to every one severally as He wills," may have taught to hearts, which, out of the compass of these isles, He drew to Himself, and had bound them to Him by the everlasting bonds of His love.

In explanation of what I intended, (however I may have failed in executing what I hoped,) I may extract some parts of what I said in the first of the books which I have thus edited, and in the last.

"The object of the following little work, and of any others of the like sort which it may be permitted to the Editor to publish, is to meet, as far as may be, some of the wants which the mighty stirring of minds within our Church for some time passed has created. Such stirrings always leave something to be supplied. God mostly sets the heart in motion, makes her feel her want of somewhat out of herself

5

Avrillon, Guide to Lent, Preface, p. v. vi.

and beyond all created beings, her need of Himself, Who alone can fill her; but how to attain to Him, He leaves most often to the guidance of others. Having brought her to the Holy City, He withdraws His star for a time, and leaves it to the Church to point her to Bethlehem; although He will ever accompany her on the way, and His light will in the end stream on the place where she shall find Whom she seeks, the Living Bread, Who came down from heaven, and she shall know the Object of her search, as well by hidden and heavenly tokens made known to herself alone, as by the teaching of the Church out of the Holy Scriptures.

“In the present time there is a craving after a higher life; stricter and more abiding penitence; deeper and fuller devotion; mental prayer; meditation upon God and His Holy Mysteries; more inward love to Him; oneness of will with Him in all things; more habitual recollection in Him amid the duties of daily life; entire consecration to God; deadness to self and to the world; growth in the several Christian graces in detail; self-knowledge in order to victory over self; daily strife; stricter conformity with our Lord's blessed Commandments and all-holy Life, sympathy with His Passion, 'the fellowship of His sufferings,' oneness with Him. Yet in all, people feel that they lack instruction; they see dimly what God would have of them, they see not how to set about it.

Η

6

"The Editor, then, wished to minister through others what he was not qualified to provide himself. Directions as to holy seasons, contemplation of our Lord, guidance in the habits of meditation and mental prayer, to self-knowledge, to penitence, the spiritual life, the bearing of His Cross and conformity to Him, holy performance of the ordinary actions of daily life, Divine love, enlarged and deeper views of the Christian graces, were objects on which he wished to furnish such assistance as he might, for those who hunger after it.

"For both the large heads, under which these and the like wants would fall,-contemplation and selfdiscipline, the spiritual writers of foreign Churches have, as yet, some obvious advantages over our own; -for the discipline and knowledge of self, through that knowledge of the human heart which results from habitual confession; for contemplation, in the Monastic Orders, as joining, in all cases, contemplation and mental prayer with charity and mortification. .

"It must be owned also, that our writers have, for some time at least, or for the most part, drawn too much from their own resources. The richest and most thoughtful of our writers, such as Hooker, and Andrewes, and Bishop Taylor, are precisely those who have most largely converted into the substance of their own minds the thoughts of the saints and 7 Ib. p. xiii.-xv.

Ib.
p.

X. xi