going
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 O