Sermon IX. [LIX. Ben.] Again, on the Lord’s Prayer, Matt. vi. To the Competentes. 1. You have rehearsed what you believe, hear now what you are to pray for. Forasmuch as you would not be able to call on Him, in whom you should not first have believed; as saith the Apostle, “How shall they call on Him, in whom they have not believed?”2083 Therefore have you first learned the Creed, where is a brief and sublime rule of your faith; brief in the number of its words, sublime in the weight of its contents.2084 But the prayer which you receive to-day to be learned by heart, and to be repeated eight days hence, was dictated (as you heard when the Gospel was being read) by the Lord Himself to His disciples, and came from them unto us, since “their sound went into all the earth.”2085 2. Ye then who have found a Father in heaven, be loth to cleave to the things of earth. For ye are about to say, “Our Father, which art in heaven.”2086 You have begun to belong to a great family. Under this Father the lord and the slave are brethren; under this Father the general and the common soldier are brethren; under this Father the rich man and the poor are brethren. All Christian believers have divers fathers in earth, some noble, some obscure; but they all call upon one Father which is in heaven. If our Father be there, there is the inheritance prepared for us. But He is such a Father, that we can possess with Him what He giveth. For He giveth an inheritance; but He doth not leave it to us by dying. For He doth not depart Himself, but He abideth ever, that we may come to Him. Seeing then 289 we have heard of Whom we are to ask, let us know also what to ask for, lest haply we offend such a Father by asking amiss. 3. What then hath the Lord Jesus Christ taught us to ask of the Father which is in heaven? “Hallowed be Thy Name.”2087 What kind of blessing is this that we ask of God, that His Name may be hallowed? The Name of God is always Holy; why then do we pray that it may be hallowed, except that we may be hallowed by it? We pray then that that which is Holy always, may be hallowed in us. The Name of God is hallowed in you when ye are baptized. Why will ye offer this prayer after ye have been baptized, but that that which ye shall then receive may abide ever in you? 4. Another petition follows, “Thy kingdom come.”2088 God’s kingdom will come, whether we ask it or not. Why then do we ask it, but that that which will come to all saints 2083 Rom. x. 14. 2084 Sententiarum. 2085 Ps. xviii. 5, Sept. (xix. 4, English version). 2086 Matt. vi. 9. 2087 Matt. vi. 9. 2088 Matt. vi. 10. Again, on the Lord’s Prayer, Matt. vi. To the Competentes. 612 Again, on the Lord’s Prayer, Matt. vi. To the Competentes.