XX. But let us venerate to-day the Baptism
of Christ; and let us keep the feast well, not in pampering the belly,
but rejoicing in spirit. And how shall we luxuriate?
“Wash you, make you clean.” Isa. i. 17, 18. If ye be scarlet with sin and less
bloody, be made white as snow; if ye be red, and men bathed in blood,
yet be ye brought to the whiteness of wool. Anyhow be purified,
and you shall be clean (for God rejoices in nothing so much as in the
amendment and salvation of man, on whose behalf is every discourse and
every Sacrament), that you may be like lights in the world, a
quickening force to all other men; that you may stand as perfect lights
beside That great Light, and may learn the mystery of the illumination
of Heaven, enlightened by the Trinity more purely and clearly, of Which
even now you are receiving in a measure the One Ray from the One
Godhead in Christ Jesus our Lord; to Whom be the glory and the might
for ever and ever. Amen.