Chapter XXIV.
How we ought not to ask for other things, except only
those which are contained in the limits of the Lord’s Prayer.
You
see then what is the method
and form of prayer proposed to us by the Judge Himself, who is to be
prayed to by it, a form in which there is contained no petition for
riches, no thought of honours, no request for power and might, no
mention of bodily health and of temporal life. For He who is the Author
of Eternity would have men ask of Him nothing uncertain, nothing
paltry, and nothing temporal. And so a man will offer the greatest
insult to His Majesty and Bounty, if he leaves on one side these
eternal petitions and chooses rather to ask of Him something transitory
and uncertain; and will also incur the indignation rather than the
propitiation of the Judge by the pettiness of his prayer.