Concerning the Sacraments · Part 14

* Cf. Keble, Christian Year (Septuagesima):

The Moon above, the Church below, A wondrous race they'run

• • • • •

The Saints, like stars, around His seat, Perform their courses still.

son of man that thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels, thou hast crowned him with glory and honour, and hast set him over the works of thy hands. Then there is another thanksgiving: Thou hast put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field.1

26. We have taught, so far as we could grasp them, truths which perhaps we have not learned, and we have set them forth as far as we were able. May your holiness,2 informed by priestly training, labour to hold fast what it has received from God. And may that oblation, like a pure victim, always find in you its seal, that you your- selves may be able to attain to grace and the rewards of virtue by our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom is glory, honour, praise, everlastingness, from the ages, and now, and always, and for ever and ever. — Amen.

1 It is difficult to see, in the above interpretation of Psalm viii., in what sense the words " I shall behold the heaven" and "What is man... that thou visitest him?" can be regarded as "prayers." The explanation, perhaps, is that the former verse is taken to refer to the future establishment of the true heaven, i. e. that in which Christ is the sun, and the Church the moon; while the latter verse foreshadows the humiliation and exaltation of Christ. These verses, in the author's view, were prophecies of David, but, as they lay in the future, they were also aspirations, and therefore, in a sense, prayers. The lines of Keble, quoted in the preceding note, and the use of Ps. viii. as a proper Psalm for Ascension Day, are an echo of some of the ideas propounded in this section. In the author's interpretation, the opening ascription of praise is the oratio (or " prayer"). The words " I shall behold the heaven, the moon and the stars" are the obsecratio ("supplication"); while the words " What is man... works of Thy hands " are the postulatio (" peti- tion"). The words "Thou hast put all things... beasts of the field " form the concluding thanksgiving. In dc Inst. Virg. ii. 9, Ambrose gives a similar interpretation of the psalm, though in a more intelligible form. The opening of praise is the same, though more of it is quoted; but the obsecratio is found in the words " that thou mayst destroy the enemy and the avenger." The words, " I shall behold," etc., are interpreted in the same way as here, but are regarded as the postulatio; while the rest of the psalm, beginning " What is man," forms the concluding thanksgiving.

2 On this expression see note on i. 6. 24.