r prayer, and we
will not hear it ourselves: but it is worse to waste our time in foul
and idle thoughts. Abraham, when he made a sacrifice to GOD, fowls of
the air lighted thereon, and would have defiled it; and he cleared those
birds away, so that none durst come nigh it, till all the time were
passed, and the sacrifice made. Let us do so with these flying thoughts,
which defile the sacrifice of our prayer. This sacrifice is agreeable to
GOD, when it comes from a clean and loving heart. GOD bids: "send prayer
to ME, and I shall send grace to thee; and whatso thou dost for ME, I
forget it not." The fourth, that hinders our prayer from being heard, is
hardness of heart; and that is in two manners; first hardness of heart
against the poor; and thereof the prophet says "who shuts his ear to the
cry of the poor, he may call and I will not hear him." The other is the
hardness of those who will not forgive to those who have misdone them:
to such, Solomon says:--"Forgive thy neighbour who has injured thee
while he prays to thee, and thy sins shall be forgiven." And the Gospel
says: "As thou standest praying, forgive if thou hast aught against any,
and your Father which is in heaven will forgive your sins." The fifth,
that hinders our prayer from being heard, is little yearning after the
things that men pray for: and S. Augustine says: "GOD stores this up for
thee, that with thy whole heart it may be desired; "for He will not to
give to Thee hastily, that so thou mayst learn great things greatly to
desire." And S. Gregory says: "if with our mouth we pray after the bliss
of heaven, and do not yearn for it in our heart, we are crying still."
The sixth, that hinders our prayer; is foul and idle speech, that we
fill our lips with; for if thou givest a great lord drink in a slutty
cup, were the drink never so good, he would feel disgust therewith, and
bid throw it away, were his thirst never so sore: so GOD does with a
prayer that comes from a foul mouth; He esteems it not, but turns
therefrom. Therefore says S. Gregory: "The more our lips are defiled
with foolish talking, so much the less are they heard by GOD in prayer."
The sixth, what might and virtue prayer is of. Men who were before this
age, who kept themselves in soothfastness, and spoke nothing idle, won
from GOD what they prayed for: and that was shewn to a holy hermit
Florentius, who dwelt in a wilderness unknown of men. So much vermin was
there about this hermitage, that