APPENDIX TO THE FIRST EDITION OF THE Visitatio Infirmorum: CONTAINING AN OFFICE FOR A SICK MAN IN UNBELIEF, PERSON, AN OFFICE FOR SPIRITUAL COMMUNION; COMPILED BY WILLIAM HENRY COPE, M.A., MINOR CANON AND LIBRARIAN OF S. PETER'S, WESTMINSTER, AND CHAPLAIN TO AND HENRY STRETTON, M.A., PERPETUAL CURATE OF HIXON, IN THE DIOCESE OF LICHFIELD. LONDON: JOSEPH MASTERS, ALDERSGATE STREET, AND 78, NEW BOND STREET. MDCCCL. The following Offices and Instructions for the Sick, (included in the Second Edition of the VISITATIO INFIRMORUM,) which the experience of the Compilers or the valued suggestions of Clerical Brethren proved to be needed in the Priest's ministration to the Sick, are published in this separate form for the convenience of those who possess the First Edition. An Office for A Sick Man in Unbelief. If the Priest, on conferring with the Sick Person, finds him wanting or doubtful in faith, he shall address him as follows: Brother, You may depend upon this, that any objections to the Christian Faith, however natural and feasible they may appear to the mind, will not bear the strict examination of calm and unprejudiced reason. For instance: if it be said, that it seems unreasonable that a man should be expected to believe what he cannot understand; let us try this principle in a few plain instances. Take the case of a child. We evidently require him to believe and act upon what he does not fully understand. For how could a child increase in stature, how in knowledge, how in goodness, if he were obliged to wait until he could understand what is proper food either for the body or the mind? In childhood he does not know the difference of food from poison, nor can he distinguish right from wrong. If he were to be denied food until he could be made to understand that one substance or liquid supports life and another destroys it, he must, it is plain, die for want of sustenance. So in education: if he be taught nothing until he can prove the value and importance of what he is learning, and in fact understand the reason of the course he is put upon, then must his teachers let him remain in ignorance, and so be without any sufficient education for the rest of his life. And consider how many things every parent denies his child, and how many acts he compels him to perform, without explaining to him the grounds on which he withholds the one or enjoins the other. Nay, you yourself must admit that it is better for the child that he should be kept in this state of discipline. But, if it be contended that the principle does not apply to children, but to grown up persons, who having understanding, it may be said, would not have had this gift bestowed upon them unless they were at liberty to use it, in order to receive or reject what was brought before them; I may reasonably ask how it comes to pass, that all men, even the most intelligent, so far from actually understanding all things for themselves, are in fact obliged to take a very great deal upon trust. For instance, we all employ lawyers and physicians, and thus commit to other men the management of our most important affairs and the very preservation of our property, health, and lives. Not one man in a hundred understands the law, or the grounds on which a lawyer gives him advice, yet he unreservedly receives that counsel and acts upon it. In like manner we implicitly obey the injunctions of a medical man, and take the medicines he prescribes, without the ability of getting at the reasons which have actuated him in administering them. So we act on the advice or opinion of an experienced friend, or a man of business, without questioning, very often without the capability of understanding the reasons which have led him to persuade to such and such a course. Take again the way in which people act as regards foreign parts. Those who have not been abroad know in fact nothing, of their own knowledge, of foreign countries; and have only the statements of travellers to depend upon; yet they do not only believe that such countries exist, but they are ready very often to embark themselves and their families and fortunes to visit them. They even take it for granted that the produce of the country is of such a nature, or that persons of particular trades or professions will find employment there, only because they have been told so by trustworthy persons. They thus actually give up a positive certainty for that which they take upon trust without any present means of testing its reality. In like manner with regard to the facts of history, and what is written and taught in books, we believe what is asserted, and act on our belief in a great number of instances, because we think that people on the whole are more set on directing us right than wrong. Travellers may deceive or writers err, and often do but unless we put our faith in a number of things which we can neither understand nor prove, we should stand still and never act at all. Life is too short and the necessity for action too great for us to stop to examine and prove every thing. Take another very practical instance. Very few persons who travel by railway understand any thing of the construction or working of the steam engine, and yet they trust their lives in the carriage which it propels. Nay, if a man were to refuse to travel by railway because he did not understand the nature of the machinery, he would be ridiculed for unreasonable and narrow-minded prejudice. There are in truth some things which as we advance in life we get thoroughly to understand: but there are very few things indeed which any one first gets to comprehend, and does not act upon until he comprehends them. It is indeed in some degree in natural things as in spiritual, that men live in them not by understanding but by faith: for their understandings ripen into perfection at a mature age, and are very imperfect at the beginning of life, and they can therefore do nothing in the early part of life, if they do not apply the knowledge of others. Faith |