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Ethical
But what reason is there in going to prayer with hands indeed washed, but the spirit foul?—inasmuch as to our hands themselves spiritual purities are necessary, that they may be “lifted up pure”[8841] from falsehood, from murder, from cruelty, from poisonings,[8842] from idolatry, and all the other blemishes which, conceived by the spirit, are effected by the operation of the hands. These are the true purities;[8843] not those which most are superstitiously careful about, taking water at every prayer, even when they are coming from a bath of the whole body. When I was scrupulously making a thorough investigation of this practice, and searching into the reason of it, I ascertained it to be a commemorative act, bearing on the surrender[8844] of our Lord. We, however, pray to the Lord: we do not surrender Him; nay, we ought even to set ourselves in opposition to the example of His surrenderer, and not, on that account, wash our hands. Unless any defilement contracted in human intercourse be a conscientious cause for washing them, they are otherwise clean enough, which together with our whole body we once washed in Christ.[8845]
Albeit Israel washed daily all his limbs over, yet is he never clean. His hands, at all events, are ever unclean, eternally dyed with the blood of the prophets, and of the Lord Himself; and on that account, as being hereditary culprits from their privity to their fathers’ crimes,[8846] they do not dare even to raise them unto the Lord,[8847] for fear some Isaiah should cry out,[8848] for fear Christ should utterly shudder. We, however, not only raise, but even expand them; and, taking our model from the Lord’s passion[8849] even in prayer we confess[8850] to Christ.
But since we have touched on one special point of empty observance,[8851] it will not be irksome to set our brand likewise on the other points against which the reproach of vanity may deservedly be laid; if, that is, they are observed without the authority of any precept either of the Lord, or else of the apostles. For matters of this kind belong not to religion, but to superstition, being studied, and forced, and of curious rather than rational ceremony;[8852] deserving of restraint, at all events, even on this ground, that they put us on a level with Gentiles.[8853] As, e.g., it is the custom of some to make prayer with cloaks doffed, for so do the nations approach their idols; which practice, of course, were its observance becoming, the apostles, who teach concerning the garb of prayer,[8854] would have comprehended in their instructions, unless any think that is was in prayer that Paul had left his cloak with Carpus![8855] God, forsooth, would not hear cloaked suppliants, who plainly heard the three saints in the Babylonian king’s furnace praying in their trousers and turbans.[8856]
Again, for the custom which some have of sitting when prayer is ended, I perceive no reason, except that which children give.[8857] For what if that Hermas,[8858] whose writing is generally inscribed with the title The Shepherd, had, after finishing his prayer, not sat down on his bed, but done some other thing: should we maintain that also as a matter for observance? Of course not. Why, even as it is the sentence, “When I had prayed, and had sat down on my bed,” is simply put with a view to the order of the narration, not as a model of discipline. Else we shall have to pray nowhere except where there is a bed! Nay, whoever sits in a chair or on a bench, will act contrary to that writing. Further: inasmuch as the nations do the like, in sitting down after adoring their petty images; even on this account the practice deserves to be censured in us, because it is observed in the worship of idols. To this is further added the charge of irreverence,—intelligible even to the nations themselves, if they had any sense. If, on the one hand, it is irreverent to sit under the eye, and over against the eye, of him whom you most of all revere and venerate; how much more, on the other hand, is that deed most irreligious under the eye of the living God, while the angel of prayer is still standing by[8859] unless we are upbraiding God that prayer has wearied us!
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