Gracious is the Lord, and righteous: yea, our God is 13. merciful. Psal. 116. For his wrath endureth but the twinkling of an eye, and in his plea- 14. sure is life: heaviness may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the Psal. 30. morning. He will not alway be chiding, neither keepeth he his 15. anger for ever. Psal. ciii. He hath not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according 16. to our wickedness. For look, how wide the east is from the west, so far hath 17. he set our sins from us. For like as a father pitieth his children, even so is the Lord merciful 18. to them that fear him. For he knoweth whereof we be made: he remembereth 19. that we are but dust. For thou, Lord, art good and gracious, and of great mercy unto all 20. them that call upon thee. Psal. 86. Thou hast forgotten the offence of thy people, and covered 21. all their sins. Psal. 85. Thou hast taken away all thy displeasure, and turned thyself from 22. thy wrathful indignation. Thou hast turned our heaviness to joy: thou hast put off 23. our sackcloth, and girded us with gladness. Psal. 30. Turn thee, again, O Lord, at the last, and be gracious unto thy 24. servants. Psal. 90. O satisfy us with thy mercy, and that soon: so shall we 25. rejoice and be glad all the days of our life. Comfort us again, after the time that thou hast plagued us: and for 26. the year wherein we have suffered adversity. Shew thy servants thy work, and their children thy 27. glory and the glorious majesty of the Lord our God be upon us. Prosper thou the work of our hands upon us, O prosper thou our handy work. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost: As it was in the beginning, &c. [A Psalm compiled out of the Book of Psalms, and appointed by the Bishop to be used in public, upon the abatement of the Plague. UNTO thee, O Lord, lift we up our eyes, O thou that dwellest in the heavens. Even as the eyes of servants look unto the hands of their masters, and as the eyes of a maiden unto the hands of her mistress: even so our eyes wait upon the Lord our God until he have mercy upon us. In our trouble we have called upon the Lord: with our voice we complained unto our God, and our prayers entered into his ears, and he heard us out of his holy temple. Many there were that did say of our souls, There is no help for them in their God. But salvation belongeth unto thee, O Lord, and thy blessing is upon thy people. We will tarry the Lord's leisure with patience, and put our trust in him, and he will comfort our hearts. They that know thy name, O Lord, will put their trust in thee, for thou hast never failed them that seek thee. Thou healest those that are broken in heart, and givest medicine to heal their sickness. Finish, therefore, O Lord, the work of thy mercy, that thou hast begun in us: save the residue that are appointed to death. Shew thy marvellous loving kindness to us, thou that art the saviour of them that put their trust in thee. Quicken us, O Lord, for thy name's sake: for thy mercy's sake bring our souls out of trouble. The glorious majesty of our God be upon us: prosper thou the work of thy hands upon us, O prosper thou the work of thy hands. God is a righteous Judge, strong and patient, and God is provoked every day. If a man will not turn, he will whet his sword; he hath bent his bow, and made it ready, and ordaineth his arrows against the wicked and ungodly. [This Psalm, if Strype is correct, does not belong to the Service here given still, he clearly refers it to Grindal, and to the present period. See his Life, p. 82; and the Appendix, p. 6. Can it have constituted part of some similar Form, put forth on the same occasion by another bishop for his own diocese ?] Let us therefore always set God before our eyes: Let us 15. stand in awe and sin not: Let us offer up the sacrifice of Psal. 4. righteousness, and put our trust in the Lord. Let us have an eye unto the laws of the Lord, and keep his ways, 16. and not forsake our God, as the wicked doth. Psal. 18. Let us live uncorrupt before him, and eschew our own 17. wickedness. Let us come near unto his house, even in the multitude of his mercies, 18. and in his fear let us worship toward his holy temple. Psal. 5. Then he will lift up the light of his countenance upon us, 19. and bless us. Psal. 4. Then may we lay ourselves down in peace and take our rest: for it 20. is the Lord only that maketh us dwell in safety. For thou, O Lord, wilt give thy blessing unto the righte- 21. ous, and with thy favourable kindness wilt thou defend him, Psal. 5. as with a shield. Psal. 3[1] O how plentiful is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them 22. that fear thee, and that thou hast prepared for them that put their trust in thee, even before the sons of men. Thanks be to the Lord: for he hath shewed us marvel- 23. lous great kindness in a mighty city. Psal. 16. We will thank the Lord, because he hath given us warning: we will 24. sing of the Lord, because he hath dealt lovingly with us: Yea, we will praise the name of the Lord most High. 5. Let all them that put their trust in the Lord rejoice : 25. they shall ever be giving of thanks, because thou defendest Psal. & them they that love thy name shall be joyful in thy salvation. Psal. 18. The Lord liveth, and blessed be our gracious helper: and praised be 26. the God of our salvation, which hath delivered us from the snares of death. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost: As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever. &c.] The Prayer or Collect. WE yield thee hearty thanks, O most merciful Father, that it hath pleased thee in thy wrath to remember thy mercy, and partly to mitigate thy severe rod of this terrible plague, wherewith thou hast hitherto most justly scourged us for our wickedness, and most mercifully revoked us from the same: calling us (who in health and prosperity had clean forgotten both thee and ourselves) by sickness and adversity to the remembrance both of thy justice1 and judgment, and of our miserable frailness and mortality; and now, lest we by the heaviness of thine indignation should have utterly despaired, comforting us again by the manifest declaration of thy fatherly inclination to all compassion and clemency. We beseech thee to perfect the work of thy mercy graciously begun in us: And forasmuch as true health is, to be sound and whole in that part, which in us is most excellent and like to thy Godhead, we pray thee thoroughly to cure and heal the wounds and diseases of our souls3, grievously wounded and poisoned, by the daily assaults and infections of the old serpent Satan, with the deadly plagues of sin and wickedness: by the which inward infection of our minds these outward diseases of our bodies have by the order of thy justice, O Lord, issued and followed, that we, by thy fatherly goodness and benefit, obtaining perfect health both of our minds and bodies, may render unto thee therefore continual and most hearty thanks, and that, by flying from sin, we may avoid thine anger and plagues, and ever hereafter, in innocency and godliness of life studying to serve and please thee, may both by our words and works always glorify thy holy name. Which we beseech thee to grant us, O Father of mercies and God of all consolation, for thy dear Son, our only Saviour and Mediator, Jesus Christ's sake. Amen. [terrible justice. These notes shew the original readings of the manuscript copy.] [from.] [the great murtherer and old serpent.] [ minds, as it were out of a most corrupt sink, these.] [ flowed.] [ anger, and ever.] [ of sin from henceforth.] A SHORT FORM OF THANKSGIVING TO GOD for ceasing the vII. contagious sickness of the plague, to be used in Common prayer, on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, in stead of the Common prayers, used in the time of mortality. Set forth by the Bishop of London, to be used in the City of London, and the rest of his diocese, and in other places also at the discretion of the ordinary Ministers of the Churches. After the end of the Collect in the Litany, which beginneth with these Psal. 85. Thou hast taken away all thy displeasure, and turned thyself from 2. thy wrathful indignation. For if thou, Lord, hadst not helped us, it had not failed, but our souls had been put to silence. 3. Psal. 94. But when we said, our feet have slipped, thy mercy, O Lord, helped 4. us up. In the multitude of the sorrows that we had in our hearts, 5. thy comforts have refreshed our souls. Our souls waited still upon the Lord, our souls hanged upon his help, 6. our hope was always in him. Psal. 62.63. In the Lord's word did we rejoice, in God's word did we 7. comfort ourselves. For the Lord said: Call upon me in the time of trouble, and I will 8. hear thee, and thou shalt praise me. Psal. 50. So when we were poor, needy, sickly, and in heaviness, 9. the Lord cared for us: he was our help and our Saviour ac- Psal. 40. 69. cording to his word. In our adversity and distress he hath lift up our heads, and saved us 10. from utter destruction. Psal. 27. He hath delivered our souls from death, he hath fed us in 11. the time of dearth, he hath saved us from the noisome pesti- Psal. 33.91. lence. [The psalm has been reprinted once before in Bull's Christian Prayers, p. 164. It occurs, too, in a Form for 1625, put forth on a similar occasion.] [LITURG. QU. ELIZ.] 33 |