Job was afraid of all his works; if according to Isaiah all our
righteousness is as filthy rags, who shall presume to boast
himself of the perfection of any virtue, or deny that from some
circumstance a thing may deserve to be reprehended, which in
itself perhaps was not reprehensible. For good springs from one
selfsame source, but evil arises in many ways, as Dionysius
informs us. Wherefore to make amends for our iniquities, by
which we acknowledge ourselves to have frequently offended the
Creator of all things, in asking the assistance of their prayers,
we have thought fit to exhort our future students to show their
gratitude as well to us as to their other benefactors in time to
come by requiting our forethought for their benefit by spiritual
retribution. Let us live when dead in their memories, who have
lived in our benevolence before they were born, and live now
sustained by our beneficence. Let them implore the mercy of the
Redeemer with unwearied prayer, that the pious Judge may excuse
our negligences, may pardon the wickedness of our sins, may cover
the lapses of our feebleness with the cloak of piety, and remit
by His divine goodness the offences of which we are ashamed and
penitent. That He may preserve to us for a due season of
repentance the gifts of His good grace, steadfastness of faith,
loftiness of hope, and the widest charity to all men. That He
may turn our haughty will to lament its faults, that it may
deplore its past most vain elations, may retract its most bitter
indignations, and detest its most insane delectations. That His
virtue may abound in us, when our own is found wanting, and that
He who freely consecrated our beginning by the sacrament of
baptism, and advanced our progress to the seat of the Apostles
without any desert of ours, may deign to fortify our outgoing by
the fitting sacraments. That we may be delivered from the lust