The worth of prayer

Falsehood. It seems that you are plunging yourself headlong into the whirlpool of heresy; for you imply that prayer does not avail for the living or the dead, because, according to your old error, all things that will come about must of necessity come about. But what is more expressly against the faith of scripture? Since Christ in Matthew 6 teaches Christians to pray; and as to vengeance or punishment to be obtained by a man’s prayer, James says in the last chapter: "Elias was a man passible like unto us: and with prayer he prayed that it might not rain upon the earth. And it rained not for three years and six months. And he prayed again. And the heaven gave 46rain: and the earth brought forth her fruit."¹ For otherwise, with the hope of a man’s praying withdrawn, scripture would for the greater part fail, and the wayfarerviator: wayfarer would as a rule despair.

Truth. Do you not blush to inferconcludere: to infer blasphemy without evidenceevidencia: evidence, when you cannot establish any colour of inferenceconsequencia: inference?² For I grant you that all things that will come about will come about of necessity; therefore it is necessary that men pray, and with worthy prayers aid by intercessionsuffragari: to aid by intercession both themselves and others; and so I grant every part of scripture, and especially that [passage] in Matthew 6 on the Lord’s Prayer, and the others that sound to the efficacy of entreaty, as was said of James and like authorities in scripture. Nevertheless you have never learned that a man’s prayer ought to be sold in such a way, nor that the wayfarer should magnify his own prayer, but that God willed the efficacy of our prayer to be unknown to us, lest we should traffic in prayer with pomp. For, as we take on faith, the more anyone (praying with discretion for another) is loved by the Lord, the more excellent is his prayer. Now who doubts that every predestinatepredestinatus, -i: the predestinate (sg. "a predestinate [person]") [person] is loved by God as it were infinitely more than one of the foreknownprescitus, -i: the foreknown, since God eternally wills that the first be beatified and the second perpetually condemned? Therefore, as the love of God with which the wayfarer is loved is unknown to us, so also is the worth of his prayer. Let the wayfarer blush, then, to commend the worth of his prayer above others. And yet in this the cloisterersclaustrales: cloisterers greatly deceive lordsdominus; dominari: lord; to exercise lordship / to lord it, rich and poor, stupidly commending their prayer and merit.³ Hence a crafty fiction has been invented by which the stupid may be seduced the more: namely, that priestssacerdos / presbiter: priest / presbyter, and especially cloisterers by virtue of their order, even the foreknown, merit unspeakably by their prayers in virtue of the churchecclesia: church. And to 47this end the evidences of the father of lies play the sophistsophisticare (transitive): to counterfeit.⁴ But if an order or sectreligio privata; secta: private religion; sect advances priests so that their prayer is heard more by the Lord, the sect of Christ, and the order which he himself imprints so that the wayfarer is a priest in the homelandvia / patria: the way / the homeland, advances infinitely more than a sect brought in without Christ’s leave, or a perceptiblesensibilis: perceptible charactercarecter (sensibilis): (perceptible) character contrived by human ingenuity.⁵ Likewise all such foreknown men, popespapa: pope or cloisterers, are manifest devils of "the church of the malignant";⁶ how then, by virtue of the church of Christ, which they infect, should they profit [others] by their prayers in this way? Do we believe that God is necessitated to pour the light of grace, through such abscessesapostema: abscess as means, into his predestinate vessels, into which, it is supposed as faith teachesex fide: as faith teaches; with a genitive, from the faith of [scripture], he has flowedillabi: to flow into?

Truth. Likewise such a cloisterer, by turning aside from the law of the Lord, is very displeasing to him, and as such unfitindispositus; (se) indisponere: unfit; to make (oneself) unfit to pray.⁷ Hence in Proverbs 28 it is written thus: "He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, his prayer shall become an abomination."⁸ Likewise, as is supposed here, all things are the just’s, and especially the poor in spirit’s, however abominable they may be in the world’s eyes; now the endoweddotacio: endowment clergyclerus; clericus: the clergy; cleric defraud these poor of their substance; therefore, because of this injury, God must of necessity repel their prayer, unless someone blasphemes that one displeasing to God is rather heard in his prayers because he is richer or more excellent in the world.⁹ Hence, in confirmation of this assumedassumptum: the assumption teachingsentencia: teaching, it is written in Ecclesiasticus 34: "He that offereth sacrifice of the goods of the poor, is as one that sacrificeth the son in the presence of the father."¹⁰ Such are many testimonies in scripture, as Proverbs 1, Isaiah 1, Malachi 1, with others. Moved by these, blessed Gregory said concerning unworthy prelatesprelatus: prelate: "We all plainly know that when one who displeases is sent to intercede, the mind of the angry one is without doubt provoked to worse," as is clear in his Pastoral [Rule]; and in the canon [law], [Causa] 3, question 7, "Si quis in 48gravibus."¹¹ Hence Augustine, alluding to this teaching, says that one who duly observes the Lord’s commandments praises God in whatever he does or whatever he says. And by consequence the transgressorprevaricator; prevaricancia: transgressor; transgression, on the contrary, harms himself and brings evil on the church militantecclesia militans / triumphans / dormiens: the church militant / triumphant / sleeping. "If," he says, "you gorge yourself with drunkenness, whatever praises your tongue may utter, your life blasphemes."¹² Because of such things many reckon that many bedesmenoratores: bedesmen of these four sects are in the chapter of Iscariot, of whom it is said in Psalm 108, "May his prayer be turned to sin," and in the chapter of those of whom it is said in Malachi 2, "I will curse your blessings."¹³ Therefore from such prayers deliver us, O Lord.