Page:Devotions - Donne - 1840.djvu/155

 service, angels associated with angels. The power of a single angel we see in that one, who, in one night destroyed almost two hundred thousand in Sennacherib's army, yet thou often employest many; as we know the power of salvation is abundantly in any one evangelist, and yet thou hast afforded us four. Thy Son proclaims of himself, that thy Sperit hath anointed him to preach the Gospel, yet he hath given others for the perfecting of the saints in the work of the ministry. Thou hast made him Bishop of our souls, but there are others bishops too. He gave the Holy Ghost, and others gave it also. Thy way, O my God (and, O my God, thou lovest to walk in thine own ways, for they are large), thy way from the beginning, is multiplication of thy helps; and therefore it were a degree of ingratitude, not to accept this mercy of affording me many helps for my bodily health, as a type and earnest of thy gracious purpose now, and ever, to afford me the same assistances. That for thy great help, thy word, I may seek that, not from corners, nor conventicles, nor schismatical singularities, but from the association and communion of thy Catholic church, and those persons whom thou hast always furnished that church withal: and that I may associate thy word with thy sacrament, thy seal with thy patent; and in that sacrament associate the sign with the thing signified, the bread with the body of thy Son, so as I may be sure to have received both, and to be made thereby (as thy blessed servant Augustine says) the ark, and the monument, and the tomb of thy most blessed Son, that he, and all the merits of his death, may, by that receiving, be buried in me, to my quickening in this world, and my immortal establishing in the next.