Page:Guatimala or the United Provinces of Central America in 1827-8.pdf/125

Rh tranquil times, and that you may see all this new world ever in your fold, and may augment the number of those sheep which Christ has commended to you as his vicar on earth, to lead and guide to heaven.” The sermon commences by an address to the clergy urging them to zeal in these troublous times, and to keep firm in their obedience to the holy see. This preliminary exhortation concludes thus, “behold then the necessity of being within the divine bark of the fisherman, lest we make shipwreck of the faith and become the plaything of the waves, or the unhappy victims of piratical mariners. This tumultuous sea can only be navigated in one boat, in order to arrive at eternal happiness. This the greatest enemies of the church have confessed, and I am about to prove it, as a warning to those incautious and malicious men, who would cast America out of this one ship, and leave her to be tossed in the tempestuous sea of every heresy. For power to address you with effect, and so a to produce fruit, aid me to implore the divine grace through the intercession of Mary, our beloved mother saluting her with the angel “Ave Maria, &c.”

The sermon is founded upon Matt. xiv. 28: “Lord, if it be thou, command that I come to thee upon the water.” Its style is declamatory, and its object is to prove that there is no