better it is. Ordinarily, it were meet for a man to retire himself an hour in the morning or night, seeing that not without cause our Saviour Christ spent an hour in that retired prayer which He made in the garden of Gethsemane, as we may collect out of the reprehension He gave St. Peter, saying, " Could you not watch one hour with me? [1] But he that by reason of his business cannot be an hour, let him be half an hour; and if he cannot be half an hour, yet let him employ, if he please, but a quarter of an hour in that mental prayer which we call examination of the conscience, in the manner that we shall hereafter prescribe; and let him allow himself some longer time for prayer upon holy-days, because they were instituted to attend to the service of Almighty God.
3. Concerning this ordinary time, we must be very considerate that after a man has set down his time that he intends to employ daily in prayer, whether it be in respect of the rule of his state (as some religionists do), or by special devotion, or direction of his ghostly father, he must be very constant in spending that whole time entirely in his holy exercise, without letting slip the space of one day, or losing even one " credo" of the hour allotted; for the devil, with great solicitude, invents a thousand devices, sometimes of corporal occasions, and sometimes of cares and business, under the pretext of piety, to make us interrupt our prayer; for omitting it one day through any sinister end, a man comes to omit it afterwards another and another day, and at length to omit it altogether. Whereupon St Chrysostom [2] says, that a just man should hold it for a thing more sorrowful than death itself to be deprived of prayer; imitating in this the holy prophet Daniel, who was accustomed to pray three times a day 4, and although the King of Persia commanded that no man upon pain of his life should pray
