Page:Post-Mediaeval Preachers.djvu/171

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will be found exceedingly useful, as it contains solutions of many difficulties which are likely to beset a parish priest. The Candelabrum Mysticuin is a very important and useful practical exposition of the Sacraments, and the Virga Aaronis florens, which is generally bound up with the Hortus, is an admirable directory of priestly life, containing godly admonitions and advice, under five heads and thirteen lections, each lection representing a blossom on Aaron’s rod, or a perfection in he sacerdotal life to which every priest should labour to attain. At the end of this work there is an interesting account of the introduction and founding of a congregation of St. Charles Boromeo (oblates), in the diocese of Leyden, by the joint efforts of Marchant and his friends Stephen Strecheus, Suffragan of Leyden, and John à Chokier, Vicar-General. This congregation is a society of secular Clergy constituted on much the same principles as the Societies of the Oratorians and St. Philip Neri. At this time, when associations for the advancement of spiritual life are being formed in our own branch of the Church, it would be well to consider whether the rules of St. Charles might not be taken and adapted to our modern exigencies, and so the congregation of oblates be revived amongst ourselves.

But to return to the Shepherd’s Garden.

As a specimen of the manner in which Jacques Marchant expounds a doctrine, I will give in outline his exposition of the eleventh Article of the Creed—“The Resurrection of the Body.”

Lection I. On the resurrection of the dead.

Proposition 1. Universal resurrection was an-