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| Of Washing the Hands.
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Chapter
XIII.—Of Washing the Hands.
But what reason is there in going to prayer with
hands indeed washed, but the spirit foul?—inasmuch as to our
hands themselves spiritual purities are necessary, that they may be
“lifted up pure”8841
from falsehood,
from murder, from cruelty, from poisonings,8842
from idolatry, and all the other blemishes which, conceived by the
spirit, are effected by the operation of the hands. These are the
true purities;8843
| 8843 See Matt. xv. 10, 11, 17–20; xxiii. 25,
26. | not those which
most are superstitiously careful about, taking water at every prayer,
even when they are coming from a bath of the whole body. When I was
scrupulously making a thorough investigation of this practice, and
searching into the reason of it, I ascertained it to be a commemorative
act, bearing on the surrender8844
of our Lord. We,
however, pray to the Lord: we do not surrender Him;
nay, we ought even to set ourselves in opposition to the example of His
surrenderer, and not, on that account, wash our hands. Unless any
defilement contracted in human intercourse be a conscientious cause
for washing them, they are otherwise clean enough, which
together with our whole body we once washed in Christ.8845
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