shall be productive of this proper effect on them, even to cause them to celebrate its fame. Thus Hosea, speaking of the future redemption of the Church, addresses the Lord: “Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously; so will we render the calves of our lips.”[379] Nor do the Divine blessings only claim the praises of the tongue, but naturally conciliate our love. “I love the Lord (says David) because he hath heard my voice and my supplications.”[380] In another place also, enumerating the assistances he had experienced, “I will love thee, O Lord, my strength.”[381] Nor will any praises ever please God, but such as flow from this ardour of love. We must likewise remember the position of Paul, that all petitions, to which thanksgiving is not annexed, are irregular and faulty. For thus he speaks: “In every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.”[382] For since moroseness, weariness, impatience, pungent sorrow and fear, impel many to mutter petitions, he enjoins such a regulation of the affections, that believers may cheerfully bless God, even before they have obtained their requests. If this connection ought to exist in circumstances apparently adverse, God lays us under a still more sacred obligation to sing his praises, whenever he grants us the enjoyment of our wishes. But as we have asserted that our prayers, which had otherwise been defiled, are consecrated by the intercession of Christ, so the apostle, when he exhorts us “by Christ to offer the sacrifice of praise,”[383] admonishes us that our lips are not sufficiently pure to celebrate the name of God, without the intervention of the priesthood of Christ. Whence we infer, how prodigious must be the fascination of the Papists, the majority of whom wonder that Christ is called an Advocate. This is the reason why Paul directs to “pray without ceasing,” and “in every thing to give thanks;”[384] because he desires that all men, with all possible assiduity, at every time and in every place, and in all circumstances and affairs, may direct their prayers to God, expecting all from him, and ascribing to him the praise of all, since he affords us perpetual matter of prayer and praise.