in any single temptation (for sometimes even a good wrestler and fighter may get roughly handled):  avarice, then, has got the better of a man, good wrestler though he be, and he has done some avaricious act.  Or there has been a passing lust; it has not brought the man to fornication, nor reached unto adultery—­for when this does take place, the man must at all events be kept back from the criminal act.  But he “hath seen a woman to lust after her”; he has let his thoughts dwell on her with more pleasure than was right; he has admitted the attack; excellent combatant though he be, he has been wounded, but he has not consented to it; he has beaten back the motion of his lust, has chastised it with the bitterness of grief, he has beaten it back; and has prevailed.  Still, in the very fact that he had slipped, has he ground for saying, “Forgive us our debts.”  And so of all other temptations, it is a hard matter that in them all there should not be occasion for saying, “Forgive us our debts.”  What, then, is that frightful temptation which I have mentioned, that grievous, that tremendous temptation, which must be avoided with all our strength, with all our resolution; what is it?  When we go about to avenge ourselves.  Anger is kindled, and the man bums to be avenged.  O frightful temptation!  Thou art losing that, whereby thou hadst to attain pardon for other faults.  If thou hadst committed any sin as to other senses, and other lusts, hence mightest thou have had thy cure, in that thou mightest say, “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.”  But whoso instigateth thee to take vengeance will lose for thee the power thou hadst to say, “As we also forgive our debtors.”  When that power is lost, all sins will be retained; nothing at all is remitted.

Our Lord and Master, and Savior, knowing this dangerous temptation in this life, when he taught us six or seven petitions in this prayer, took none of them for himself to treat of, and to commend to us with greater earnestness, than this one.  Have we not said, “Our Father, which art in heaven,” and the rest which follows?  Why after the conclusion of the prayer, did he not enlarge upon it to us, either as to what he had laid down in the beginning, or concluded with at the end, or placed in the middle?  For why said he not, if the name of God be not hallowed in you, or if ye have no part in the kingdom of God, or if the will of God be not done in you, as in heaven, or if God guard you not, that ye enter not into temptation; why none of all these? but what saith he?  “Verily I say unto you, that if ye forgive men their trespasses,” in reference to that petition, “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.”  Having passed over all the other petitions which he taught us, this he taught us with an especial force.  There was no need of insisting so much upon those sins in which if a man offend, he may know the means whereby he may be cured; need of it there was with