Luke 11:2 And he said to them, When you pray, say, Our Father which are in heaven, Hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done… — Meum and Tuum, these words, "Mine" and "Thine," have been the seeds of envy and contention ever since the world was habitable. From these little grains hath the law's large harvest grown up. These were they which at first invented, and ever since exercised our terms — the common barristers, causes of all rents and schisms in the commonwealth's body. These have blown the coals of strife, occasioned brothers to go to law with brothers, nay, brothers to destroy one another. If Abel should have asked Cain upon what quarrel he killed him, he could have stated his controversy in no other terms but Meum and Tuum — "Thy sacrifice is better accepted than mine." These have been the accursed removers of neighbours' bounds and landmarks, have entitled the vigilant oppressor to another's patrimony. These were the bloody depositions that cost Naboth his life; had he relinquished his right to the vineyard, and not called it mine — "I will not give thee my vineyard" — he had preserved a friend of Jezebel and a life too. These two little monosyllables, "mine" and "thine," they are the great monopolists that span the wide world, that, like Abraham and Lot, divide the land betwixt them, yet cannot agree, but are ever wrangling and quarrelling about their shares; like these two factious brethren, Eteocles and Polyniees, who never could be reconciled, living nor dead, for when they had slain one the other, and were put on one hearse, one funeral pile, their ashes fought, and the flames that burnt the bodies, as sensible of the mortal feud which was betwixt them living, divided themselves. How many actions and suits begun upon these terms "mine" and "thine" have survived those that commenced them first, and descended from the great-grandfather to the heir in the fourth generation? Since then these two had occasioned so much strife, so much mischief in the politic body, Christ would not have them admitted to make any faction or rent in the mystical body of the Church. But as He was the Reconciler of God and man by His blood, so would He show Himself the Reconciler of man and man, shutting up all opposition of mine and thine in this one word, as the common peacemaker, Noster, Our Father. (William Gouge.) Parallel Verses KJV: And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. |
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