Wednesday 19 December 2012

PASTORAL CARE,

'...the good catechizer perceives what particular sin it is that keeps the man away from God; he can seek out those dark dens, where lurk sin and Satan, fleshly lusts and the lust of the world and its idols. In the same way as a fisherman knows where the fish are, and the mole-catcher the runs of the moles, and the fowler where to find the patridge, so does the expert catechizer recognize the secret ways of the temptations of the world and of the flesh, and know all the twist and turns of human nature; the difference between the stirrings of grace and the strirrings of nature, between true repentance and fits of melancholy, or the state of unhappiness that overtakes us at times in this world. As Sir Isaac Newton, with a few round and triangular figures, comprehends all the circuits of the stars and planets, so the good catchechizer, with a word or two that he gets from the lips of a simple man, comes to an exact understanding of the sate of that man's heart...'  
William Williams, The Experience Meeting, p.32.