Now, would you know for yourself, like the communicant who came to me in my sleep, how you are ever to get past all those arbours, and settles, and seats, and couches, with all their sweet sorceries and intoxicating enchantments--would you in earnest know that? Then study well the case of one Standfast. Especially the time when she who enchants this whole ground hereabouts set so upon that pilgrim. In one word, it was this: he remembered his Lord; and, like his Lord, he fell on his face; and as his Lord would have it, His servant's lips as they touched the ground touched also the healing plant harmony and he was saved.
"A small unsightly root, But of divine effect. Unknown, and like esteem'd, and the dull swain Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon; And yet more med'cinal is it than that moly That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave; He call'd it haemony, and gave it me, And bade me keep it as of sovran use 'Gainst all enchantments, mildew, blast, or damp, Or ghastly furies' apparition. And now I find it true; for by this means I knew the foul enchantress, though disguised, Enter'd the very lime-twigs of her spells, And yet came off. If you have this about you (As I will give you when you go) you may Boldly assault the necromancer's hall: Where if she be, with dauntless hardihood, And brandished blade, rush on her, break her glass, And shed her luscious liquor on the ground, And seize her wand."
Prayer, my sin-beset brethren, standfast prayer, is the otherwise unidentified haemony whose best habitat was the Garden of Gethsemane; and with that holy root in your heart and in your mouth, there is "no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination against Israel."