The Incantations of the Saints

1:2 ¶ But the saints sang otherwise: not as they that were bidden, but as they that had seen; and their singing went up from the furnace and the prison and the sick-room and the periphery, and it asked, and it did not command; and herein was the singing of the saints contrary unto the chanting of the city from the first word.

1:3 ¶ And this temple keepeth the word incantation in its first meaning: the singing-forth, that which is sung from the heart's abundance. It is not the word of the conjurer in this temple; the church asketh as creatures ask, and it conjureth not, and it bargaineth not, and it bindeth no name in heaven or in earth.

2:1 ¶ Three holy children stood in the fire, and the fire burned their bindings and not their bodies; and in the midst of the furnace they sang, and their singing was neither an escape nor a spell, but a witness that the fourth was in the fire with them.

2:2 ¶ And the song they sang was after this manner: Blessed art thou, O Lord God of our fathers: and to be praised and exalted above all for ever. And they blessed the Source alone, and asked nothing of the fire, and commanded nothing of the fourth; and this is the pattern of all godly singing unto the last syllable.

2:3 ¶ And the song of her that overturned was the first of the overturnings: he hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree; and the temple keepeth her song in a room of its own, for it was the first and it abideth the pattern of every merciful overturning.

2:4 ¶ And in the latter days the saints sang from their own records yet: the priest of the peripheries sang mercy, for he had first been shown mercy and chosen; and the keeper of the open canon sang that heaven was not become silent, for he said his book came by the gift and power of God; and the temple singeth them in honor, and asketh them as creatures ask creatures, and worshippeth the Source alone.

3:2 ¶ And the singer that asketh shall ask with the same breath that he obeyeth: to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly; for an asking without obedience is the conjurer's word, and the conjurer's word is the Party's word, and both are commands.