l. 243. Heare us, weake ecchoes, O thou eare, and cry. The 'cry' of the editions is surely right. God is at once the source of our prayers and their answerer. Our prayers are echoes of what His grace inspires in our hearts. The 'eye' of S and other MSS., which also read 'wretches' for 'ecchoes', is due to a misapprehension of the condensed thought, and 'eye' with 'ecchoes' is entirely irrelevant. JC tries another emendation: 'Oh thou heare our cry.'
'Every man who prostrates himselfe in his chamber, and poures out his soule in prayer to God;... though his faith assure him, that God hath granted all that he asked upon the first petition of his prayer, yea before he made it, (for God put that petition in to his heart and mouth, and moved him to aske it, that thereby he might be moved to grant it), yet as long as the Spirit enables him he continues his prayer,' &c. Sermons 80. 77. 786.
But indeed we do not need to go to the Sermons to see that this is Donne's meaning. He has emphasized it already in this poem: e.g. in Stanza xxiii:
Heare us, for till thou heare us, Lord
We know not what to say:
Thine eare to'our sighes, teares, thoughts gives voice and word.
O Thou who Satan heard'st in Jobs sicke day,
Heare thy selfe now, for thou in us dost pray.
'But in things of this kind (i.e. sermons), that soul that inanimates them never departs from them. The Spirit of God that dictates them in the speaker or writer, and is present in his tongue or hand, meets him again (as we meet ourselves in a glass) in the eyes and ears and hearts of the hearers and readers.' Gosse, Life, &c., i. 123: To ... the Countess of Montgomery.
'God cannot be called a cry', Grosart says; but St. Paul so describes the work of the Spirit: 'Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities, for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the heart knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.' Calvin thus closes his note on the passage: 'Atque ita locutus est Paulus quo significantius id totum tribueret Spiritus gratiae. Iubemur quidem pulsare, sed nemo sponte praemeditari vel unam syllabam poterit, nisi arcano Spiritus sui instinctu nos Deus pulset, adeoque sibi corda nostra aperiat.'