Exhortation to saints to abound in prayer

         Use Second.  To the saints.  Be you provoked to ply this oar more diligently than ever.  If this be neg­lected, a universal decay of all your graces follows.  When the ports and havens of a kingdom are blocked up, that the merchant can not go forth, there follows a damp on all the inland trade, so that an enemy needs not strike a stroke, but only stand still to see them eat up one another.  The psalmist tells of a stream which ‘makes glad the city of God,’ Ps. 46:4. The promise is this stream, upon which the saints have all their livelihood brought up to their very doors.  If this be kept open, Satan cannot much distress them; which then is done, when they can send out their prayers on this stream to heaven.  But if once this trade be stopped, then they are hard put to it.  It is observed of our neighbours the Nether­lands, that whereas other nations used to be made poor by war, they have grown rich with it; because, with their wars, they have enlarged their trade and traffic abroad.  And if thou, Christian, wouldst thrive by all thy temptations, thou must take the same course.  Whatever thou dost, starve not thy trade with heaven.  God hath—to make thee more diligent in this duty—so ordered things, that all the treasure of the promise is to be conveyed to thee in this bottom of prayer.  This is like the merchant’s ship, it ‘bringeth her food from afar,’ Prov. 31:14.  If thy mer­cies were of the growth of thy own country, thou mightest spare a voyage to heaven.  But alas! poor creature, when thou art best laid in, and thy store­house fullest, if no foreign supplies should come unto thee from heaven, how soon wouldst thou be brought, with the poor widow, to eat thy last cake and die!  It was not her little meal in her barrel, nor oil at the bottom of her cruse, but God’s blessing multiplying them, that make them hold out so long.  So, not thy present grace, strength, or comfort, but God's feeding these with a new spring, that thou must live upon. Now cease praying, and the oil of grace will cease running: ‘Ye have not, because ye ask not.’  And when the store is spent the city must yield.  As thou wouldst not therefore fall into Satan’s hands, lose not thy interest in God, thy best ally, for want of preserving a good correspondence with him at the throne of grace.

         Now, for the better pursuit of this exhortation, some counsel would not be amiss in order to thy driv­ing this trade of prayer more successfully.  Satan hath received so many shameful overthrows by the saints’ prayers, that he trembles at the force of this great ordnance of heaven.  This is the voice, the mighty voice of God in his saints, which shakes those moun­tains of pride, divides the flames of fiery temptations, and makes them cast forth their abortive counsels to their shame and disappointment.  ‘O Lord, I pray thee, turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness,’ II Sam. 15:31.  This one prayer made both Ahithophel a fool, and him that set him on work also—defeating the wisdom both of man and devil. Satan hath such an impression of dread upon him—from the remem­brance of what he hath suffered from the hands of prayer—that he will turn every stone, and try every way, to obstruct thee in it.  ‘What do we,’ said the Pharisees concerning Christ, ‘for this man doeth many miracles?...if we let him thus alone, the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.’ Satan cannot deny but great wonders have been wrought by prayer.  As the spirit of prayer goes up, so his kingdom goes down.  It is of the royal seed. He can no more stand before it than falling Haman before rising Mordecai.  And therefore, seeing this is like to do thee such great service against him, it be­hooves thee the more to defend it from his strata­gems.  Because the great artillery of an army is so useful to it, and formidable to the enemy, therefore it hath a strong guard set about it.