Four rules whereby to know if we act faith in prayer or no 1/3

         (1.) Rule.  We may know if we have acted faith by the serenity and composure of our spirits after prayer.  Faith may live in a storm, but it will not suffer a storm to live in it.  As faith rises, so the blustering wind of discontented troublesome thoughts go down.  In the same proportion that there is faith in the heart there is peace also.  They are joined together, ‘quietness and confidence,’ Isa. 30:15: ‘In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.’  Therefore called ‘peace in believing,’ Rom. 15:13. Even where it is weakest it will not let the unquietness of the heart pass without a chiding.  ‘Why art thou disquieted, O my soul! trust still in God,’ Ps. 42:5, 11.  What! soul no sooner off thy knees, but clamorous!  Hast not thou made thy moan to a God able to help thee, and will not that ease thee? Faith disburdens the soul in prayer of that which oppresses it; whereas the unbelieving soul still carries about it the cause of its trouble, because it had not strength to cast forth it sorrows, and roul its cares upon God in the duty. Christian, dost thou carry away the same burden on thy back from prayer which thou didst bring to it? surely thou didst want faith to lift it off thy shoulder. Had faith been there, and that been active and lively, it would have bestowed this elsewhere, and brought thee away with a light heart: as Hannah, who rose from praying ‘to eat, and her countenance was no more sad;’ and as Christ, who kneeled down with as sorrowful a heart as ever any, but comes off with a holy courage, to go and meet his approaching death, and his bloody enemies now on the way to attack him.  ‘Rise,’ saith he to his disciples, ‘let us be going, behold he is at hand that doth betray me,’ Matt. 26:46. May it not put us to the blush to think that we could come less satisfied from God’s presence than we do sometimes from a sorry man’s?  If you were poor, and had a rich friend that bids you send your children to him, and he will provide for them; would not this ease your mind of all your cares and distracting thoughts concerning their maintenance?  And doth not God promise more that this comes to when he bids us ‘be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God?’

         (2.) Rule.  Dost thou continue praying even when God continues to deny?  An unbelieving heart may have some mettle at hand, but will be sure to jade in a long journey.  Faith will throw in the net of prayer again and again, as long as God commands and the promise encourageth.  The greyhound hunts by sight, when he cannot see his game he gives over running; but the true hound by scent, he hunts over hedge and ditch though he sees not the hare he pursues all the day long.  An unbelieving heart, may be, drawn out, upon some visible probabilities and sensible hopes of a mercy coming, to pray, but when these are out of sight his heart fails him; but faith keeps the scent of the promise and gives not over the chase.