First. Examine thy soul, what end thou propoundest to thyself in the intended service of extraordinary prayer. None but a child or a fool will run before he knows what is his errand. The end is that which a wise man looks to before he sets his hand to any work, and the more weighty the enterprise is the more necessary this is.
- Consider, if the end thou propoundest be evil, the duty cannot be good, because thy heart is not sincere in it. The sincerity of the heart discovers itself in the mark it sets up and end it aims at in a duty, not in the external performance of it. The thief and the honest traveller may be found riding in the same road, but they have different aims therein, and this distinguisheth them. Thus the saint and hypocrite join in the same duty, shoot as it were the same bow, but their eye takes not the same aim, and therefore the arrows meet not in the same butt. The prayers of one are rejected as abominable, and the other graciously accepted. Who more seemingly devout than the captive Jews that kept up a fast for seventy years together? yet God gives them but little thanks for their pains, because their end was not right: ‘When ye fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh month, even those seventy years, did ye at all fast unto me, even to me?’ Zech. 7:5. The faster a man gallops, if he be out of his way, it is the worse. Zeal is the best or worst thing in a duty. If the end be right, O it is excellent! but if wrong, stark naught. And it is no easy thing to propound a right end. The eye must be set right in the head before it can look right. If the piece be wrong made it will never carry the bullet straight to the mark. A false heart—and every carnal heart is such—cannot have a true end.
- Consider that your endeavour in the duty will bear proportion, and be commensurate, to the end you propound therein. If your end be low, your endeavour will be no more than to reach that end; as he that intends to build a little cottage contents himself with ordinary stuff, clay and thatch; but he that designs some stately palace provides more precious materials. Thus David was very curious in the materials he laid aside for the temple: ‘For the palace,’ saith he, ‘is not for man, but for the Lord God.’ Therefore he ‘prepared with all his might gold and silver,’ &c., I Chr. 29:1-3. The hypocrite’s ends in a fast are low and base—his credit with men, carnal profit, and the like. Accordingly, his endeavour is laid out on the external duty—a demure countenance, devout posture, and such expressions in prayer as may most take with those that hear him, and this is all he looks at. But the gracious soul saith with David, This palace I build, this duty I perform, ‘is not for man, but for the Lord God,’ and therefore his chief care is to provide more precious materials—a broken heart for sin in his confessions, faith and fervency in his petitions, love and thankfulness in his acknowledgments of mercies received.
Question. But when is an evil end propounded in this duty?
Answer. The end we propound may be evil, either intrinsically, when the thing we aim at is evil in its own nature, or else from some irregularity in placing it too high or low in our aim.
(1.) The ends that are intrinsically evil. To name two,
(a) When a person or a people shall fast and pray to cover and more sleightily carry on any wicked enterprise. This is a horrid evil, a monstrous abomination. What is this but to hang out the sign of an angel at the door, that they may play the devil within the less suspected? Yet, such deep hypocrisy hath the heart of man discovered, that it dare come and lay its cockatrice egg under the very wing of God, and make use of this solemn ordinance as an expedient to hatch their wicked designs. The fox, they say, when hard put to it, will, to save himself, fall in among the dogs, and hunt among them as one of their company. Thus the hypocrite, the better to conceal his wicked projects, will run among the saints, and make as loud a cry in this duty and others as the best of them all. It is the devil’s old trick, and he hath learned it his instruments, to wrap up wicked plots in the gilded covers of God’s ordinances. What plotting and counterplotting was there between Shechem the son of Hamor and Simeon and Levi? and the expedient both used to accomplish their designs was an ordinance of God. The one hopes by submitting to it to hook into his hands the whole estate of Jacob’s family —‘shall not their substance be ours?’ and the other persuades them to it that when they were sore they might butcher them without resistance. Absalom, that he might better play the traitor against his father, begs leave to pay his vow at Hebron. Jezebel sets her trap for Naboth, and that he may the more surely fall into her clutches, she croucheth and humbleth herself even before God in a fast. And the demure Pharisee, who bragged so much of his fasting, our Saviour was bold to tell him it was to ‘devour the widows’ houses.’ But, as the father hath it, manducant in terris quod apud inferos digerunt—they devour on earth those morsels that will lie heavy on their stomachs in hell to be digesting to eternity. Thus the hypocrite, like antichrist, sits in the temple of God, and there commits his execrable abominations, turning a house of prayer into a den of thieves. O tremble at this great wickedness! It gives a crimson tincture to a sin when it is committed under the disguise of religion.
(b) When a person thinks by fasting and prayer to satisfy God for his sin, or merit any favour at the hands of God. This is wicked and abominable, and as contrary to the nature of prayer as buying is to begging. ‘The poor,’ saith Solomon, ‘useth entreaties,’ Prov. 18:23. ‘Whom, though I were righteous, yet would I not answer, but I would make supplication to my judge,’ Job 9:15. We cannot have the benefit of the throne of grace till we quit our legal plea. Christ indeed pleads as righteous, and therefore desires what he asks for us as just, because he hath paid for it; but we pray as sinners, and therefore crave all as mercy, yea, though we plead Christ’s merit, because he is the greatest and freest gift of all other. Yet, such is the pride of man's heart, that he had rather play the merchant, and truck his duties for God’s blessings, than be thought to receive them gratis. This was the temper of the carnal Jews. They thought to pacify God for their sin, as Jacob his angry brother, with the droves and flocks of duties which they presented him with, and thought their services undervalued when they were not accepted for good payment. Hence their bold expostulating the case with the Lord, ‘Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge?’ Isa. 58:3. Such a high opinion they had of themselves. O take heed of this: pride turns an ordinance into an idol. God accepts our fasts and prayers when used for humiliation, but abhors them when we bring them for our justification. The Pharisee lost himself by his proud brags how oft he fasted, while the poor publican got the prize by a humble confession of his sin, Luke 18. He that thinks to wash his face with puddle water, instead of making it clean will leave it fouler. Truly our best tears are not over clean, and can they make us clean that need themselves to be washed? Holy Job durst not rely on his purity: ‘If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean, yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me. For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come together in judgment,’ Job 9:30-32.
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