Satan’s designs against prayer

Now Satan’s designs against prayer are of three kinds.  First. If he can, he will keep thee from prayer.  If that be not feasible, Second. He will strive to interrupt thee in prayer.  And, Third. If that plot takes not, he will labour to hinder the success and return of thy prayer.

Satan strives to keep from prayer

First Design.  Satan’s first design upon the Christian will be to keep him from prayer.  To effect this he wants not his stratagems; many objections that he will start, and discouragements he will throw in thy way to this duty; hoping that if thou stumblest not at one, yet he may make thee fall by another, and be sick of thy enterprise before thou settest upon it.  And, which is worst, thou wilt find a party in thy own bosom too ready to listen to what he saith, yea, to take up his arguments and maintain the dispute against thy engaging in this work.  We shall pick up a few among many, and put an answer into thy mouth against he comes.

Satan keeps from prayer by charging the Christian with hypocrisy.

First Stratagem.  ‘What! thou pray!  If thou dost, thou wilt but play the hypocrite; and better not pray at all, than never the better!’  Nay, possibly thy own misgiving heart may suggest the same, or at least so far credit his charge, as to make thee waver in thy thoughts what thou shouldst do—pray or not.  Now, to arm thee against this, consider,

1. Thou art but afraid thou shouldst play the hypocrite, if [you] pray; but thou wilt certainly prove thyself an atheist if thou dost not.  And that is it which he would have.  I hope thou art wiser than to neglect a known duty upon a jealousy thou hast of miscarrying in it; to lie down in a known sin—yea, so broad a one as brands him for an atheist that contin­ues in it—for fear of meeting a lion, may be but a bugbear, in the way of thy obedience to an indispens­able command.
2. Thou art in the less danger of playing the hypocrite, because of thy fear.  Some bodily diseases indeed are caught with a fear and fancy.  He is most like to have the plague or pox that fears most he shall have them.  But none are so safe from sin as they that fear the falling into it most.  The truth is, I would desire no better argument to prove thee sincere than this—to fear thy hypocrisy.  Believe it, if this be the great trouble of thy soul, the devil hath more reason to fear thy sincerity than thou thy hypocrisy.  And in all likelihood this it is that makes him to scare thee from prayer—because thou scare him so much by thy praying.  If thou wert a hypocrite, as he pretends, himself would invite thee to it; yea, make a lane for thee, rather than that thou shouldst not come to the work; and when thou art risen from thy knees, he would thank thee for thy pains, because he knows God would not.  The hypocrite does him more service than God.  You do not believe, sure, that the devil was any great enemy to Jezebel's fasting.  Nay, I doubt not but he put it into her head, that she might thereby mock both God and man.  Her fast was the devil’s feast.  But,

3. If thou findest more cause to fear thy playing the hypocrite than I who am a stranger to thy heart have reason to do—who indeed can know so well how thy own heart beats as thyself?—I say, if thou fearest this be the sin which is most likely to make a breach upon thee in thy duty, do as Moses, who slew the Egyptian to rescue the Israelite—destroy the sin, that thou mayest rescue thy soul from the neglect of a duty.  Thou hast a very fair advantage, by the intel­ligence God graciously gives thee whence thy danger is most likely to come, of falling on thy enemy, and taking the fuller revenge on him, before thou settest about the work of prayer.  Get but thy heart into a hatred of this odious sin, and fixed resolution against it, and, with God’s blessing, it shall neither be able to hurt thee, nor hinder thy prayer from finding wel­come with God.