Why we must pray in the spirit fervently 1/2

           Question.  But why must we pray in the spirit fervently?  Answer First.  We must pray in the spirit fervently, from  the command.  ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might; and these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart,’ Deut. 6:5, 6; which imports the affectionate perfor­mance of every command and duty.  Sever the out­ward from the inward part of God’s worship, and he owns it not.  ‘Who hath required this at your hands?’ Isa. 1:12.  As if he had said, Did I ever command you to give a beast’s heart in sacrifice, and keep back your own?  Why dost thou pray at all?  Wilt thou say, Be­cause he commands it?  Then, why not fervently, which the command intends chiefly?  When you send for a book, would you be pleased with him that brings you only the cover?  And will God accept the skin for the sacrifice?  The external part of the duty is but as the cup.  Thy love, faith, and joy are the wine he de­sires to taste of.  Without these, thou givest him but an empty cup to drink in.  Now, what is this but to mock him?

           Answer Second.  We must pray in the spirit, to comport with the name of God.  The common de­scription of prayer is calling on the name of God. Now, as in prayer we call upon the name of God, so it must be with a worship suitable to his name, or else we pollute it and incur his wrath.  This is the chief meaning of the third commandment.  In the first, God provides that none besides himself, the only true God, be worshipped; in the second, that he, the true God, be not served with will‑worship, but his own institutions; and in the third, that he be not served vainly and slightily in his own worship.  There is no attribute in God but calls for this fervency in his worship.

1. He is a great and glorious God; and as such it becomes us to approach his presence with our affec­tions in the best array.  Are yawning prayers fit for a great God’s hearing? Darest thou speak to such a majesty before thou art well awake, and hast such a sacrifice prepared as he will accept?  ‘Cursed be the deceiver, which hath in his flock a male, and voweth, and sacrificeth unto the Lord a corrupt thing: for I am a great King, saith the Lord of hosts, and my name is dreadful among the heathen,’ Mal. 1:14.  See here, first, anything less than the best we have is a corrupt thing.  He will accept a little, if the best, but he abhors that thou shouldst save thy best for another.  Again he that offers not the best—the strength of his affections—is a deceiver; because he robs him of his due, and he is a great God.  It is fit the prince’s table should be served with the best that the market affords, and not the refuse.  When Jacob intended a present to the governor of the land, he bids his children ‘take of the best of the fruit of the land in your vessels.’  Lastly, the awful thoughts which God extorts from the very heathen by his mighty works, do reproach us who live in the bosom of the church, and despise his name by our heedless and heartless serving of him.

Five particulars to be observed in praying against guilt 2/3

   (c) Take heed thou prayest not with a reserva­tion.  Be sure thou renouncest what thou wouldst have God remit.  God will never remove the guilt so long as thou entertainest the sin.  What prince will pardon his treason that means to continue a traitor? It is desperate folly to desire God to forgive what thou intendest to commit.  Thou hadst as good speak out and ask leave to sin with impunity, for God knows the language of thy heart, and needs not thy tongue to be an interpreter. Some princes have misplaced their high favours to their heavy cost, as the emperor Leo Armenius, who pardoned that monster of ingratitude Michael Balbus, and was in the same night in which he was delivered out of prison murdered by him.  But the great God is subject to no mistake in his govern­ment.  Never got a hypocrite pardon in the disguise of a saint.  He will call thee by thy own name, though thou comest to him in the semblance of a penitent.  ‘Come in, thou wife of Jeroboam,’ said the prophet. Hypocrisy is too thin a veil to blind the eyes of the Al­mighty.  Thou mayest put thy own eyes out, so as not to see him; but thou canst never blind his eyes that he should not see thee.  And as long as God loves himself, he must needs hate the hypocrite; and if he hates him, surely he will not pardon him.  The par­doned soul and the sincere are all one.  ‘Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile,’ Ps. 32:2.

           (d) Make Christ thy plea.  Pardon of sin is a fa­vour not known in the first covenant.  Do, and live; sin, and die, were all its contents.  No room left for an after-game by that law.  The gospel covenant is our tabula post naufragium—the only plank by which we may recover the shore after our miserable wreck. This covenant is founded in Christ, who, upon agreement with his Father, undertook to answer the demands of the law, and happily performed what he undertook; upon which the gospel is preached, and pardon prom­ised to all that repent and believe on him.  ‘Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour,’ Acts 5:31.  Him hath God ‘set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood,’ Rom. 3:25.  As therefore, when Christ intercedes for poor sinners, he carries his blood with him and presents it to God, for the price of that forgiveness he desires for them; so thou mayest bring the same blood in the hand of thy faith when thou prayest for the pardon of thy sins, for ‘without shedding of blood is no remission,’ Heb. 9:22. This is the more to be heeded, because many, out of ignorance, and some from a corrupt principle, apply themselves to their prayers to the absolute goodness and mercy of God for pardon.  Ask them why they hope to be forgiven, and they will tell you, ‘God is good, and they hope he will be merciful to them, see­ing his nature is so gracious.’  But, alas! they forget he is just as well as merciful, and mercy will not act but with the consent of his justice.  Now the only salve for the justice of God is the satisfaction of Christ.  ‘Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteous­ness;...that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus,’ Rom. 3:25, 26.  So that, to de­sire God to forgive thee thy sin without the interven­ing of Christ’s satisfaction, is to desire God to be un­just, and pardon thee with the loss of his own honour; and how welcome thou art like to be that comest to him on such an errand, is easy to think.

           (e)  Lastly, take no denial in this thy request, but, pray for it with unwearied importunity.  It is a mercy thou canst not want; it is more necessary than thy very being.  Better never to be than ever be unpar­doned.  Think but a little on thy dismal condition while guilt is not taken off and thy pardon not obtained, and it is impossible that thou shouldst e a cold faint suitor for this mercy of mercies.  Know, then, while unpardoned thou art God’s prisoner.  All the plagues written in the law cleave as close to thee as thy girdle to thy loins.  Every moment thou mayest fear they should take hold upon thee as thou walkest in thy house, sittest at thy table, or liest on thy bed. Where canst thou be safe who hast God {for} thine enemy?  Can the bread resist him that eats it? or the tree withstand the axe of the feller? truly no more canst thou the wrath of an avenging God.  Is it not he that holds the stoutest devils in chains?—he who can kindle a fire in thy own bones and bosom, and make thee consume like lime with the inward burning of thy self‑tormenting thoughts?  Is he not a righteous God, whose justice binds him, in the distributions of justice, to be exact according to the sinner’s demerit? Is he not the everlasting God?—not a sorry creature, who may threaten thee to‑day, and be dead himself to‑morrow; but eternity itself, who ever lives to take vengeance on sinners, out of whose hands thou canst not escape by dying?

          

Five particulars to be observed in praying against guilt 1/3

           (a) Pray with a deep sense and sorrow for thy sins.  The worse nonsense in prayer is of the heart, when that hath no sense of the sin [the person praying] deprecates, or of the mercy he desires.  Nothing more hardens the heart of God against our prayer, than the hardness of our heart in prayer; and, on the contrary, no such way to melt God into pity as for our own hearts to dissolve into sorrow.  He that would have us ‘give wine unto those that be of heavy hearts,’ Prov. 31:6, saves this vessel—the promise, I mean, of pardoning mercy, which holds the sweetest wine in God’s cellar—‘to revive the heart of the contrite ones,’ Isa. 57:15.  A tear in the eye for sin adorns the creature more than a jewel in his ear, and his prayer more than all the embroidery of expres­sions in it can do.  While the publican smote his own breast, he got into God's bosom, and carried a pardon home with him.  Will Christ drop his blood to pro­cure thy pardon who canst shed no tears for thy sin? The truth is, here lies the difficulty of the work—not how to move God, but how to get the sinner's own heart melted.  It is harder to get sin felt by the crea­ture, than the burden, when felt, removed by the hand of a forgiving God.  Never was tender-hearted chirurgeon more willing to take up the vein and bind up the wound of his fainting patient, when he hath bled enough, than God is, by his pardoning mercy, to ease the troubled spirit of a mourning penitent.  It is one rule he gives his servants in their practice upon their spiritual patients, to beware of making too great an evacuation in the souls of poor sinners by exces­sive humiliation, lest thereby the spirits of their faith be too much weakened: ‘Sufficient to such a man is this punishment,’ &c.  ‘So that...ye ought rather to forgive him, and comfort him, lest perhaps such a one should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow,’ II Cor. 2:6, 7.

           (b) Justify and clear God in all the expressions of his displeasure for thy sins.  Thou dost perhaps carry the marks of his anger on thy flesh in some outward judgement; or, which is worse, the terrors of the Lord have taken hold of thy soul, and like poisoned arrows lie burning in thy conscience, where they stick.  Acknowledge him just, and all this that has come upon thee ‘less than thy iniquities deserve,’ Ezra 9:13. The way to escape the fatal stroke of his axe is to kiss the block. Clear his justice, and fear not but his mercy will save thy life. Thou hast a promise on thy side: ‘If then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity: then will I remember my covenant,’ Lev. 26:41, 42.  David took this course and sped, ‘For I acknowledge my transgressions,’ Ps. 51:3.  And why is he so willing to spread his sins in his confession before the Lord?  See ver. 4: ‘That thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.’  He would have all the world know that God did him no wrong in the judgments that came upon him; he takes all the blame upon himself.

        

All prayer’ viewed as to DIVERSITY IN MATTER —Second kind of petitionary prayer —the deprecatory.

 

           Second. Deprecatory prayer.  The second branch in the petitionary part of prayer is deprecation, wherein we desire of God, in the name of Christ, the removal of some evil felt or feared, inflicted or threatened.  So that evil is the object of deprecation.  Here I shall briefly point at the evils to be dep­recated, and how we are to frame our requests to God in dep­recating of them.  All evil is comprehended in these two:—1. Sin.  2. Suffering.

First object of deprecatory prayer.

1. Object. Sin.  This indeed is the evil of evils, against which chiefly we are to let fly the arrows of our prayers.  This is the only thing that is intrinsically evil in its own nature.  Suffering is rather evil to us than in itself, and our sufferings have both their being and malignity from the evil of our sins.  Had there been no sin, there had been no suffering.  Where that ceaseth, this is not to be found.  No sorrow in heaven, because no sin.  These, like twins, live and die together.  ‘If thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door;’ that is, if thou doest the evil of sin, prepare to meet with the evil of suffering.  Now in sin two things [are] to be deprecated: (1.) Guilt, and (2.) Filth—the defiling power of sin.

           (1.) Guilt.  This is the proper effect and conse­quent of every sin.  Whenever any sin is committed there is guilt contracted, whereby the creature be­comes obnoxious to the wrath of God; and this guilt wears not off by length of time, but continues bound upon the sinner till God by an act of pardoning mercy absolves him.  So that, though the act of sin be tran­sient, and passeth away as soon as the fact is commit­ted, yet the creature is in the bond of his iniquity, held with this chain of guilt as a prisoner to divine justice, till he by faith and repentance sues out his pardon; even as a felon who, may be, is not presently after the fact taken and brought into judgment, yet abides a debtor to the law, wherever he is, till he can obtain his pardon.  Now need I speak anything to set out the dismal and deplored condition  of a soul un­der guilt, thereby to provoke you to pray for the re­moval of it?  There is no mountain so heavy as the guilt of the least sin is to an awakened conscience. Better thy house were haunted with devils than thy soul with guilt.  If thy conscience tells thee thou art ‘in the bond of iniquity,’ thou canst not be ‘in the gall of bitterness,’ they are joined together, Acts 8:23.  Guilt is a burden which the sinner can neither stand under nor throw off.  One compares him to a beast stung with a gadfly—fain would he run from his pain, but still he finds it in him.  This lies throbbing in his soul like a thorn in the flesh, and will not let him rest by day or sleep by night; he turns himself on his bed as Regulius in his barrel stuck with nails—not an easy plat that he can find in it.  This makes him afraid of every disease that comes to town, pox or plague, lest it should arrest him and bring him by death to judg­ment.  His guilt makes him think that every bush a man, and every man a messenger of divine vengeance to slay him.  The ‘mark’ that God set upon guilty Cain, Gen. 4:15,  is by many interpreters conceived to be a trembling heart, made visible by a ghastly coun­tenance and discomposed carriage of his outward man; and that passage, ver. 12, ‘A fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth,’ the Septuagint read thus, FJX<T< 6" JDXµT< §F® ¦B J­H (­H —thou shalt be sighing and trembling in the earth. No convulsion fit so distorts the body as sin doth the soul.—Now in this prayer against guilt, and for pardon, observe these particulars.

All prayer’ viewed as to DIVERSITY IN MATTER – First kind of petitionary prayer—THE PRECATORY 4/4

           Doth sick David pray that some further time may be added to the lease of his temporal life?  It is not out of a fond love to this world or the carnal entertainments of it, but to prepare himself the better for another life.  ‘O spare me,’ a little ‘that I may recover strength, before I go hence, and be no more,’ Ps. 39:13.  Is he comforted with hopes of a longer stay here?  It is not any of this world’s carnal pleasures that kindles this joy in his holy breast, but the advan­tage he shall thereby have for praising God in the land of the living.  ‘Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God,’ Ps. 42:11.  The saint hath as quick a sense to taste the sweetness of a temporal mercy as another; but his heart being spiritual, and so acquainted with higher enjoyments, he desires with Luther that God would not put him off with these shells of blessings. O how few thus pray for temporals!  Most are but progging^[4] for their lusts while praying for them.  ‘Ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts,’ James 4:3.  One is sick, and prays for health that he may be again at his pots or harlots.  Another is child­less, and he would have an heir to uphold the pride and grandeur of his house, but not the increase of Christ’s family in the world.  A third would be a greater man in the world—and for what?  May be, that having more power he may take the fuller re­venge on his enemies that are now out of his reach. And other that bring not their sacrifice with so evil a mind, yet look no higher their carnal contentment in the enjoyment they would have, as appears by their carriage in the use of it.  Thus the mariners in a sea‑storm, ‘Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble,’ Ps. 107:28.  And when they have their life given them as they desire, ‘then are they glad because they be quiet,’ and God hears no more of them now their turn is served—a plain evidence that they were selfish and carnal in their prayer for this mercy, because they improve it not for their spiritual end. Which makes the psalmist break out into that holy option and vote, ‘Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness,’ ver. 31.  But much more abominable is it to pray for spiritual mercies for the sake of some temporal advantage we hope to have by them.  Thus Simon Magus desired the gifts of the Holy Ghost that he might be JÂH µX(­"H—a man of fame and name.  And do not some labour to bring the gospel to town as an expedient to mend the takings in their shop? —others pray for the assistances of the Spirit, and project their own praise by the means, basely per­verting those holy things to secular advantages?  O horrid baseness! As if one should desire a prince’s robe to stop an oven with it!  This is, as Austin saith, uti Deo ut fruamur mundo—to make God the stirrup and the creature our saddle.

           (2.) Those spiritual blessings which are intrin­sical to our happiness and indispensably necessary to our salvation, these we are to pray for with an undeni­able importunity.  Such are pardon of sin, the love and favour of God, and the sanctifying graces of the Spirit.  To be cold or indifferent in our prayers for these is a great wickedness.  The promise will bear us out in our greatest importunity: ‘Seek the Lord, and his strength: seek his face evermore,’ Ps. 105:4. ‘Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely,’ Rev. 22:17.  Tantum possumus in negotio religionis, quantum volumus—we are powerful in the matter of religion.  Nothing loseth us these mercies more than weak velleities and faint desires of them.  But our prayers for temporal blessings must be with a latitude of submission to the will of God, because they are promised conditionally. The promise is the founda­tion of our faith, the superstructure therefore of our prayers must not jet beyond it.  This was Israel’s sin —‘Who shall give us flesh to eat?’ Num. 11:18.  God had indeed promised to feed them in the wilderness, but not to give them every dish their wanton palate craved; and therefore, when God’s bill of fare contents them not, but they cry for flesh, they have their desire but sour sauce with it; for, ‘while their meat was yet in their mouths, the wrath of God came upon them, and slew the fattest of them,’ Ps. 78:31. Thus they were fed for the slaughter by the meat they inordinately lusted after.  O take heed of peremptory prayers for any temporal enjoyment, for thereby thou beggest but a rod for thy own back.  Rachel must have children or else she dies, and she at last hath two, but dies in travail of the latter.  It was a smart saying of one to his wife, who passionately desired a son, and had one at last, but none of the wisest, ‘Wife,’ saith he, ‘thou hast long passionately desired a boy, and now thou hast one that will always be a boy.’  God may justly set some print of his anger on that mercy which he answers our peremptory prayers with.  Why, alas! must we needs have that which we must needs lose, or shall not enjoy while we have it?

           (3.) Those spiritual blessings which are intrinsical to the saints’ happiness are to be prayed for with boundless desires.  Not, Give me thus much grace and I will trouble thee for no more.  No, God gives a little grace, not to stop our mouth, but to open it wider for more.  Yet, alas! how unreasonably rea­sonable are most in this particular!  So much holiness contents them as will, like salt, keep them from putrefying in gross sins, that they be not unsavoury to the nostrils of their neighbours, or as will save them from the lash of their tormenting conscience; like school-boys, that care for no more of their lesson than will save a whipping.  Alas! this is not to desire it at all; it is thy credit abroad and thy quiet within thou desirest, and the other but to help thee to these.  He that knows the true worth of grace thinks he hath never enough till satisfied with it in glory.  Paul had more than many of his brethren, yet prays and presseth as hard after more as if he had none at all, Php. 3:13, 14.  But in temporal enjoyments we are to stint our desires, and not let out all the sails of our affections when praying for them.  A gracious heart is as unwilling to have too much of these as afraid of having too little.  ‘Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me,’ Prov. 30:8.  I think not a saint but could cheerfully say amen to this prayer of Agur—I am sure he ought.  That house is best seated which stands neither on the bleak top of the hill nor on the wet bottom.  The nature of these temporal good things is enough to convince any wise man that the mean is best.  They are not the Chris­tian’s freight but his ballast, and therefore are to be desired to poise, not load, the vessel.  They are not his portion—heaven is that; but his spending money in his journey thither; and what traveller that is wise desires to carry any greater charge about him than will pay for his quarters?

All prayer’ viewed as to DIVERSITY IN MATTER - First kind of petitionary prayer—THE PRECATORY 3/4

           (4.) Our requests for both must be spiced with thanksgiv­ing.  ‘With thanksgiving let your requests be made known,’ Php. 4:6; and, I Thes. 5:18, ‘in everything give thanks.’  Art thou praying for the love and favour of God?  Bless God thou art where it may be ob­tained, and not in hell past hope or help. Is it health thou desirest?  Bless God for life; it is the Lord’s mercy we are not consumed.  No condition on earth can be of so sad a colour in which there may not some eye of white, some mixture of mercy, be found inter­woven.  Puræ tenebræ—utter darkness, without any stricture of mercy, is found in hell alone.  Come not therefore to pray till you know also what to praise God for.  As God hath an open hand to give, so he hath an open eye to see who comes to his door, and to discern between the thankful beggar and the unthankful.  Will God give more to him on whom all is lost that he hath formerly bestowed?  Indeed he doth do good to the evil and unthankful, but it is not a gracious return of their prayers, but an act of common providence, of which they will have little comfort when he brings the bounty of his providence in judgement against them, to aggravate their sins and increase their torment.—Now follows a threefold dissimilitude which we are to observe in framing our requests for spiritual and temporal mercies.

2. There is a threefold dissimilitude to be used in precatory prayer.  Temporal mercies are chiefly to be desired for the sake of spiritual, but spiritual mercies for themselves, and not for temporal advantages.

           (1.) Temporal mercies are chiefly to be desired for the sake of spiritual blessings, and not their own. The traveller desires a horse not for itself so much as for the convenience of his journey he is to go.  Thus the Christian, when praying for temporal things, should desire them as helps in his way and passage to heaven.  I do not say it is unlawful to desire life, health, and other comforts of this life, for the suit­ableness these have to our natural affections, and to supply our outward necessities; but to desire them only for this is low and base, it is the mere cry of the creature.  The ravens thus cry, and all the beasts of the field seek their meat of God; that is, they desire the preservation of their lives, and make their moan when they want that which should support them. And these creatures being made for no higher end than the enjoyment of these particular narrow good things, they observe the law of their creation.  But thou art an intellectual being, and by thy immortal soul, which is a spiritual substance, thou art as near akin to the angels in heaven as thou art by thy meaner bodily part to the beasts, yea, allied to God thy Maker, not only made by him, as they were, but for him, which they are not.  He is thy chief good, and therefore thou infinitely dishonourest him and thyself too if thou canst sit down short of him in thy desires.  Nihil bonum sine summo bono—nothing should be good to thee without God, who is thy chief good.  Non placent tibi mea sine mecum, nec tua mihi sine tecum—thus shouldst thou say and pray, O Lord, as all my gifts and services do not please thee except with them I give thee myself, so none of these gifts of thy bounty can content me except with them thou wilt bestow thyself on me.  Now this regular motion of the heart in praying for temporals is to be found only in those whose inward wheels—I mean powers and faculties —are set right by the hand of divine grace.  Man in his corrupt state is like Nebuchadnezzar at grass—he hath a beast’s heart, that craves no more than the sat­isfaction of his sensual appetite.  But when renewed by grace, then his understanding returns to him, by which he is enabled in praying for temporals to ele­vate his desires to a higher pitch and nobler end.

All prayer’ viewed as to DIVERSITY IN MATTER - First kind of petitionary prayer—THE PRECATORY 2/4

           (2.) In both thou must pray in faith, for both spiritual and temporal blessings are promised, and therefore thou art to believe that God will be as faithful and punctual in the performance of the less promises that concern this life, as in the more weighty matters which respect thy eternal happiness in the other.  Indeed, he promiseth spiritual blessings in specie—grace and glory he will give; but temporal enjoyments in valore—either in kind or value—‘no good thing will he withhold.’  And it is fit he should judge when a temporal enjoyment will be good for us, and when it will be better to give some other thing in the lieu of it.  Hence that method in our Lord’s prayer, first to pray, ‘Thy will be done,’ before we pray, ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’  But the seal is the same which ratifies temporal promises with that which he sets to spiritual; his truth and faithfulness are as deeply obliged to perform temporal promises, according to the tenure in which they are made, as to make good the other.  And therefore we are as strongly to acquiesce in his care and providence for our protection and provision here, as for our salva­tion hereafter; else he had done his people wrong to take them off from an anxious care for those things which he meant not to charge his providence with. Certainly if he bids us be careful for none of these things, but only let our requests be made known to him, he intends not our loss by our ease, but thereby would have us understand and believe that he will take the care upon himself, and give us at last a full account of his love and faithfulness in the issue of his providence, how all was disposed for our best advantage.

           (3.) We must join our endeavour in the use of all means with our prayers, whether they be put up for spiritual or temporal blessings.  Lazy beggars are not to be relieved at our door.  ‘This we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat,’ II Thes. 3:10.  And certainly God will not bid them welcome to his door whom he would have us deny at ours.  We must pray with our hand at the pump or the ship will sink in sight of our prayers.

           Is it temporal subsistence thou prayest for?  Pray and work, or pray and starve.  Dost thou think to set God at work whilst thou sittest with thy hand in thy bosom?  Those two proverbs in Solomon are observable, ‘The hand of the dili­gent maketh rich,’ Prov. 10:4; and, ver. 22, ‘The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it.’  He that prays but is not diligent is not like to be rich.  He that is diligent but prays not may be rich, but he cannot be blessed with his riches.  But he that obtains his riches by sincere prayer in conjunction with his diligence is rich by the blessing of God, and shall escape the sorrow which the worldling lays up with his money; yea, though he gets not an estate, yet he hath the blessing of God, and that makes him rich when there is no money in his purse.

           Again, is it any spiritual blessing thou prayest for?  Wouldst thou have more knowledge in the things of God?  Think not it will drop into thy mind without endeavour.  Daniel studied as his eyes were one while on the book, and another while lift up to heaven in prayer, Dan. 9:2.  ‘Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased,’ Dan. 12:4.  It is got by running from one means to another.  As the merchant's ship takes in some of her freight at one port, some at another, so the Christian gets some light in a sermon, some in a conference; some in one duty, some in another.  And he that takes up one duty, but through sloth neglects the rest, saves but his pains to lose his gains.  Sometimes God is found in this duty and sometimes in that, on purpose to keep up the credit of all, that we waive none.

All prayer’ viewed as to DIVERSITY IN MATTER - First kind of petitionary prayer—THE PRECATORY 1/4

  Passing from what we have said of diverse man­ner in prayer, we are now to consider the diversam materiam orationis—the diverse matter of prayer. And thus, to pray with all prayer and supplication, is to encircle the whole matter of prayer within the com­pass of our duties, and not to leave anything out of our prayers which God would have taken in.  Now this diversity of prayer’s matter, some think they find in the two words of the text, BDTF,LP¬ and *,ZF4H; but I shall not ground my discourse on so nice a criti­cism.  We will content ourselves with the division which the same apostle makes: ‘In every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God,’ Php. 4:6; and, ‘Pray without ceasing.  In every thing give thanks,’ I Thes. 5:17, 18.  In both which places the whole matter of prayer is com­prehended in these two: First. Re­quest or petitionary prayer.  Second. Thanksgiving. These two are like the double motion of the lungs, by which they suck in and breathe out the air again.  In the petitionary part of prayer we desire something at God's hands; in thanksgiving we return praise to him for mercies received from him. I begin with the petitionary part of prayer.

The petitionary part of prayer.       First. The first of the twofold division of the whole matter of prayer, viz. petitionary prayer.  This is threefold.  First. Precatory.  Second. Deprecatory. Third. Imprecatory. As for that of intercession, we shall leave it to another place, under those words ‘supplication for all saints.’

First kind of petitionary prayer—the precatory.

           First. Precatory prayer; that part of prayer, I mean, wherein the Christian desires of God, in the name of Christ, some good thing of the promise to be given unto him.  Now the good things promised are either spiritual or temporal—those that respect our souls and our eternal salvation, or those which relate to our bodies and temporary estate of them in this life.  Such a large field hath the Christian given him for his requests to walk in, for ‘godliness hath the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come,’ I Tim. 4:8.  This earth below, to a saint, is a land of promise, though not the land which is chiefly promised.  God hath not promised him heaven but left him to the wide world to shift for his outward sub­sistence, he hath not bid them live by faith for their souls, but live by their wits for their bodies.  No, he that hath promised to ‘give’ him ‘grace and glory,’ hath also said, ‘no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly,’ Ps. 84:11.  Their bill of fare is provided as well as their inheritance hereafter. Now all that I shall do here is to put a compass into your hand, by the help of which you may steer your course safely, when you are bound in your requests to either point of the promise, whether it be for temporal or spiritual mercies.  And that I may not run you beside the true channel upon rocks or sands, I shall touch the needle of that compass I would commend to your use with the lodestone of Scripture, from which we may gather a fourfold similitude to be used in our request for spiritual and temporal good things promised, and a threefold dissimilitude also.

1. There is a fourfold similitude to be used in precatory prayer.

           (1.) Whether thou prayest for temporal or spir­itual blessings, thou must pray in the sense of thy own unworthiness, for thou deservest neither.  When Christ prays for us, he pleads as an advocate for justice, because he paid before he prays, and asks but what he gives the price for.  But we poor creatures are beggars, and must crave all as pure alms, for the money comes not out of our purse that made the pur­chase; neither was God the Father bound to engage his Son, or the Son to engage himself, in our recov­ery, who were fallen by forfeiture into the hands of divine justice.  So that mercy is the only plea thou who art a sinner canst make with God.  Thou mayest with man stand upon thy desert.  Thus Jacob claimed his wages at Laban’s hand; but when he hath to do with God he changeth his plea, and sues sub formâ pauperis—in the form of the poor: ‘I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which thou hast shewed unto thy servant,’ Gen. 32:10.  So Daniel: ‘We do not present our supplications before thee for our righteousnesses, but for thy great mercies.’  No blessing so great but may be obtained where mercy is the plea, and none so little that we merit.  If thou wouldst therefore beg anything at God’s hand, confess thou deservest nothing.  Then are we fit to receive great things from God when we are least in our own eye; then nearest the crown when we judge ourselves unworthy of a crust.  The proud Pharisee brought his righteousness in his prayer to God, and carried away his sin bound upon him; the publican brought his sin in his humble confession, and carries away his absolution and justification with him.  Thus God crosseth his hands like Jacob in giving his blessings.

What is needful after extraordinary prayer

3. Requisite.  That which is necessary after extra­ordinary prayer.  The third word of direction is to the Christian, how he should carry himself when the day for extraordinary prayer is over, and this lies in a holy watch that he is to set upon himself.  He that prays and watcheth not, is like him that sows a field with precious seed, but leaves the gate open for hogs to come and root it up; or him that takes great pains to get money, but no care to lay it up safely when he hath it.  If Satan cannot beat thee in the field, yet he hopes to have thee at an advantage when thou hast disbanded thy forces, the duty be past, and thou liest in a careless posture.  Esau promised himself an opportunity of avenging himself on Jacob: ‘The days of mourning,’ saith he, ‘for my father are at hand; then will I slay him,’ Gen. 27:41.  Thus saith Satan: The days of mourning and fasting will soon be over; he will not be always upon his knees praying, not always beating down his body with fasting, and then I will fall upon him.  Now one of these two ways thy danger is like to come upon thee—either by his wounding thy faith or slackening thy care in thy obediential walking; and if he can do either, he will give a sad blow to thy prayers.

           (1.) Look therefore after such a day to thy faith. To pray and not to act faith, is to shoot and not look where the arrow lights; to send a ship with merchan­dise to sea and look for no return by the voyage. Thou hast in prayer laboured to overcome God to hear and help thee; now take as much pains to overcome thy heart into a quiet waiting on God and entire confidence in him.  When Jehoshaphat had ended his public fast, he stands up the next day and speaks these words to his people that had joined with him in that solemn duty, ‘Hear me, O Judah, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem; Believe in the Lord your God, so shall ye be established; believe his prophets, so shall ye prosper,’ II Chr. 20:20.  So when our blessed Saviour had taught his disciples to pray, then he pres­seth them entirely to commit themselves and their affairs to that God to whom they prayed, Matt. 6:19-34. Truly else extraordinary prayer is but extraordinary prattle; we mock God, and our prayers will mock us, for no fruit will come of them.  The hunter may want his supper, though his dog runs fast and mouths it well, if, when he comes at the prey, he dares not fasten upon it.  Now it is faith's office to fasten on the promise and take hold of God, without which thy loud cry in prayer is bootless and fruitless.  O canst thou trust thy cause with the lawyer, after thy opening it to him; and put thy life into the physician's hand by following his prescriptions, when thou hast acquaint­ed him with thy disease; and darest not thou venture thy stake in God's hand, after thou hast poured thy soul forth to him in prayer!  This is a great folly. Why shouldst thou think omnipotency cannot help, or truth and faithfulness will not?  Yea, a grievous sin to bring the name of the great God into question by thy unbelief.  Yet this our Saviour complains sadly to be the usage God meets with at their hands from whom he might expect better.  ‘Shall not God avenge his own elect which cry day and night to him, though he bear long with them?  I tell you that he will avenge them speedily.’  What greater security can the heart of a saint desire more than the word of a faithful God? yet few to be found after all their praying for deliverance that can entirely wait for the same. ‘Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?’ Luke 18:8.

           (2.) Look after a day of extraordinary prayer to thy obediential walking.  Solomon’s advice is, to ‘keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God,’ Ecc. 5:1.  Mine at present is, to look to thy foot as thou comest from it.  Thou mayest do thyself more mis­chief than all the devils in hell can do thee.  They cannot intercept thy prayers and hinder the happy re­turn of them into thy bosom, but thou mayest soon do it: ‘Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear: but your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear,’ Isa. 59:1, 2.  This is the whisperer that separateth chief friends; that makes God, our best friend, stand aloof from his people and their prayers.  Be as careful, Christian, after a fast, as a man would be after strong physic.  A cold caught now—a little disorder in thy walking—may be of sad consequence.  Remember that as thou hast left thy prayers, so thy vows, with the Lord. As thou lookest God should answer the one, so he expects thou shouldst pay the other.  Break thy promise to him and thou dischargest God with thy own hand of any mercy he owes thee.  It is folly to think thou canst bind God and leave thyself free.—We have des­patched then the first branch of the distinction of the kinds of prayer, which held forth the diversos modos orandi—diverse manners of praying; from which hath been shown, that we are to pray with all manner of prayer, ejaculatory and composed, solitary and social, private and public, ordinary and extraordinary; and we now go on to the second.

What is needful IN extraordinary prayer 2/2

           (3.) Be very careful to approve thyself faithful in the soul-humbling work of the day.  Let thy confes­sions be free and full, the sense thou hast of thy sins be deep, and thy sorrow for them be sincere and evangelical, for as thou quittest thyself in this, so thou wilt be in all the other parts of the duty.  If thou con­fessest thy sin feelingly, thou wilt pray against it fervently.  If thy sorrow be deep and reach to thy very heart and spirit, then thy petitions for pardoning mercy and purging grace will also come from the heart, be cordial, warm, and vehement.  Whereas he that melts not in confession of sin will freeze in his prayers that he puts up against it; if his tears be false and whorish—lachrymæ mentiri doctæ, his desires cannot be true.  Why do men ask in their petitions that grace which they do not in their hearts desire, but because they do not feel the smart, and are not loathed with the evil, of their sins that they confess? thus many confess their sins as beggars sometimes show their sores, which they are not willing to have cured.  Again, as thou art in thy confession of sin, so thou wilt be in thy acknowledgments of mercy.  The lower thou fallest in the abasement of thyself for thy sins, the higher thou wilt mount in thy praises for his mercies.  The rebound of the ball is suitable to the force with which it is thrown down.  The deeper the base is in confession, the shriller will the treble of thy praises be, for these mutually aggravate one another. the greater our mercies are, the greater are our sins; and the greater our sins, the greater are the mercies which, notwithstanding them, our good God vouch­safeth to us.  So that the sense we have of one must needs be in proportion to the other; as we are afflic­ted for sin so will we be affected with mercy.

           (4.) Improve the intervals of prayer with sea­sonable and suitable meditations, that thou mayest be fitted to return to the work with more life and vigour. Meditation is prayer’s handmaid to wait on it both before and after the performance.  It is as the plough before the sower, to prepare the heart for the duty of prayer, and the harrow to cover the seed when it is sown.  As the hopper feeds the mill with grist, so doth meditation the heart with matter for prayer.  Now, if it be necessary that thou shouldst consider before duty what thou art to pray, then surely after duty to make reflection on thyself how thou didst pray.  The mill may go and yet no corn be ground.  Thus thou mayest confess many sins, and yet thy heart be bro­ken and ground with sorrow for none of them all. Thou mayest pray for many graces, and exercise little or no grace in thy praying for them—thy heart being lazy, and putting no weight to the work—without which these spices are not broken, and so send not forth their sweet savour.  Look therefore back upon the past duty, and observe narrowly what the beha­viour of thy heart was in it.  If thou findest it to have been lazy, and drew loose in its gears, or played the truant by gadding from the work with impertinent thoughts—in a word, if under the power of any sinful distemper, be sure at thy return to the duty of prayer that thou chargest this home upon thyself with shame and sorrow.  This is the only way to stay God’s hand and stop him from commencing a suit against thee: ‘If we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged,’ I Cor. 11:31.  Ubi desinit justitia incipit judi­cium—where justice takes end judgment begins.  If we do not justice on ourselves, then God will right himself as well as he can.  Indeed thou canst not in faith pray for pardon of these sins till thou hast shown thyself on God's side by entering thy protest against them.  Moses took the right method—he expressed his zeal first for God against Israel’s sin of the golden calf, and then fell hard to the work of prayer to God for the pardon of it.  He durst not open his lips for them to God till he had vented his zeal for God, Ex. 32:26 compared with ver. 30, 31.  And if he took this course when to intercede for others, much more then shouldst thou when to pray for the pardon of thy own sin.

           Again, if upon this review of thy prayer thou findest thy heart was warm in the work, that thy affec­tions flowed out to God, and his reciprocated loves again by unbosoming himself to thee, take heed that no secret pride robs thee of thy new got treasure; be humble and thankful, remembering they were not thy own wings on which thou wert carried.  And also, be careful to improve these divine favours given to en­courage thee in the work, as the handfuls of ears of corn let fall for Ruth in the field of Boaz.  God would not that they should stop thy mouth, but open it wider when thou comest again to pray.  Did thy heart begin to melt in thy bosom?  O now cry for more bro­kenness of heart.  Did thy God cast a kind look on thee? let it set thee a longing for fuller discoveries of his love.  When the beggar sees the rich man putting his hand to his purse he cries more earnestly.  God is now on the giving hand, and this should embolden thee to ask; as Abraham, who, as God yielded, made his approaches closer, improving the ground which he got by inches for a further advantage to gain more, Gen. 18:27.