Rules for trying the sincerity of our hearts in prayer

           Rule 1.  What is thy care in performing this duty of prayer in secret?  If thy heart be sincere, it will delight in privacy.  A false heart calls others to see his zeal for God.  May be he is forward to put himself upon duty where he hath spectators to applaud him, and can be very hot and earnest at the work; but wither he is wholly a stranger to secret prayer, or else he is cold in the performance; he finds himself be­calmed now he wants the breath of others to fill his sails.  The plummets are off which quickened his mo­tion, and he moves heavily to what he did before company.  Whereas a sincere Christian never finds more freedom of spirit, and liquefactions of soul, than in his solitary addresses to God.  Joseph, when he would give full vent to his passion, sought some secret place where to weep, and therefore retired himself into his chamber, Gen. 43:30.  So the sincere Christian goes to his closet, and there easeth his heart into the bosom of God, and lets his passions of sor­row for sin, and love to Christ, burst forth and have their full scope, which in public prayer he restrains —as to the outward expression of them—out of a holy modesty, and fear of being observed by others, which he hunts not for. Now speak, Christian, what is thy temper?  Can thy closet witness for thee in this particular?  It is the trick of a hypocrite to strain him­self to the utmost in duty when he hath spectators, and to draw loose in his gears when alone; like some that carry their best meat to market, and save the worst for their own food at home; and others that draw their best wine to their customers, but drink the dead and flat themselves at their own private table.

           Rule 2. Observe thyself in thy more public ad­dresses to the throne of grace: and that in two par­ticulars.  (1.) When thou prayest before others.  (2.) When thou joinest with others that pray.

           (1.) When thou prayest before others, observe on what thou bestowest thy chief care and zeal, whether in the externals or internals of prayer—that which is exposed to the eye and ear of men, or that which should be prepared for the eye and ear of God; the devout posture of thy body, or the inward devo­tion of thy soul; the pomp of thy words, or the power of thy faith; the agitation of thy bodily spirits in the vehemency of thy voice, or the fervency of thy spirit in heart‑breaking affections.  These inward workings of the soul in prayer are the very soul of prayer; and all the care about the other without this, is like the trimming bestowed upon a dead body—that will not make the carcass sweet, nor these thy prayer to God’s nostrils.  It is the faith, love, brokenness of heart for sin, and the inward affections exerted in prayer, that, like Elijah in his fiery chariot, mount up to God in the heavens, while the other, with the prophet’s mantle, fall to the ground.  The sincere soul dares not be rude in his outward posture.  He is careful of his very words and phrase, that they may be grave and pertinent.  Neither would he pray them asleep that joins with him, by a cold, dreaming, and lazy manner of delivering of it; but still, it is the inward disposition of his heart he principally looks to, knowing well, that by the other he is but cook to others, and may fast himself if his own heart be idle in the duty; and there­fore he doth not count he prays well—though to the affecting of their hearts—except he finds his own affections drawn out in the duty.  Whereas the hypo­crite, if he may but come off the duty with the ap­plause of others in the external performance, is very well pleased, though he be conscious of the deadness and naughtiness of his own heart therein.

           (2.) When thou joinest with others that pray.  Do the gifts and graces that breathe from others in prayer warm thy affections, and draw out thy soul to bear them company to heaven in the petitions they put up?  Or do they stir up a secret envying and repi­ning at the gifts of God bestowed on them?  This would discover much pride and unsoundness in thy spirit. The hypocrite is proud, and thinks all the water is spilt and lost that runs beside his own mill; whereas the sincere soul prizeth the gifts of others, can heartily bless God for them, and make a humble and holy use of them.  His heart is as much affected with the holy savoury requests that another puts up, as when they come out of his own mouth.  But the hypocrite's eye is evil, because God’s is good.

           Rule 3.  Observe whether thy fervency in prayer be uniform.  A false heart may seem very hot in pray­ing against one sin; but he can skip over another, and either leave it out of his confession, or handles it very gently.  As a partial witness, that would fain save the prisoner’s life he comes against, will not speak all he knows, but minceth his evidence; thus doth the hypo­crite deal with his darling lust.  He is like one that mows grass with a gapped scythe; some he cuts down, and other he leaves standing; vehement against this, and favourable to that lust; whereas sincerity makes clear work as it goes.  ‘Order my steps in thy word: and let not any iniquity have dominion over me,’ Ps. 119:133.

           Again the false heart is as uneven in his petitions as in his deprecations.  Very earnest he is for some mercies, and they are commonly of an inferior nature, but more indifferent in his desires for those that are greater; he tithes mint and cummin in his prayers —temporal mercies, I mean—but neglects the weight­ier things of the promise—the sanctifying graces of the Spirit, humility, heavenly-mindedness, content­ment, self-denial; a little of these upon a knife’s point will content him.

           Rule 4.  Observe whether thy endeavours corres­pond with thy prayers.  The false heart seems hot in prayer, but you will find him cold enough at work.  He prays very fiercely against his sins, as if he desired them to be all slain upon the place; but what doth he towards the speeding of them with his own hands? Doth he set himself upon the work of mortifica­tion? doth he withdraw the fuel that feeds them? is he care­ful to shun occasions that may ensnare him?  When temptations come, do they find him in arms upon his guard, resolved to resist their motion?  Alas! no such matter.  If a few good words in prayer will do the work, well and good; but as for any more, he is too lazy to go about it.  Whereas the sincere heart is not idle after prayer; when it hath given heaven the alarm, and called God in to his help, then he takes the field himself, and opposeth his lusts with all his might, watching their motions, and taking every advantage he meets with to fall upon them.  Every mercy he receives, he beats it out into a weapon, to knock down all thoughts of sinning again.  Thus, ‘Seeing that thou our God hast punished us less than our iniquities deserve, and hast given us such deliverance as this; should we again break thy commandments?’ Ezra 9:13, 14.  O God forbid, saith the holy soul, that he should bid such a thought welcome!  Every promise he reads, he lifts it up as a sword for his defence against this enemy.  ‘Having these promises, let us cleanse our­selves,’ II Cor. 7:1.  I shall shut up this head with a few directions how we may get this sincere heart in prayer.

To pray in the spirit, we must have sincerity

           Third.  We pray in the spirit when we pray in sincerity.  There may be much fervour where there is little or no sincerity.  And this is strange fire; the heat of a distemper, not the kindly natural heat of the new creature, which both comes from God and acts for God; whereas the other is from self, and ends in self. Indeed the fire which self kindles serves only to warm the man's own hands by it that makes it: ‘Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks,’ Isa. 50:11; the prophet represents them as sitting down about the fire they had made.  Self-acting and self‑aiming ever go together; therefore our Saviour with spirit requires truth.  He ‘seeketh such to worship him’ as will ‘worship him in spirit and in truth,’ John 4:23, 24.

           Question.  But wherein consists this sincere fervency?

           Answer. Zeal intends the affections, sincerity di­rects their end, and consists in their purity and incor­ruption.  The blood is oft hot when none of the pur­est, and affections strong when the heart insincere; therefore the apostle exhorts us that we ‘love one another out of a pure heart fervently,’ I Peter 1:22, and speaks in another place of ‘sorrowing after a godly sort,’ that is, sincerely.  Now the sincerity of the heart in prayer then appears when a person is real in his prayers, and that from pure principles to pure ends.

           First. When he is real in what he presents to God in prayer.  The index of his tongue without and the clockwork of his heart within go together; he doth not declaim against a sin with his lips which he fa­vours with his heart; he doth not make a loud cry for that grace which he would be sorry to have granted him.  This is the true badge of a hypocrite, who oft would be loath {that} God should take him at his word.  A dismal day it would be to such when God shall bring in their own conscience to witness against them that their hearts never signed and sealed the requests which they made.  There is a state-policy used sometimes by princes to send ambassadors, and set treaties on foot, when nothing less than peace is intended.  Such a deceit is to be found in the false heart of man, to blind and cover secret purposes of war and rebellion against God with fair overtures in prayer to him for peace.

           Second.  When the person is not only real in what he desires, but this from a pure principle to a pure end.  I doubt not but a hypocrite in confession may have a real trouble upon his spirit for his sins, and cordially, yea passionately, desire his pardoning mercy; but not from a pure principle—a hatred of sin —but an abhorrency of wrath he sees hastening to him for it; not for a pure end, that the glory of God’s mercy may be magnified in and by him, but that him­self may not be tormented by God’s just wrath.  He may desire the graces of his Spirit, but not out of any love to them, but only as an expedient, without which he knows to hell he must go; as a sick man in exqui­site torture—suppose of the stone or some other acute disease—calls for some potion he loathes, because he knows he cannot have ease except he drinks it.  Whereas the sincere soul desires grace, not only as physic, but food.  He craves it not only as necessary but as sweet to his palate.  The intrinsical bounty and excellency of holiness inflames him with such a love to it, that, as one taken with the beauty of a virgin, saith he will marry her though he hath noth­ing with her but the clothes to her back; so the sincere heart would have holiness though it brought no other advantages with it than what is found in its own lovely nature.  So much to show what sincerity in prayer is.

           Now he that would pray acceptably must pray thus in his spirit, that is, with the sincerity of his spirit.  ‘The prayer of the upright is his delight.’ Nadab and Abihu brought fire, and had fire, ‘a strange fire,’ to destroy them for the ‘strange fire’ they of­fered; and such is all fervency and zeal that is not taken from the altar of a sincere heart, Lev. 10:1.  ‘The fervent prayer’—B@8×ÆFPb,4—‘availeth much.’  It can do much, but it must be of a righteous man, and such the sincere man only is.  And no wonder that God stands so much upon sincerity in prayer, seeing the lip of truth is so prized even among men.  Nature hath taught men to commend their words to others by laying their hands on their breasts, as an assurance that what they say or promise is true and cordial; which the penitent publican it is like aimed at, he ‘smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner,’ Luke 18:13, thereby declaring whence his sor­rowful confession came.  That light which told the heathens that God must be worshipped, informed them also this worship must come from the inward recesses of the heart.  In sancto quid facit aurum —quin damnus id superis, &c.—what care the gods for gold! let us offer that which is more worth than all treasures, sanctos recessus animi—the heart and inward affections of it.  It is a strange custom Benzo, in his Historia Novi Orbis, relates of the natives there: Indi occidentales dum sacra faciunt, dimisso in guttur bacillo, vomitum cient, ut idolo ostendant nihil se in pectore mali occultum gerere—the West Indi­ans, when worshipping their gods, used, by putting a little stick down their throat, to provoke themselves to vomit, thereby showing their idol that they carried no secret evil within them.  I should not have named this barbarous custom but to show how deeply this notion is engraven in the natural conscience—that we must be sincere in the worship of God.

           Use. Let it put us upon the trial whether we thus pray in the spirit—whether you can find sincerity stamped on your fervency.  If the prayer be not fer­vent it cannot be sincere, but it may have a fervour without this.  This is a very fine sieve; approve thyself here, and thou mayest without presumption write thy­self a saint.  But how fervent soever thou art without sincerity, it matters not.  Nay, zeal without upright­ness is worse than key‑cold; none will go to hell with more shame than the false-hearted zealot, who mounts up towards heaven in the fiery chariot, a seeming zeal, but at last is found a devil in Samuel’s mantle, and so is thrown down like lightning from heaven, whither he would have been thought by his neighbours to be going.  Be not loath to be searched. Then there will then need no further search to prove thee unsound.  If God’s officer be denied entrance, all is not right within.  Now to help thee in the work, inquire—

How to raise our affections to fervency in prayer

           Question.  But how may we get this fervency of spirit in prayer?

           Answer (a). Thou who propoundest the question art a saint or not; if not, there is another question must precede this.  How thou, that art at present in a state of spiritual death, mayest have spiritual life? There must be life in the soul before there can be life in the duty.  All the rugs in the upholsterer’s shop will not fetch a dead man to warmth, nor any arguments, though taken from the most moving topics in the Scripture, will make thee pray fervently while thy soul lies in a dead state.  Go first to Christ that thou may­est have life, and having life, then there is hope to chafe thee into some heat.  But,

           Answer (b).  If thou beest a saint, it yet calls for thy utmost care to get, and when thou hast got, to keep, thy soul in a kindly heat.  As the stone cannot of itself mount up into the air, so the bird—though it can do this, yet—cannot stay there long without some labour and motion with its wings.  The saints have a spark of heavenly fire in their bosom, but this needs the bellows of their care and diligence to keep it alive. There is a rust that breeds from the gold, a worm from the wood, a moth from the garment, that in time waste them; and ashes from the coal that choke the fire; yea, and in the saint too, which will damp his zeal if not cleared by daily watchfulness.  Observe therefore what is thy chief impediment to fervency in prayer, and set thyself vigorously against it.  If thou beest remiss in this precedaneous duty thou wilt be much more remiss in prayer itself.  He that knows of a slough in the way, and mends it not before he takes his journey, hath no cause to wonder when his chariot is laid fast in it.

           Answer (c).  Now this is not the same in all, and therefore it is necessary that thou beest so much ac­quainted with thine own estate as to know what is thy great clog in this duty.  Certainly, were not the firma­ment of the saint’s soul cooled with some malignant vapours that arise from his own breast, and weaken the force of divine grace in him, it would be summer all the year long with him, his heart would be ever warm, and his affections lively in duty.  Look there­fore narrowly whence thy cooling comes.  Perhaps thy heart is too much let out upon the world in the day, and at night thy spirits are spent, when thou shouldst come before the Lord in prayer.  If thou wilt be hotter in duty thou must be colder towards the world.  A horse that carrieth a pack all day is unfit to go post at night.  Wood that hath the sap in it will not burn easily; neither will thy heart readily take fire in holy duties who comest so sopped in the world to them. Drain, therefore, thy heart of these eager affections to that, if thou meanest to have them warm and lively in this.  Now, no better way for this than to set thy soul under the frequent meditation of Christ's love to thee, thy relation to him, with the great and glorious things thou expectest from him in another world.  This, or nothing, will dry up thy love to this world, as your wood which is laid a sunning is made fit for the fire. Whereas, let your hearts continue soaking in the thoughts of an inordinate love to the world, and you will find, when you come to pray, that thy  heart will be in a duty even as a foggy wet log at the back of a fire, long in kindling, and soon out again.  Haply the deadness of thy heart in prayer ariseth from want of a deep sense of thy wants and mercies thou desirest to have supplied.  Couldst thou but pray feelingly no doubt but thou wouldst pray fervently.  The hungry man needs no help from art to learn him how to beg; his pinched bowels make him earnest and eloquent.

           Is it pardon of sin thou wouldst pray for?  First see what anguish of spirit they put thee to.  Do with thy soul as the chirurgeon with his patient’s wounds, who syringeth them with some sharp searching water to try what sense he hath of them.  Apply such con­siderations to thy soul as may make thee feel their smart, and be sensible of thy deplored estate by rea­son of them; then go and sleep at prayer if thou canst. We have David first affecting his heart, and expres­sing the dolor of his soul for his sin: ‘Mine iniquities are gone over mine head: as an heavy burden they are too heavy for me,’ Ps. 38:4.  Now when his heart is sick with these thoughts, as one with strong physic work­ing in his stomach, he pours out his soul in prayer to God, ‘All my desire is before thee; and my groaning is not hid from thee,’ ver. 9.

           Art thou to pray for others?  First pierce thy heart through with their sorrows, and, by a spirit of sympathy, bring thyself to feel their miseries as if thou wert in their case.  Then will thy heart be warm in prayer for them when it flows from a heart melted in compassion to them.  Thus we read Christ troubled himself for Lazarus before he lifted up his eyes to heaven for him, John 11:33, 38, compared.

           Again, it may be thy want of zeal proceeds from a defect in thy faith.  Faith is the back of steel to the bow of prayer; this sends the arrow with a force to heaven.  Where faith is weak the cry will not be strong.  He that goes about a business with little hope to speed will do it but faintly; he works, as we say, for a dead horse.  It is a true axiom, voluntas non fertur in impossibilia—the less we hope the less we en­deavour.  We read of strong cries that Christ put up in the days of his flesh.  Now mark what enforced his prayer—‘unto him that was able to save him;’ and not only so, but if you look into that prayer to which this refers, you shall find that he clasped about God as his God—‘My God, my God.’  His hold on God held up his spirit in prayer.  So in the several precedents of praying saints upon Scripture record, you may see how the spirit of prayer ebbed and flowed, fell and rose, as their faith was up and down.  This made David press so hard upon God in the day of his dis­tress: ‘I believed, therefore have I spoken: I was greatly afflicted,’ Ps. 116:10.  This made the woman of Canaan so invincibly importunate.  Let Christ frown and chide, deny and rebuke her, she yet makes her approaches nearer and nearer, gathering arguments from his very denials, as if a soldier should shoot his enemy’s bullets back upon him again; and Christ tells us what kept her spirit undaunted, ‘O woman, great is thy faith!’

           Again, may be it proceeds from some distaste thou hast given to the Holy Spirit, who alone can blow up thy affections; and then, no wonder thou art cold in prayer when he is gone that should keep thy heart warm at it.  What is the body without the soul but cold clay, dead earth? and what the soul without the Spirit? truly no better.  O invite him back to thy soul, or else thy praying work is at an end.  And, if thou wouldst persuade him to return, observe what was the thing that distasted him, and remove it.  That which makes this dove forsake its lockyers will hinder his return if not taken away.

Arguments to enkindle our zeal and fervency in prayer 2/2

  Argument 2.  God deserves the prime and strength of thy soul should be bestowed on him in thy prayers.

• He gave thee the powers of thy soul and all thy affections.  According to the mould so is the stat­ue that is cast in it; such thou art as thou wert in the idea of the divine mind.  Now, may not thy Maker call for that which was his gift?  He that made the stone an inanimate being, and confined the narrow souls of brutes to act upon low sensitive good, en­nobleth thee with a rational appetite and spiritual affections.  Now, wilt thou not employ those divine powers in the worship of thy God, from whom, thou hadst them?  This were hard indeed—that God should be denied what himself gave, and not suffered to taste of his own cost.  ‘I came unto my own,’ saith Christ, ‘and they would not receive me.’  Thus here, I came to my own creature; he had his life from me, and brings a dead heart unto me!  Suppose a friend should give you notice that he will ere long be at your house, and sends you in beforehand a vessel of rich wine; which you, when he comes, grudge to broach it for his entertainment, and put him off with that which is dead and flat?  Expectest thou a better friend to be thy guest than thy God?  The psalmist calls upon us to ‘serve the Lord with gladness,’ and what is his enforcement?  ‘Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us,’  100:2, 3.  Who plants a vineyard and looks not to drink  of the wine?  If God calls our corn and wine his, he therefore expects to be served with them; much more with our love and joy, for surely he allows us not to alienate the best of his gifts from him.  When thou art therefore going to pray, call up thy affections, which haply are asleep on some creature's lap, as Jonah in the sides of the ship: ‘What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God.’

           (2.) He deserves thy affections because he gives thee his.  He is jealous of thee because he is zealous for thee.  Well may he complain of thy cold dreaming prayers whose heart is on a flame of love to thee. High and admirable are the expressions with which he sets forth his dear love to his people; whatever he doth for them is with a zeal.  In protecting of them, ‘as birds flying, so will the Lord defend Jerusalem,’ that is, swiftly, as a bird flies full speed to her nest when she perceives her young is in danger; in aven­ging them of their enemies, ‘the zeal of the Lord of hosts shall perform this;’ in hearing their prayers he doth it ‘with delight;’ in forgiving their sins he is ready to forgive,’ ‘multiplies to pardon;’ when they ask one talent he gives them two.  Jacob desires a safe egress and regress.  He doth this and more than he desired, for he brings him home with two bands.  Not the least mercy he gives but he draws forth his souls and heart with it; even in his afflicting providences, where he seems to show least love, there his heart overflows with it.  ‘O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? mine heart is turned within me.’

           (3.) He is a good pay-master for his people’s zeal.  ‘He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him,’ Heb. 11:6.  Never did fervent prayer find cold welcome with him.  Elias’ {Elijah’s} prayer fetched fire from heaven because it carried fire to heaven. The tribe of Levi for their zeal were preferred to the priesthood.  And why?  Surely they who were so zealous in doing justice on their brethren would be no less zealous in making atonement for them by their sacrifices.  Most men lose their fervency and strength of their desires by misplacing them; they are zealous for such things as cannot, and persons that oft will not, pay them for their pains.  O how hot is the covet­ous man in his chase after the world's pelf!  He ‘pants after the dust of the earth,’ and that ‘on the head of the poor.’  But what reward hath he for his labour? After all his getting, like the dogs in pursuit of the hare, he misseth his game, and at last goes often poor and supperless to bed in his grave; to be sure he dies ‘a fool,’ Jer. 17:11.  How many court-spaniels—that have fawned and flattered, yea, licked up their mas­ter’s spittle, and all for some scraps of preferment —have befooled themselves, when at last they have seen their creeping sordid practices rewarded with the fatal stroke of the headsman, or a lingering consump­tive death in their prince’s favour?  Which made that ambitious cardinal say too late, If he had been as observant of his heavenly Master as he had been of his earthly, he could not have been left so miserable at last.  In a word, do we not see the superstitious person knocking his breast and cutting his own flesh, out of a zeal to his wooden god, that hath neither ear to hear nor hand to help him?  Now, doth not the liv­ing God, thy loving Father, deserve thy zeal more than their dead and dumb idols do theirs?  For shame!  Let not us be cold in his worship when the idolater sweats before his god of clouts; let not the worldling’s zeal in pursuit of his earthly mammon leave thee lagging behind with a heedless heartless serving of thy God.  Neither fear the world’s hooting at thee for thy zeal; they think thee a fool, but thou knowest them to be so.

Arguments to enkindle our zeal and fervency in prayer 1/2

           Argument 1.  Consider the excellency of zeal and fervency.  If a saint, thou hast a principle that in­clines thee to approve of things that are excellent; and such is this.  Life is the excellency of beings, yea, even in inanimate creatures there is an analogical life, and therein consists its excellency.  The spirits of wine commend it; what is it worth when dead and flat?  In the diamond, the sparkle gives the worth; in fountain water, that which makes it more excellent than other is its motion, called therefore ‘living water.’  Much more in beings that have true life; for this the flea or fly are counted nobler creatures than the sun.  The higher kind of life that beings have, their nature is thereby the more advanced—beasts above plants, men above beasts, and angels above men.  Now as life gives the excellency to being, so vivacity and vigour in operating gives excellency to life.  Indeed the nobler the life of the creature is, the greater energy is in its actings.  The apprehension of an angel is quicker, and zeal stronger, than in a man. So that, the more lively thou art in thy duty, and the more zeal thou expres­sest therein, the nearer thou comest to the nature of those glorious spirits who, for their zeal in service of God, are called ‘a flame of fire.’ 

 I confess, to be calm and cool in inferior things, and in our own matters betwixt man and man, is better than zeal.  So Solomon saith, ‘A man of understanding is of an excellent spirit,’ Prov. 17:27.  In the Hebrew it is a cool spirit.  Injuries do not put him into a flame, neither do any occurrences in the world heat him to any height of joy, grief, or anger.  Who more temperate in these than Moses? but set this holy man to pray, he is fire and tow, all life and zeal. Indeed it is one excel­lency of this fervency of spirit in prayer, that it allays all sinful passions.  David’s fervency in praying for his child when alive, made him bear the tidings of his death so calmly and patiently.  We hear not an angry word that Hannah replies to her scolding companion Peninnah.  And why, but because she had found the art of easing her troubled spirit in prayer?  What need she contend with her adversary, who could, by wrest­ling with God, persuade him to espouse her quarrel? And truly were there nothing else to commend fer­vency of spirit in prayer, this is enough—that, like David's harp, it can charm the evil spirit of our passions, which in their excess the saint counts great sins, and I am sure finds them grievous troubles. When are you more placate and serene, than when the most life and fervour your souls can mount up in the flame of your sacrifices into the bosom of God? Possibly you may come, like Moses, down the mount with greater heat, but it will be against sin, not for self; whereas a formal prayer, like a plaster, which hath good ingredients in it, yet being laid cold upon the wound, hurts it rather than heals it.

         

User Application of Fervent Prayer

           Use First.  This sadly shows there is little true praying to be found among us, because few that pray fervently.  Let us sort men into their several ranks.

1. The ignorant, do these pray fervently?  Their hearts, alas! must needs be frozen up in the duty; they dwell too far from the sun to have any of this divine heat in their devotions.
2. The profane person, that is debauched with his filthy lusts, his heat runs out another way.  Can the heart which is inflamed with lusts be any other than cold in prayer?  Hell-fire must be quenched before this from heaven can be kindled.
3. The soul under the power of roving thoughts—whose mind, like Satan, is walking to and fro the earth, while his eyes seem nailed to heaven—can he be fervent?  Can the affections be intended and the mind inattentive?  Fervency unites the soul and gathers in the thoughts to the work in hand.  It will not suffer diversions, but answers all foreign thoughts, as Nehemiah, in another case, did them that would have called him off from building, ‘I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease?’ Neh. 6:3.  It is said of Elias {Elijah}, ‘He prayed earnestly,’ he prayed in praying, so the Greek. As in Ezekiel’s vision, there was ‘a wheel in a wheel,’ so a prayer in his prayer.  Whereas the roving soul is prayerless, his lips pray and his mind plays; his eye is up to heaven, as if that were his mark, but he shoots his thoughts down to the earth.
4. He to whom the duty is tedious and weari­some, who doth not sigh and groan in the duty, but under it; who prays as a sick man works in his calling, finding no delight or joy in it.  True fervency suffers no weariness, feels no pain.  The tradesman, when hot at his work, and the soldier in fight, the one feels not his weariness nor the other his wounds.  Affec­tions are strong things, able to pull up a weak body. Therefore, he that shrugs at a duty, and turns this way and that way, as a sick man from one side of his bed to the other for ease, shows he hath little content in the duty, and therefore less zeal. These aches of the spirit in prayer—though he be a saint—come of some cold he hath gotten, and declare him to be under a great distemper.  A man in health finds not more savour in his food and refreshing from it, than the Christian doth in the offices of religion, when his heart is in the right temper.

           Use Second. For exhortation.  Dost thou pray? Pray fervently, or thou dost nothing.  Cold prayer is no more prayer than painted fire is fire.  That prayer which warms not thine own heart, will it, thinkest thou, move God’s?  Thou drawest the tap, but the vessel is frozen.  A man hath not the use of his hand clung up with cold, neither canst thou have the use of thy spirit in duty till thy heart chafed into some sense and feeling of what thou prayest for.  Now to bring thy cold heart into some spiritual heat,

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2.He is the living God.  Is a dead‑hearted prayer a sacrifice suitable to a living God?  How can that be accepted of him which never came from him?  Lay not your dead prayers by his side.  The lively prayer is his, the dead thine own.  What the psalmist saith of persons, we may say of prayers, The living, the living they shall praise him.’  The glorious angels, who for their zeal are called seraphims, and a flame of fire, these he chooseth to minister to him in heaven; and the saints below—who, though they sojourn on earth, yet have their extraction from heaven, and so have spirits raised and refined from the dulness of their earthly constitution—these he sets apart for himself as priests to offer up spiritual sacrifices unto him. The quicker any one is himself, the more offensive is a dull leaden heeled messenger or slow‑handed work­man to him.  How then can God, who is all life, brook thy lazy listless devotions?  When he com­manded the neck of an ass to be broke, and not offered up unto him, was it because he was angry with the beast?  No sure, it was his own workmanship; no other than himself made it; but to teach us how unpleasant a dull heart is to him in his service.          

3. He is a loving God, and love will be paid in no coin but its own.  Give God love for love, or he ac­counts you give him nothing.  ‘If ye love me, keep my commandments,’ John 14:15.  And, ‘If a man would give the substance of his house for love, it would be contemned,’ Song 8:7.  So, if a man thinks to commute with God, and give him anything in prayer instead of his love and fervent affection, it will be contemned. Let the prayer be never so pithy, the posture of the body never so devout, the voice never so loud, if the affections of the heart be not drawn out after God in the duty, he disdains and rejects it, because it doth not correspond with the dear affections which God expresseth to us.  He draws out the heart with his purse, and gives his very soul and self with all his gifts to his people.  Therefore he expects our hearts should come with all our services to him.  It is no wonder to see the servant, whose master is hard and cruel, have no heart to or mettle in his work; but love in the master useth to put life into the servant. And there­fore God, who is incomparably the best master, dis­dains to be served as none but the worst among men use to be.

           Answer Third.  We must pray in the spirit, be­cause the promise is only to fervent prayer.  A still-born child is no heir, neither is a prayer that wants life heir to any promise.  Fervency is to prayer what fire was to the spices in the censer—without this it cannot ascend as incense before God.  Some have attempted a shorter cut to the Indies by the north, but were ever frozen up in their way; and so will all sluggish prayers be served.  It were an easy voyage indeed to heaven if such prayers might find the way thither.  But never could they show any of that good land's gold who prayed thus, though he were a saint. The righteous man indeed is declared heir, as to all other promises, so to this of having his prayer heard; but if he hath not aptitudinem intrandi—he is not in a fit posture to enter into the possession of this promise, or claim present benefit from it, while his heart remains cold and formal in the duty.  There is a qualification to the act of prayer as necessary as of the person praying: ‘The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.’  When God intends a mercy for his people, he stirs up a spirit of prayer in them: ‘I said not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain,’ Isa. 45:19; that is, I never stirred them up to it, and helped them in it, and then let them lose their labour.  ‘Then ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you: and ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart,’ Jer. 29:12, 13.  Feeble desires, like weak pangs, go over, and bring not a mercy to the birth.  As the full time grows nearer, so the spirit of prayer grows stronger. ‘Shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, I tell you that he will avenge them speedily,’ Luke 18:7, 8.  None in the house per­haps will stir for a little knock at the door; they think he is some idle beggar, or one in no great haste; but if he raps thick and loud, then they go, yea, out of their beds.  ‘Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity,’ Luke 11:8.

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           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.

To pray in the spirit, we must have fervency

 

           Second.  We pray in the spirit when we pray in fervency.  The soul keeps the body warm while it is in it.  So much as there is our soul and spirit in a duty, so much heat and fervency.  If the prayer be cold, we may certainly conclude the heart is idle, and bears no part in the duty.  Our spirit is an active creature: what it doth is with a force, whether bad or good.  Hence in Scripture, to set the heart and soul upon a thing, im­ports vehemency and fervour.  Thus the poor labour­ing man is said to ‘set his heart on his wages,’ Deut. 24:15.  The hopes of what he shall have at night makes him sweat at his work in the day.  Darius ‘set his heart on Daniel to deliver him;’ and it follows, ‘He laboured till the going down of the sun to deliver him,’ Dan. 6:14.  When the spirit of a man is set about a work, he will do it to purpose.  ‘If thou shalt seek the Lord with all thy heart and with all thy soul,’ Deut. 4:29, that is, fervently.  This consists not in a violent agitation of the bodily spirits.  A man may put his body into a sweat in duty, and the prayer be cold. That is the fervent prayer that flows from a warm heart and enkindled affections; like an exhalation which first is set on fire in the cloud, and then breaks forth into thunder.  ‘My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned: then spake I with my tongue, Lord, make me to know mine end,’ Ps. 39:3, 4.  Now as zeal is not one single affection, but the edge and vehemency of them all; so fervency in prayer is, when all the affections act strongly and suit­ably to the several parts of prayer.

           In confession, then have we fervency, when the soul melts into a holy shame and sorrow for the sins he spreads before the Lord, so that he feels a holy smart and pain within, and doth not act a tragical part with a comical heart.  For, as Chrysostom saith, ‘To paint tears is worse than to paint the face.’  Here is true fervency: ‘I mourn in my complaint, and make a noise,’ Ps. 55:2.  There may be fire in the pan, when none in the piece; a loud wind, but no rain with it. David made a noise with his voice, and mourned in his spirit.

           So, in petition we have fervency, when the heart is drawn out with vehement desires of the grace it prays for, not some lazy woundings or wishings, or weak velleities, but passionate breathings and break­ings of heart.  Sometimes it is set out by the violence of thirst, which is thought more tormenting than that of hunger.  As the hunted hart panteth after the cool waters, so did David’s soul after God, Ps. 42.  Some­times it is set out by the strainings of a wrestler—so Jacob is said to wrestle with the angel; and of those that run in a race, ‘instantly serving God day and night,’ Acts 26:7, ¦< ¦6J,<,\‘—they stretched out themselves.  ‘My soul breaketh for longing,’ Ps. 119:20, as one that with straining breaks a vein.

APPLICATION of The Inward Principle Of Prayer

           Use First.  How few then pray in the spirit! Were this the only character to try many by, would they not be cast over the bar for mere babblers?  As, first, those in the Popish church, where most know not a word what they say in prayer.  If it be such a weakness to subscribe a petition to a king, or to a parliament, which we never read or understood, what shall we then think of such brutish prayers as these sent to heaven and indorsed with an ignoramus on the back of them?  Yea, amongst ourselves, many, who though they pray in their mother language, yet are as ignorant as to the matter of their prayers; how else could they patter over the creed and commandments with their blind devotion instead of prayers?  Are there more deplored ruins of mankind to be found among the Indians than such?  Yea, when they join with their minister in prayer, neither know that God to whom the prayer is directed, nor the Mediator under the favour of whose name it is presented.  Before Nebu­chadnezzar could bless God, he had the under­standing of a man given him, which these yet want. Do you not think such ignorant wretches as these might be easily persuaded to kneel before an image gaudily dressed up, or to put their letter into some angel or saint's hand for despatch, being made to believe that it will find a kinder welcome by the mediation of such favourites?  O what a darkness is there even at this day upon the face of our waters! on which, had but the pope’s instruments opportunity to sit brooding awhile, they might soon bring their de­sired work to a perfection among the multitude of ignorant souls that are amidst us!  We see there is need not only to stir up our people to pray, or else we send them before they have learned their errand, as if we should call a child to read before he hath learned his letters.

           Use Second.  It speaks to all that are at any time the mouth to God for others in prayer, so to pray, that those who join with them may clearly understand what they put up to God for them.  Who is more to be blamed—he that prayeth in an unknown tongue, or he that with such uncouth phrases and high-flown expressions as are not understood by half the com­pany?  Suppose thine own spirit prays, as the apostle saith, yet thy understanding is unfruitful unto them. They, alas! are at a loss, and stand gazing, as the dis­ciples did when the cloud parted Christ from them. Either come down from thy high towering expres­sions, or help them up to thee.  They may say of thee as those of Moses, ‘We know not what is become of the man.’  No wonder if, while they cannot keep sight of the matter in hand, that their thoughts rove and dance about some object of their own framing.  Dost thou pray to be admired for thy rouling tongue, height of gifts, or the like?  Perhaps thou mayest have this thy reward of some ignorant ones, and others that would as fain commend themselves upon the same account; but consider what a low and base end thou propoundest in so high a service, unworthy of a Chris­tian’s thought.  What! no net to fish with for thy credit and applause but a sacred ordinance!  The whip which Christ made in the gospel belongs to thy back.  Our blessed Saviour, that was all on fire with zeal to see his house of prayer made a house of merchandise, O how doth his soul loathe the base­ness of thy mercenary spirit, who dost the same, though in another dress!