and then pour out your hearts before him. Confide in him as a most faithful and powerful friend, and then you will open your hearts to him.

2. For the way of offering up prayer; it is a great art, a main part of the secret of religion to be skilled in it, and of great concern for the comfort and success of it. Much is here to be considered, but for the present take these advices briefly. 1. Offer not to speak to him without the heart in some measure seasoned and prepossessed with the sense of his greatness and holiness. And there is much in this; considering wisely to whom we speak, the king, the Lord of glory, and setting the soul before him, in his presence; and then reflecting on ourselves, and seeing what we are, how wretched, and base, and filthy, and unworthy of such access to such a great majesty. The want of this preparing of the heart to speak in the Lord's ear, by the consideration of God and ourselves, is that which fills the exercise of prayer with much guiltiness; makes the heart careless, and slight, and irreverent, and so displeases the Lord, and disappoints ourselves of that comfort in prayer, and answers of it, that otherwise we would have more experience of. We rush in before him with any thing, provided we can tumble out a few words; and do not weigh these things, and compose our hearts with serious thoughts and conceptions of God. The soul that studies and endeavours this most, hath much to do to attain to any right apprehensions of him; for how little know we of him? yet should we at least, set ourselves before him as the purest and greatest Spirit; a being infinitely more excellent than our minds or any creature can conceive. This would fill the soul with awe and reverence, and balast it, so as to make it go more even through the exercise; to consider the Lord, as that prophet saw him, sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing by him, on his right hand, and on his left, and thyself a defiled sinner coming before him, as a vile frog creeping out of some pool: how would this fill thee with holy fear? Oh! a1 Kings xxii. 19. Velut e palude suâ vilis ranuncula, BERN.

his greatness and our baseness, and Oh! the distance. This is Solomon's advice, Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thy heart be hasty to utter any thing before God, for God is in heaven and thou upon earth, therefore let thy words be few. This would keep us from our ordinary babblings, that heart nonsense, which, though the words be sense, yet through the inattention of the heart, are but as impertinent confused dreams in the Lord's ears, as there follows, ver. 3.

2. When thou addressest thyself to prayer, desire and depend upon the assistance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God; without which thou art not able truly to pray. It is a supernatural work, and therefore the principle of it must be supernatural. He that hath nothing of the Spirit of God cannot pray at all. He may howl as a beast in his necessity or distress; or may speak words of prayer, as some birds learn the language of men; but pray he cannot. And they that have that spirit ought to seek the movings and actual workings of it in them in prayer; the particular help of their infirmities, teaching both what to ask, a thing, that of ourselves we know not, and then enabling them to ask; breathing forth their desires in such sighs and groans, as are the breath not simply of their own, but of God's Spirit.

3. As these two precautions are to be taken before prayer, so in the exercise of it you should learn to keep a watchful eye over your own hearts throughout for every step of the way, that they start not out; by the keeping up of a continued remembrance of that presence of God, which in the entry of the work, is to be set before the eye of the soul. And our endeavour ought to be, to fix it upon that view, that it turn not aside nor downwards, but from beginning to end keep sight of him, who sees and marks whether we do so or no. They that are most inspective, and watchful in this, will still be faulty in it; but certainly the less watchful the more faulty and this we ought to do, to be aspiring daily to more stability of mind in prayer, and driving

c Eccl. v. 2.

d Heb. iv. 15.

out somewhat of that roving and wandering, that is 90 universal an evil; and certainly so grievous, not to those that have it most, but that observe and discover it most, and endeavour most against it. A strange thing! that the mind, even the renewed mind, should' be so ready, not only at other times, but in the exercise of prayer, wherein we peculiarly come so near to God, yet even then to slip out and leave him, and follow some poor vanity or other instead of him. Surely the godly man when he thinks on this, is exceedingly ashamed of himself, cannot tell what to think of it; God his exceeding joy, whom in his right thoughts he esteems so much above the world, and all things in it, yet to use him thus, when he is speaking to him; to break off from that, and hold discourse, or change a word with some base thought that steps in, and whispers to him; or at the best not to be stedfastly minding the Lord to whom he speaks, and possest with the regard of his presence, and of his business and errand with him.

This is no small piece of our misery here; these wandrings are evidence to us that we are not at home; but though we should be humbled for this, and still labouring against it, yet should we not be so discouraged, as to be driven from the work. Satan would desire no better than that; it were to help him to his wish; and sometimes a christian may be driven to think, What! shall I do still thus, abusing my Lord's name, and the privilege he hath given me? I had better leave off. No, not so by any means; strive against the miserable evil in thee, but cast not away thy happiness. Be doing still. It is a froward childish humour, when any thing agrees not to our mind, to throw all away. Thou mayest come off as Jacob, with halting from thy wrestlings, and yet obtain the blessing for which thou wrestled.

4. Those graces, which are the due qualities of the heart, disposing it for prayer in the exercise of it, should be excited and acted; as holiness, the love of it, the desire of increase and growth of it; so the

e Gen. xxxii. 24, &c.

humbling and melting of the heart, and chiefly faith, which is mainly set on work in prayer, to draw forth the sweetnesses and virtues of the promises, to desire earnestly their performance to the soul, and to believe that they shall be performed; to have before our eyes his goodness and faithfulness, who hath promised, and to rest upon that. And for success in prayer, exercising faith in it, it is altogether necessary to interpose the Mediator, and look through him, and to speak and petition by him; who warns us of this, that there is no other way to speed, No man cometh to the Father but by me. As the Jews when they prayed looked toward the temple, where was the mercy-seat, and the peculiar presence of God [Schechinah;] thus ought we in all our praying to look on Christ, who is our propitiatory, and in whom the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily. The forgetting of this may be the cause of our many disappoint

ments.

5. Fervency; not to seek coldly, that presages refusal. There must be fire in the sacrifice, otherwise it ascends not. There is no sacrifice without incense, and no incense without fire. Our remiss dead hearts are not likely to do much for the church of God, nor for ourselves. Where are those strong cries that should pierce the heavens? His ear is open to their cry. He hears the faintest coldest prayer, but not with that delight and propenseness to grant it, his ear is not on it, as the word here is"; he takes no pleasure in hearing it, but cries, heart-cries. Oh! those take his ear, and move his bowels; for these are the voice, the cries of his own children. A strange word of encouragement to importunity, Give him no rest', suffer him not to be in quiet, till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth. A few such suitors in these times were worth thousands such as we are. Our prayers stick in our breasts, scarce come forth, much less do they go up and ascend with that piercing force, that would open up the way for deliverances to come down.

f

↑ John xiv. 6. VOL. I.

* Col. ii. 9.

h Psm.lv. 17. i Isa. lxii. 7. K k

But in this must be some difference of temporal and spiritual things. The prayer in the right strain cannot be too fervent in any thing, but the desire of the thing in temporals may be too earnest. A feverish distempered heat diseases the soul, therefore, in these things, a holy indifferency concerning the particular, may, and should be joined with the fervency of prayer. But in spiritual things, there is no danger in vehemency of desire; covet these, hunger and thirst for them, be incessantly ardent in the suit; yet even in those in some particulars, as for the degree and measure of grace, and some peculiar furtherances, they should be presented so with earnestness, as that withal it be with a reference and resignation of it to the wisdom and love of our Father.

2. For the other point, the answer of our prayers, which is in this openness of the ear, it is a thing very needful to be considered and attended to; if we think that prayer is indeed a is indeed a thing that God takes notice of, and hath regard to in his dealing with his children, it is certainly a point of duty and wisdom in them to observe how he takes notice of it, and bends his ear to it, and puts his hand to help, and so answers it. This both furnishes matter of praise, and stirs up the heart to render it. Therefore in the

Psalms, the hearing of prayer is so often observed and recorded, and made a part of the song of praise. And withal it endears both God and prayer unto the soul, as we have both together, I love the Lord because he hath heard my voice and my supplications; the transposition in the original is pathetical, I love, because the Lord hath heard my voice. I am in love, and particularly this causes it, I have found so much kindness in the Lord, I cannot but love, He hath heard my voice. And then it wins his esteem and affection to prayer, seeing I find this virtue in it, we shall never part again; I will call upon him as long as I live. Seein g prayer draweth help and favours from heaven,

k Psalm cxvi. 1.