pendeth; and to live as we shall wish at last that we had lived. Let our daily sins be daily and unfeignedly repented of; and be daily pardoned through Jesus Christ: and let us live in the belief of his mediation, according to our continual necessities. Let thy exceeding love and pardoning mercy teach us to love our neighbours as ourselves and to love our enemies, and to pardon wrongs, and to do good to all according to our power. Strengthen us in our warfare against the flesh, the world, and the devil, that we may not only resist, but overcome. Keep us from the baits and snares of sin; and let us not thrust ourselves into temptations. Save us from ignorance and unbelief, from ungodliness and hypocrisy, from pride, and worldliness, and slothfulness, and all sinful pleasing of the flesh. Cause us to worship thee in holiness, and reverently to use thy dreadful name, and to remember the keeping holy of thy day. Keep us from sinful disobeying our superiors; and all unfaithful neglecting our inferiors; and from injuring any in thought, word, or deed. Keep us from sinful wrath and passions: from all unchastity in thoughts, desires, words, or actions. Keep us from stealing and defrauding others, from lying, slandering, and backbiting; and mortify that selfishness, which would set us against our neighbour's welfare: keep us from the judgments which we deserve: and let all afflictions work together for our good. O help us to spend this transitory life in a faithful preparation for our death, and let our hearts and conversation be in heaven; and forsake us not in the time of our extremity; and take our departing souls to Christ.

Add in the Morning.

Protect, direct, and bless us this day, in all our lawful ways and labours, that in the evening we may return thee joyful thanks, through Jesus Christ, our only Saviour: in whose words we sum up all our prayers: Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

Add in the Evening.

Preserve us this night, and give us such rest of body and mind, as may fit us for the labours of the following day, for the

sake of Jesus Christ, our Saviour: in whose words we sum up our requests: Our Father which art in heaven, &c.

Another Prayer for Families: For Evening, or Morning.

O ETERNAL God, infinitely great, and wise, and good, our reconciled, merciful Father in Christ; reject not us vile and miserable sinners, who, constrained by our necessities, and invited by thy goodness, cast down ourselves in the humble confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgment of thy manifold mercies, and earnestly beg thy further grace.

We were born with corrupted, sinful natures, which from our childhood we increased by actual sin. And though thy great mercy had given us a sufficient Saviour and a covenant of grace, and betime engaged us to thee in that covenant by our baptismal vow, and gave us the great mercy of the Gospel, and christian education, yet did we sinfully forget our Creator, unthankfully neglect our Redeemer, and rebelliously resist the Holy Ghost. How blindly, how wilfully, and how long did we follow our fleshly minds and lusts, and loved pleasure more than God, and lived brutishly by sense and appetite, and minded little but the vanities of this world! Yet all this while didst thou preserve our lives, and supply our wants, and save us from many a danger and calamity, when thy justice might have cut us off in our sins, and sent us to hell as we deserved. But we abused thy patience, and all thy mercies, and wasted our precious time in sin, and refused or delayed to repent, and hearkened not to the voice of thy Spirit and word, thy ministers or our consciences, but hardened our hearts against them all. We knew that we must die, but we prepared not for it, nor seriously thought of the life that followeth. We did not, by a changed heart and life, prepare for the great change which death will make, nor consider, that except we are born again of the Spirit, we cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. We were never sure one day, or night, or hour, to see one another, and we knew our time could not be long, and we were oft told, that as we lived here, we must speed in heaven or hell for ever: and yet, alas! how senselessly have we heard and known all this! And how little care have we taken for our souls, that they might be saved from sin and hell, and live with Christ in the heavenly glory, in comparison of the care that we have taken for our bodies, which we know must turn shortly to dust. Alas! pride and folly, and the vanities of this world, and examples of sinners, and the

sloth, and appetite, and lusts of our own flesh, have deceived us, and turned away our hearts from thee. And while we quieted our conscience with the name of Christianity, and a dead and outside show of worship, we were strangers to a holy and heavenly heart and life, and drew near thee with our lips, while our hearts were far from thee, And those of us, whom thy grace hath turned from this sin and vanity to thyself, did too long stand out and delay our conversion, and resist thy Spirit. And since we have served thee, alas! how poorly, how coldly, how unconstantly, with what wavering and divided hearts, as if we were loth to leave the world and sin. And by how many failings have we quenched thy Spirit, and wronged thy glory, and our brethren's souls, and hindered our own comfort and increase of grace! We have too little differed in heart and life from the ungodly, and from our former state of sin, and no wonder if our faith, hope, and love be weak, and if we have little of the joys of thy love and our salvation.

But, O thou, the merciful Father of Spirits, have mercy upon us; forgive our great and manifold sins! Wo to us that ever we were born, if thou deal with us as we deserve. How quickly then shall we be in hell, past all remedy, in endless pain and desperation? Where we shall have time to lament that sin in vain, which we would not forsake in the day of our visitation. But we appeal from the justice of thy law of innocency, to the blood and merits of Jesus our Redeemer, and to thy law and covenant of grace, which for his propitiation freely pardoneth all penitent, true believers. We are sinners, but he is righteous, and hath satisfied for our sins: we are worthy of misery; but he is worthy for whom thy mercy should forgive our sin! Oh! wash us in his blood; justify, adopt, and accept us in him. O take possession of our souls by that Spirit which is the advocate and witness of Christ, and which may dwell in us as a principle of spiritual life, and may form us fully to thy will and image, and overcome in us the flesh, the world, and the devil, and be our seal, and pledge, and earnest, and first fruits of everlasting life, Let his quickening virtue heal our deadness, and make us lively and strong for thee. Let his illuminating virtue heal our ignorance, error, and unbelief, and fill our minds with faith and wisdom. Let his converting, sanctifying virtue kill in us the love of the pleasures, honours, and riches of this world, and give us a settled hatred of all sin, and fill our hearts with a fervent love to thee, thy word, thy ways, and servants, and to all men in

their several capacities; and cause us to delight our souls in thee. Leave us not to serve thee outwardly and unwillingly from fear alone but make thy love and service to be our food and our feast, our business and our recreation. O make thy ways so pleasant to us, that we may have no need to beg pleasure at the devil's door, nor to steal the forbidden pleasures of sin. Let the thoughts of thy precious love in Christ, of our pardon and peace with thee, and of the heavenly endless joys with Christ which thou hast promised us, be the readiest and sweetest thoughts of our minds; and a daily cordial at our hearts, to rejoice them under all the crosses and vexations of this world, and the pains of our flesh, and the fore-sight of death, and to comfort us at a dying hour. O cause us all the days of our lives to comfort ourselves and one another with these words, "That we shall for ever be with our glorified Lord, more than with the possession or hopes of life, or health, or wealth, or any thing which earth affordeth. Teach us to redeem our short and precious time, and to cast away no part of it on vanity; but to lay up our treasure in heaven, and first to seek thy kingdom and its righteousness, and to give all diligence to make our calling and election sure, and to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, remembering that we must be adjudged according to our works. Teach us to worship thee spiritually and acceptably through Christ: to reverence thy name, and word, and ordinances, and to sanctify thy holy day: to honour our superiors, and behave ourselves aright to our equals and inferiors: to wrong none in their bodies, chastity, estates, or names; but to do as we would be done by to love our neighbours as ourselves; to love and forgive our enemies, and those that do us wrong. Cause us to hate and overcome our selfishness, pride, sensuality, worldliness, hypocrisy, and all our fleshly lusts, which fight against the spirit, and are odious in thy sight. Help us to govern our thoughts, affections, senses, appetites, words, and actions, by thy word and Spirit; to labour faithfully in our callings, to fly from idleness, and yet to be contented with our daily bread. Prepare us for all sufferings, with faith, hope, and patience. Cause us to overcome in all temptations, and to persevere unto the end; that having lived soberly, righteously, and godly in this world, we may joyfully receive the sentence of death; and that that may be the day of our entrance into the heavenly joys, which is the terror of the wicked, and the beginning of their endless misery.

O send the word of life to the dark and miserable nations of the earth; call the kingdoms of heathens and infidels to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ; let every knee bow to him, and every tongue confess him to thy glory. Subdue the proud and rebellious tyrants of the earth, who keep out the Gospel, and keep up wickedness; and set up their interest against the kingdom and interest of Christ. Deliver the churches from all their oppressors and deceivers; and reform them to such wisdom, holiness, and concord, that their light may shine to Mahometans and other infidels, and do more to win them to Christ, than the scandal of their ignorance, wickedness, and divisions, hath done to hinder the world's conversion and salvation. O show to partial, blind, uncharitable, and contentious Christians, the true way of peace, in returning to the ancient simplicity and purity of doctrine, worship, discipline, and conversation. Save all the churches from their sins and enemies. Bless these kingdoms, and never take thy Gospel from us! Bless the King, with all his nobles, judges, and magistrates; that they may rule as being ruled by thy laws and Spirit, promoting knowledge, holiness, and peace; and suppressing deceivers, ungodliness, and injustice, that we may live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. Be merciful to all christian congregations, and give them able, holy, and laborious pastors, who will guide the flocks in the way of life with the wisdom from above, which is first pure, and then peaceable and gentle; even by sound doctrine, and holy living, and by love and concord among themselves, according to the blessed example of our Lord. Be merciful to the afflicted, by sickness, pains, wants, dangers, or distress of soul: bless their sufferings to their sanctification and salvation, and relieve them in the time and way as is most for thy glory and their good. Save the prosperous from the temptations of prosperity. Be merciful to this family, and let there be no ignorant, ungodly, fleshly, worldly persons in it; that shall serve the flesh and the devil, instead of serving thee, and sell their souls for the pleasures of sin. Keep us all in holiness, love, and peace, and in our duties to one another; and let thy blessing be on all our souls and bodies, and on our labours and affairs; and let not thy judgments seize upon us.

Add this at Night.

We thank thee for all the mercies of our lives to soul and body, and particularly for preserving us this day. We have had