[Three preparatory directions.]

First. Examine thy soul, what end thou propoundest to thyself in the intended service of extraordinary prayer. None but a child or a fool will run before he knows what is his errand. The end is that which a wise man looks to before he sets his hand to any work, and the more weighty the enterprise is the more necessary this is.

1. Consider, if the end thou propoundest be evil, the duty cannot be good, because thy heart is not sincere in it. The sincerity of the heart discovers itself in the mark it sets up and end it aims at in a duty, not in the external performance of it. The thief and the honest traveller may be found riding in the same road, but they have different aims therein, and this distinguisheth them. Thus the saint and hypocrite join in the same duty, shoot as it were the same bow, but their eye takes not the same aim, and therefore the arrows meet not in the same butt. The prayers of one are rejected as abominable, and the other graciously accepted. Who more seemingly devout than the captive Jews that kept up a fast for seventy years together? yet God gives them but little thanks for their pains, because their end was not right: ‘When ye fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh month, even those seventy years, did ye at all fast unto me, even to me?’ Zech. 7:5. The faster a man gallops, if he be out of his way, it is the worse. Zeal is the best or worst thing in a duty. If the end be right, O it is excellent! but if wrong, stark naught. And it is no easy thing to propound a right end. The eye must be set right in the head before it can look right. If the piece be wrong made it will never carry the bullet straight to the mark. A false heart—and every carnal heart is such—cannot have a true end.

2. Consider that your endeavour in the duty will bear proportion, and be commensurate, to the end you propound therein. If your end be low, your endeavour will be no more than to reach that end; as he that intends to build a little cottage contents himself with ordinary stuff, clay and thatch; but he that designs some stately palace provides more precious materials. Thus David was very curious in the materials he laid aside for the temple: ‘For the palace,’ saith he, ‘is not for man, but for the Lord God.’ Therefore he ‘prepared with all his might gold and silver,’ &c., I Chr. 29:1-3. The hypocrite’s ends in a fast are low and base—his credit with men, carnal profit, and the like. Accordingly, his endeavour is laid out on the external duty—a demure countenance, devout posture, and such expressions in prayer as may most take with those that hear him, and this is all he looks at. But the gracious soul saith with David, This palace I build, this duty I perform, ‘is not for man, but for the Lord God,’ and therefore his chief care is to provide more precious materials—a broken heart for sin in his confessions, faith and fervency in his petitions, love and thankfulness in his acknowledgments of mercies received.

Question. But when is an evil end propounded in this duty?

Answer. The end we propound may be evil, either intrinsically, when the thing we aim at is evil in its own nature, or else from some irregularity in placing it too high or low in our aim.

(1.) The ends that are intrinsically evil. To name two,

(a) When a person or a people shall fast and pray to cover and more sleightily carry on any wicked enterprise. This is a horrid evil, a monstrous abomination. What is this but to hang out the sign of an angel at the door, that they may play the devil within the less suspected? Yet, such deep hypocrisy hath the heart of man discovered, that it dare come and lay its cockatrice egg under the very wing of God, and make use of this solemn ordinance as an expedient to hatch their wicked designs. The fox, they say, when hard put to it, will, to save himself, fall in among the dogs, and hunt among them as one of their company. Thus the hypocrite, the better to conceal his wicked projects, will run among the saints, and make as loud a cry in this duty and others as the best of them all. It is the devil’s old trick, and he hath learned it his instruments, to wrap up wicked plots in the gilded covers of God’s ordinances. What plotting and counterplotting was there between Shechem the son of Hamor and Simeon and Levi? and the expedient both used to accomplish their designs was an ordinance of God. The one hopes by submitting to it to hook into his hands the whole estate of Jacob’s family —‘shall not their substance be ours?’ and the other persuades them to it that when they were sore they might butcher them without resistance. Absalom, that he might better play the traitor against his father, begs leave to pay his vow at Hebron. Jezebel sets her trap for Naboth, and that he may the more surely fall into her clutches, she croucheth and humbleth herself even before God in a fast. And the demure Pharisee, who bragged so much of his fasting, our Saviour was bold to tell him it was to ‘devour the widows’ houses.’ But, as the father hath it, manducant in terris quod apud inferos digerunt—they devour on earth those morsels that will lie heavy on their stomachs in hell to be digesting to eternity. Thus the hypocrite, like antichrist, sits in the temple of God, and there commits his execrable abominations, turning a house of prayer into a den of thieves. O tremble at this great wickedness! It gives a crimson tincture to a sin when it is committed under the disguise of religion.

(b) When a person thinks by fasting and prayer to satisfy God for his sin, or merit any favour at the hands of God. This is wicked and abominable, and as contrary to the nature of prayer as buying is to begging. ‘The poor,’ saith Solomon, ‘useth entreaties,’ Prov. 18:23. ‘Whom, though I were righteous, yet would I not answer, but I would make supplication to my judge,’ Job 9:15. We cannot have the benefit of the throne of grace till we quit our legal plea. Christ indeed pleads as righteous, and therefore desires what he asks for us as just, because he hath paid for it; but we pray as sinners, and therefore crave all as mercy, yea, though we plead Christ’s merit, because he is the greatest and freest gift of all other. Yet, such is the pride of man’s heart, that he had rather play the merchant, and truck his duties for God’s blessings, than be thought to receive them gratis. This was the temper of the carnal Jews. They thought to pacify God for their sin, as Jacob his angry brother, with the droves and flocks of duties which they presented him with, and thought their services undervalued when they were not accepted for good payment. Hence their bold expostulating the case with the Lord, ‘Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge?’ Isa. 58:3. Such a high opinion they had of themselves. O take heed of this: pride turns an ordinance into an idol. God accepts our fasts and prayers when used for humiliation, but abhors them when we bring them for our justification. The Pharisee lost himself by his proud brags how oft he fasted, while the poor publican got the prize by a humble confession of his sin, Luke 18. He that thinks to wash his face with puddle water, instead of making it clean will leave it fouler. Truly our best tears are not over clean, and can they make us clean that need themselves to be washed? Holy Job durst not rely on his purity: ‘If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean, yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me. For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come together in judgment,’ Job 9:30-32.

(2.) The end may be, though not intrinsically evil, yet evil from some irregularity in misplacing it; as when we make that our ultimate end which should only be our subordinate end in the duty. That which would be lawful standing in its proper place, becomes sinful when the ultimate end is crowded down to make room for that. The glory of God is to be the ultimate end, not only in every duty of worship, but in all our common actions also, even to eating and drinking. Those low actions are to be elevated to this high end, I Cor. 10:31. And good reason he should be our utmost end from whom we received our beginning. All things are of him, and therefore fit they should be to him. The river-water empties itself into the bosom of the sea from whence it flows. Now, if we are to have so high an end in our lowest actions, then surely in our highest; and such are acts of worship, in which we have immediately to do with God, and are thence called priests, ‘to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ,’ I Peter 2:5. There is indeed another end also for which ordinances are appointed, viz. to conduit-pipes for conveying all kind of blessings from God unto us; but this is an inferior end, and to be subordinated to the former, or else we make the glory of God an underling to our particular good, which God will not endure. Possibly we are in some great affliction. This sets us to prayer for deliverance. Thus far we keep our way. But then we turn aside when our deliverance is more regarded by us than his glory. This is to set the subject in his prince’s chair; uti Deo ut fruamur mundo—to make use of God that we may enjoy the creature. Beware of this. Whatever we prefer in our desires above the glory of God is an idol-worship by us. The heart can engrave as well as the hand, and an idol in the heart is as bad as one set up in the house.

Question. But how may I find whether the glory of God, or the particular good thing I pray for, be that which I make my chief end in duty?

Answer. It may be discovered two ways: (a) By thy carriage in prayer. (b) By thy carriage after prayer.

(a) By the carriage of thy heart in prayer. If the glory of God be chiefly aimed at by thee, this will give a tincture to the whole duty, and be influential into every part of it; thou wilt suit thy requests to this end. For, as there is a secret force from the arm that draws the bow impressed on the arrow which carries it to the mark aimed at by the shooter, so there is a secret power which carries the soul out in duty to act suitably to the end he chiefly propounds and desires to obtain; for no man would willingly obstruct and hinder what above all he wisheth for. We will suppose pardon of sin is the mercy thou prayest for. Now if thou desirest sincerely the glory of God as well as this mercy, yea, above it, this will direct thee in thy confession of sin to afflict thy soul more for the dishonour thou hast by it reflected on God than the wrath thou hast incurred thyself. So in thy petition, thou darest not beg thy pardon on terms that were dishonourable for God to give it on, but will desire the mercy in such a way as his glory may be both secured and advanced. Now God cannot pardon the sin of an impenitent wretch that holds still the love and liking of his lust without infinite wrong to his glorious name. And therefore, if his glory be so high in thy eye as thou sayest, thou wilt cry as earnestly for his sanctifying grace as for pardoning mercy, and not merely because thou canst not have pardon without it—as a sick man desires a bitter potion to save his life, not that he loves it—but because by it thou shalt be fitted to glorify him.

(b) It may be discovered by thy carriage after duty, and that in two particulars: when the thing prayed for is obtained, and also when denied.

When the mercy prayed for is obtained. If thou didst chiefly aim at the glory of God in begging it, thy chief care will be to lay it out for his glory now thou hast it; whereas he that aimed at himself in praying for it, will as little regard God in the using of it as he did in begging it. It is natural for things to resolve into their principles. The child that Hannah obtained of God she dedicates unto the Lord—and why? but because this was her end in praying for him, I Sam. 1:11 compared with ver. 28. When David’s prayer is heard, and he delivered, mark what his resolve from this is, ‘I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living,’ Ps. 116:9. And again, ‘O Lord, truly I am thy servant,…thou hast loosed my bonds,’ ver. 16. He returns the mercy to God by improving it for him in a holy life. How can we think he aimed at the glory of God in praying for health that runs away from God as soon as he is set upon his legs? or, in praying for wealth, that lays it out upon his lusts?

Again, when the thing prayed for is denied. He that aims sincerely at God’s glory in prayer for a mercy—I speak now of such mercies as are but conditionally promised—he will cheerfully submit to the will of God in a denial thereof, because God can in such petitions glorify himself by denying as well as granting them. David prayed and fasted for the life of his sick child. It dies notwithstanding. Now, does this denial make him fall out with God? is he clamorous and discontent? No, it raiseth no storm in his heart or lowering weather in his countenance to hinder him in the service of God. He washeth his tears from his blubbered cheeks, changes his apparel, and goes cheerfully into the house of God and worshippeth, II Sam. 12:20, so powerfully did the will of God determine his will. Thus, as the heavenly bodies are by the primum mobile carried contrary to their particular inclination, so grace in a saint overrules his natural affection, and carries him into a compliance with the will of God when it crosseth his own. Our blessed Saviour had natural affections, which made him pray the bitter cup of his passion might, if possible, pass from him; yet not so but he was willing to take a denial, and therefore desires his Father to glorify himself, though it were by taking away his life, John 12:27, 28.

Second. The second thing thou art to do, having fixed thy end right, is to make a private search into thy heart and life, whereby thou mayest be enabled more fully and feelingly to lay open thy condition before the Lord. Now there are three heads of inquiry thou art to go upon: 1. For the sins thou hast committed. 2. For the mercies thou hast received. 3. For the wants thou liest under.

[Three heads of inquiry in searching into our heart and life.]

1. For the sins thou hast committed. The great business of a fast lies in the practice of repentance, and this cannot be done without a narrow scrutiny of the heart: ‘Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord,’ Lam. 3:40. The thief must be found before he can be tried, and tried before he is condemned and executed. Some sins no doubt may be taken and apprehended with little pains; but if thou beest true to God and thy own soul, thou wouldst not willingly let any of the company escape. How canst thou expect pardon for any that desirest not justice on all? and how canst thou say thou desirest justice on those sins which thou endeavourest not to apprehend? That constable that having a hue and cry brought him for a pack of thieves, and lets any get away rather than he will rise to search for them, shows his zeal to justice is little. I do not say thou wilt be able to find all. It is enough if by thy diligence thou givest proof of thy sincerity that thou wouldst not conceal any. Set thyself, therefore, in good earnest to the work. Beset thy heart and life round, as men would do a wood where murderers are lodged. Hunt back to the several stages of thy life, youth, and riper years all the capacities and relations thou hast stood in, thy calling general and particular—every place where thou hast lived, and thy behaviour in them. Bid memory bring in its old records, and read over what passages are there written. Call conscience in to depose what it knows concerning thee, and encourage it to speak freely without mincing the matter: and take heed thou dost not snib this witness, as some corrupt judges use when they would favour a bad cause, or give it secret instructions—as David did Joab—to deal gently with thee. Be willing to have thy condition opened fully and all thy coverings turned up. For many times foul designs are his with fair pretences, as the barrels of powder in the parliament cellar under coals and billets. Now, when thou hast gone as far as thou canst, begging Heaven’s help in the thing, to search and try thee whether there be any further wickedness that thou hast not found out, then burden thy soul, judge thyself for them with all the brokenness of heart thou canst get, justifying God in the sentence denounced against thee for them. God will have thee lay thy neck on the block, though he means not to give the stroke. In a word, labour in thy meditations to give every sin its due accent, and suffer thy thoughts to dwell on them till thou findest the fire of thy indignation kindle in thy heart against them, yea, flame forth into such a holy zeal against them as makes thee put thyself under an oath to endeavour their utter ruin and destruction. Then thou art fit to beg thy own life when thou hast vowed the death of thy sins.

2. For the mercies thou hast received. Thou hast these—at least the most signal instances of them —upon the file, unless thou beest a very bad husband for thy soul. If God thinks fit to bottle his saints’ tears, they should surely not forget to book his mercies. Now there are some special seasons wherein the saint should take down this chronicle of God’s mercies to read in it; and this is one, when he is to engage in this extraordinary duty.

(1.) As the most effectual means to melt his heart for sin. Mercy gives the greatest aggravation to sin, and therefore must needs be the most powerful instrument to break the heart for sin. With this God doth reproach sinning Israel, ‘Do ye thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise?’ Deut. 32:6. They could not have been evil to such a height if God had not been so good to them. When God would break the sore of his people’s sin, he compounds a poultice with his choicest mercies and lays this warm to their hearts. David had sat many months under the lectures of the law, unhumbled for his bloody complicated sin; but Nathan is sent to preach a rehearsal sermon to him of the many mercies that God had graced him with, and while these coals are pouring on his head his heart dissolves presently, II Sam. 12. The frost seldom is quite out of the earth till the sun hath got some power in the spring to dissolve its bands; but then it sets it going. Neither will the hardness of the heart be to any purpose removed until the soul be thoroughly warmed with the sense of God’s mercies. ‘And there shall ye remember your ways, and all your doings, wherein ye have been defiled; and ye shall loathe yourselves in your own sight,’ Eze. 20:43. Where is that ‘there’ but amidst the thoughts of his mercies, as by the context is manifest? A pardon from the prince hath made some weep whom the sight of the block and axe could not move. Sight of wrath inflames the conscience, but sense of mercy kindly melts the heart and overcomes the will.

(2.) As a necessary ingredient in all our prayers. ‘With thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God,’ Php. 4:6. This spice must be in all our offerings. He that prays for mercy he wants, and is not thankful for mercies received, may seem mindful of himself, but he is forgetful of God, and so takes the right course to shut his prayers out of doors. God will not put his mercies into a rent purse, and such is an unthankful heart, for it drops them soon out of his memory.

3. For the wants thou liest under. Before the tradesman goes to the fair he looks over his shop that he may know what commodity he most lacks. Thou goest to this duty to furnish thyself with the graces and mercies thou needest, is it not necessary then to see what thy present store is? what thy personal and what thy relational needs are?—not forgetting the public, in whose peace and happiness thou art so much concerned; for, if this ship sink, thou canst not be safe in thy private cabin. To leave all these to occur and overtake thee, without charging thy thoughts with them by previous meditation, is too high a presumption for a sober Christian to take up. Besides, thy affections need help as well as thy memory. Nay, we may sooner bring our sins and wants to mind than lay them to heart. It is easier to know them, than knowing them to be deeply affected with them: and we do not come in prayer to tell God a bare story of these things, but feelingly and affectionately to make our moan and complaint with deep sighs and groans to him that can pardon the one and relieve us in the other.

Third. When thou hast upon this scrutiny kindled thy affections with the bellows of meditation into a deep sense of these things, then furnish thyself with arguments from the promises to enforce thy prayers and make them prevalent with God. The promises are the ground of faith, and faith when strengthened will make thee fervent, and such and such fervency ever speeds and returns with victory out of the field of prayer. ‘The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much,’ James 5:16. Words in prayer are but as powder; the promise is the bullet that doth the execution, faith the grace that chargeth the soul with it, and fervency that gives fire, and dischargeth it into God’s bosom with such a force that the Almighty cannot deny it entrance, because indeed he will not. Now, as he is an impudent soldier that leaves his bullets to be cast or fitted to the bore of his piece till he comes into the field; so he an unwise Christian that doth not provide and sort promises suitable to his condition and request before he engageth in so solemn a service. Daniel first searcheth out the promise—what God had engaged himself to do for his people, as also when the date of this promise expired; and when by meditation and study upon it he had raised his heart to a firm belief thereof, then he sets upon God with a holy violence in prayer, and presseth him close, not only as a merciful God, but righteous also, to remember them now the bond of his promise was coming out: ‘O Lord, according to all thy righteousness, I beseech thee, let thine anger and thy fury be turned away from thy city Jerusalem,’ &c., Dan. 9:16. The mightier any is in the word, the more mighty he will be in prayer. Having despatched the preparatory directions, I now come to those that are to be observed in the duty itself.

[What is needful in extraordinary prayer.]

2. Requisite. That necessary to be observed in the performance of the duty of extraordinary prayer. Because those directions will serve here which are given in another place for the duty of prayer in general, I shall name but a few, and those briefly.

(1.) When the time to engage thyself in this extraordinary duty is come, beware thou settest not upon it in the confidence of thy preparation, whatever thy care success therein hath been. What a worthy doctor directed ministers {to do} as to their preaching, is applicable to Christians as to their praying—he bade them study for their sermons as if they expected no divine assistance in the pulpit, and when they came in the pulpit to cast themselves upon divine assistance as if they had not studied at all. Thus prepare before thou comest to fast and pray, as if thou wert to meet with no further assistance in the duty; but when thou comest to the performance of the duty, cast thyself wholly upon divine assistance as if thou hadst not at all prepared. I know not which of the two doth worst, he that presumes upon God’s assistance in this great work without preparation, or he that presumes on his preparation, and relies not after he hath done his best endeavour on the gracious assistance of God. The first shows he hath but mean thoughts of this solemn ordinance, yea, low and unworthy thoughts of the great God with whom he hath to do in it; and the other too high thoughts of himself.

What though now, Christian, thou marchest in goodly array and thy heart in order; how soon, alas! may all that preparation be routed, and thy chariot-wheels, which thou hast taken so much pains to oil, be set fast or knocked off! Now thy thoughts are united, thou thinkest; dost thou know where they will be a few minutes hence, if thy God help thee not to keep them together? Thou canst as easily hold the four winds in a bag, as keep the thoughts of thy fluid mind from gadding. Now thy affections are wound up to some height, but canst thou hold the pegs from slipping? Cannot God wither thy hand while thou stretchest it out in prayer; make thy tongue falter when thou wouldst make use of it; yea, suffer a sudden damp to fall on thy spirit that shall chill all thy affections and leave thy heart as cold as a stone in thy bosom? ‘Surely man at his best estate is vanity.’ And this in regard of the temper of his spirit as well as in the constitution of his body and other {of} his worldly advantages. How oft do we see the gifts of his mind and the vivacity of his graces fade and wither in one duty, which at another, when the Spirit of God vouchsafed his gentle breath to quicken them, did flourish and send forth their fragrant spices in abundance! O do not then applaud thyself in thy gourd, which may so soon be smitten, neither commit so great an adventure as the success of this duty is in the leaking bottom of thy own preparation.

(2.) Pray often rather than very long at a time. It is hard to be very long in prayer and not slacken in our affections. Those watches which are made to go longer than ordinary at one winding do commonly lose towards the end. The flesh is weak; and if the spirits of the body tire, the soul that rideth on this beast must needs be cast behind. Our Saviour, when he prayed for his life, we find him praying rather often than long at once. He who, in a long journey, lights often to let his beast take breath, and then mounts upon him again, will get to his journey’s end may be sooner than he that puts him beyond his strength. Especially observe this in social prayers. For, when we pray in company we must consider them that travail with us in the duty; as Jacob said, ‘I will lead on softly,…as the children are able to endure.’ Yet I speak not this that you should give any check to the Spirit of God in his assistances, which sometime come so strong that the Christian is, as it were, carried with a full fore‑wind, and hath the labour of tugging at the oar saved him. The ship of the soul goes with most facility when with most speed. Such assistances lift both the person praying and those that join with him—if gracious, and under the same quickenings—in a manner above all weariness. The Spirit brings spirits—affections, I mean—with him. Such a soul is like a vessel that runs full and fresh—what pours from him is quick and spiritful; whereas at another time, when the Spirit of God denies these assistances, his prayer tastes flat to his own palate, if not to others’.

(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.

[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.

BRANCH SECOND.

[‘All prayer’ viewed as to diversity in matter.]

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.

(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.

(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.

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 progging⁴ 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?

[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.

[Five particulars to be observed in praying against guilt.]

(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.

(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?

In earthly courts, when the man dies his cause dies with him, because out of their jurisdiction, and past their summons. But, at death, thou fallest into the hands of the living God, who will pursue his quarrel with thee in the other world also. No sooner is thy soul abandoned of thy body and turned out of its earthly house, but it shall return to God to receive its doom. Neither shall thy body long rest in the grave where it is earthed, but be called forth to share with the soul in torment, whose partner it hath been in sin. The parting of these at death to a guilty soul is sad enough; but their meeting again at the great day of judgement will be much more dismal. For husband and wife, that have joined in some bloody murder, to be attached and sent to several prisons in order to their trial, must needs fill them with fear and terror of their approaching judgment, but much more dreadful is it to them when brought forth to receive their sentence, and suffer at the same gibbet together. At death, the sinner’s body is disposed of to one prison, his soul to another, and both meet again at the great day of assize for the world—then to be sent by the final sentence of the Judge to everlasting flames in hell’s fiery furnace, where, after the poor wretch hath experimented a thousand millions of years the weight of God’s just vengeance, he shall find himself no nearer the end of his misery than he was the first day wherein his torment commenced. Then death will be desired as a favour, but it shall flee from him—his misery being both intolerable and interminable. By this time, I suppose, a pardon will be thought worth thy having, and too good to be lost by sluggish sleepy praying for it. When, therefore, thou hast chafed thy soul thus into a sense of the indispensable necessity of this mercy, then take up a holy resolution to lay thy siege to the throne of grace, and never to rise till God open the gates of his mercy to thee. As it is so necessary thou canst not want it; so thou hast the promise of a faithful God that thou shalt not miss it, upon the timely and sincere seeking of it. ‘If we confess, he is faithful and just to forgive.’ Prayers and tears are the weapons with which the Almighty may be overcome. Manasseh, who could not on his throne —when he sinned and stouted it out against God —defend himself from the justice of God, yet in his dungeon and fetters, greatly humbling himself before the Lord, obtained his mercy. So Ephraim, ‘when he spake trembling, he exalted himself in Israel; but when he offended in Baal, he died,’ Hosea 13:1.

(2.) The second thing in sin to be deprecated is the defiling power of it. He that desires not to be purged from the filth of sin, prays in vain to be eased of the guilt. If we love the work of sin, we must like the wages also. A false heart, could be willing to have his sin covered, but the sincere desires his nature to be cured and cleansed. David begged a clean heart as well as a quiet conscience: ‘Blot out all mine iniquities; create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me,’ Ps. 51:9, 10. He desires water to purify his heart, as well as blood to sprinkle and pacify his conscience. Now, in framing thy requests as to this, observe these particulars.

[Five particulars to be observed in praying against the defilement of sin.]

(a) Be sure thou comest with a deep abhorrence of thyself for that sin-filth which cleaves to thee. This is called ‘knowing the plague of a man’s own heart,’ I Kings 8:38, when a creature is affected and afflicted with the sense of his corruptions, as if he had so many plague sores running upon him, and bathes himself for them, as much as Job did for the boils and sores with which his body was covered. The leper was commanded, in order to his cure, to put himself into a mourner’s habit: ‘His clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry, Unclean, unclean,’ Lev. 13:45. Why all this, but to express the deep sense of his sin and misery? Look upon the saints in scripture, and you shall find this was their way to abase themselves in their prayers with the greatest self-abhorrency that was possible. Penitent David takes the fool, yea the beast, unto himself; he knows not how to speak bad enough of himself. ‘So foolish was I, and ignorant: I was as a beast before thee,’ Ps. 73:22. Holy Job cries out, ‘I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes,’ Job 42:6. Others blush, and are as much ashamed to be seen in the presence of God, as one that had fallen into some puddle or jakes⁵ would be in that pickle to come before his prince.

(b) In praying against thy lusts, look thy heart goes with thy tongue. In nothing so our hearts put more cheats upon us than in our prayers, and in no requests more than in those which are levelled against our lusts. That is least oftentimes intended which is most pretended. And truly we had need be well acquainted with ourselves before we can find the bottom of our designs. Austin confesseth, when he was a young man, and forced by conviction in his conscience to pray that God would deliver him out of the bondage of his lust, that yet the secret whispers of his heart were non adhuc, Domine—not yet, Lord. He was afraid that God would take him at his word. Thus the hypocritical Jews first ‘set up their idols in their heart,’ Eze. 14:3. This is a great wickedness. And it were a just, though a heavy plague, for God to answer such according to the secret vote of their hearts, by them up to those lusts which they inwardly crave. When Paul begs prayers for himself, to embolden them in their requests for him, he assures them of his sincerity: ‘Pray for us: for we trust we have a good conscience, in all things willing to live honestly,’ Heb. 13:18. As if he had said, I durst not make you my spokesmen to God, if my heart did not check me that I did secretly comply with any sin, and did not mean in all things to live honestly. How then canst thou have the face to go thyself to God on an errand to desire that of him which thou wouldst be loath to have.

Question. But how may we come to know that our hearts are sincere or hypocritical in praying against the defiling power of sin?

Answer [1]. Observe whether thy prayer be uniform—laid against all sin, one lust as well as another. Sincerity makes not here a balk and there a furrow; is not hot against one lust and cold against another; but goes through stitch in the work: it ‘hates every false way,’ Ps. 119:104. It shoots its arrows at the whole flock, and singles not this sin out in his prayers which he would have taken, and that left: ‘Let not any iniquity have dominion over me,’ ver. 133. He knows if all his chains were knocked off, and only one left upon him, he should be as true a slave to Satan as if all the other were still on. He prays not against one sin because a great one, and pleads for another because it is a little one. The dust and rubbish help to fill up the wall as well as the great stones; little sins contribute as well as great to make up the partition wall between God and the creature. Every little speck blemisheth the garment, and every penny increaseth the sums. So little sins defile the soul and swell the sinner’s account. Therefore he prays against them as well as the other. David, who desired to be kept back from ‘presumptuous sins,’ did also beg to be ‘cleansed from his secret faults,’ Ps. 19:12.

Answer [2]. Observe whether thy heart stand firmly resolved to renounce that sin thou prayest God to subdue. The sincere Christian binds himself, as well as labours to engage God against his sin. Indeed that prayer is a blank which hath not a vow in it. ‘Thou…hast heard my vows,’ Ps. 61:5; that is, his prayers, which are always to be put up with vows. Is it a mercy thou prayest him to give? If sincere, thou wilt vow to praise him for it and serve him with it. Is it a sin thou prayest against? Except thou jugglest with God thou wilt vow as well as pray against it. ‘Remove from me the way of lying,’ Ps. 119:29. There is David’s deprecation. Now, mark his promise and vow: ‘I have chosen the way of truth: thy judgments have I laid before me,’ ver. 30. While he prays against the way of lying he chooseth the way of truth.

Answer [3]. Observe whether thou beest vigorous in the use of all appointed means to mortify the lust thou prayest against. Resolutions in the time of prayer are good when backed with strenuous endeavours, else but a blind for a false heart to cover itself with. Samson did not only pray he might be avenged on his enemies, but set his hands to the pillars of the house. He that hath bid thee pray against thy lust hath bid thee shun the occasions of it. ‘Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house, lest thou give thy honour unto others,’ Prov. 5:8; that is, lest thou be hooked in to her by the occasion. Thus Joseph, that he might not be drawn to lie with his mistress, would not stay alone in the room with her, Gen. 39:7-12. So, Prov. 23:20, ‘be not among wine-bibbers;’ and, ‘look not on the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup,’ ver. 31, because looking may breed liking. Now, art thou conscientiously careful to keep out of the way that leads to the sin, and to shun the occasion that might betray thee into the hands of that lust thou prayest against? Certainly, he that would not have his house blown up will not have set his gunpowder in the chimney-corner.

(c) Again, God, who bids thee pray against thy lusts, commands thee also to take the sword of his word, by meditating on it, and applying it close to thy heart and conscience, to cut them down and get victory over them. Thus did David. He hid the word in his heart that he might not sin. Thou prayest against covetousness. O that God would rid thy heart of it! Well, what dost thou towards thy own delivery from this base lust? Here is a sword put into thy hand, whose edge is sharp enough to cut and kill if thou wilt lay it on in good earnest. This sets forth the vanity of the creature—how vile and base a sin covetousness is; takes away all occasion of inordinate desires and cares for the world by many sweet promises—what he hath laid up in another world for us, and what care in his providence he will take for us in this life. ‘Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee,’ Heb. 13:5. Now, what use doth thou make of this weapon? Dost thou strengthen thy assent to the truth of these promises?—labour to affect thy heart with the sweetness of them, and then draw forth this sword to defend thyself against this lust when the enemy comes with a temptation to it? If so, thou wert sincere in thy prayer. A false heart contents itself with a few idle lay prayers against his lust, but is afraid to use this sword against it. Or, if he doth, he strikes with the back and not the edge; or lays his stroke so favourably on that it shall not much endanger the life of his sin—like a mountebank, that will be sure to make no worse wound in his side than his balsam will in a day or two cure.

Now, to raise thy heart to the greater vehemency in praying against thy lusts, labour deeply to affect thy heart what a fearful plague it is—indeed, of all other incomparably the greatest—for a soul to be given up of God to the power of his lusts. This consideration, if any, will make thee lay close siege to God and set upon him with the utmost importunity, knowing thou art an undone creature if thou speedest not in thy errand. When God intends to smite home he takes his aim at the heart, he gives the creature over to his lusts. Thus he hardened Pharaoh to a final obstinacy, ‘I will…send all my plagues upon thine heart,’ Ex. 9:14. They did not only light upon the beasts and fruits of the field, or upon their own bodies, but chiefly upon their hearts and spirits, hardening them into obstinacy to their destruction. And this, indeed, is to send all plagues in one. Other plagues, that reach only to estate or body, are consistent with the love and favour of God. He can smite the body and smile on the soul; blast the man’s estate and bless him with spiritual riches; make him poor in the world and rich in faith. But he that is given up to his lusts is abhorred of God. A saint may be given up to Satan ut lictori—to correct him, for the destruction of the flesh and saving of his spirit; but it is the brand of a reprobate to be delivered up to Satan ut domino —that his lusts may have full power over him; which judiciary act of God portends the sinner’s destruction, Deut. 2:30; II Thes. 2:11. Outward plagues are sometimes in the sinner’s mouth as a bridle to restrain him from sin. But this is a spur that makes them more mad after their lusts; it takes away the sense of sin, and then the wretch plays the devil. Nothing will stop him in his way, but to hell he will go over hedge and ditch.

(d) Pray against the power of thy lusts as a branch of the gospel covenant. God is not bound by the first covenant to stir a foot for man’s help. Man went of his own accord over to the devil’s quarters. He deserted God and chose a new lord; and in his hands God might have left him, without offering any help for his rescue. It was not any tie that man had upon God by the covenant of nature which obliged him, but his own free grace that moved him, to undertake his recovery. And this he doth by making a new covenant on the ruins of the old. So that, whoever will pray against his lusts with success must first become a covenanter with God, by accepting the terms upon which God in it offers to save us from our sins, and they are faith and repentance. When the soul doth thus face about from his sins to close with Christ, then he becomes a covenanter with God, and may, with faith, call God into the field for his help against this huge host of lusts and devils that come against him. God’s chariots are his; the whole militia of heaven is engaged in his quarrel. ‘Sin shall not have dominion over you’—and why?—‘for ye are not under law but under grace,’ Rom. 6:14; that is, you are not under the law covenant made with Adam, but under the gospel covenant made with Christ, and through him with all believers. O how many prayers against sin are lost for want of well understanding this grand notion of the gospel! A great cry is made and complaint by many of their sins to God, and victory over them pretend to be desired; yet they live and grow stronger every day than other. And what is the reason? Alas! they stand not in a federal relation to God; neither take they any care how to get into it. Will a prince raise an army to fight for he knows not whom? Indeed, if his subjects or allies be in distress he is ready to step in for their succour; but strangers cannot expect he should do this for them. Leagues are made before assistance desired. God first promised to bring Israel ‘into the bond of his covenant,’ Eze. 20:37; and then, that he will ‘accept them with your sweet savour,’ ver. 41. David knew this very well, that the carnal world are abandoned by God, to be trod under the foot of every lust; and therefore, when he prays God would order his steps in his word, and let no iniquity have dominion over him, he desires it as a favour peculiar to those that were near and dear to him: Deal with me ‘as thou usest to do unto those that love thy name,’ Ps. 119:132.

(e) Pray not only against the power of sin, but for the power of holiness also. A naughty heart may pray against his sins, not out of any inward enmity to them, or love to holiness, but because they are troublesome guests to his conscience. Believe it for a certain truth, his zeal is false that seems hot against sin but is key‑cold to holiness. A city is rebellious that keeps their rightful prince out though it receives not his enemy in. Nay, the devil needs not fear but at last he shall make that soul his garrison again, out of which for a while he seems shut, so long as it stands empty and is not filled with solid grace, Matt. 12:44, 45. What indeed should hinder Satan’s re-entry into that house which hath not in it to keep him out?

[Second object of deprecatory prayer.]

2. Object. The second object of deprecatory prayer is suffering. Sin brought suffering into the world. Sin is indeed the elder twin, but suffering stayed not long after it; for it took it by the heel, presently arresting Adam upon the very place where he committed his trespass, and ever since follows it as close as the shadow doth the body. It leaves not the saint till death parts him and his sin, but pursues the wicked with their sins into the other world also. So that this distribution of suffering into temporal and eternal shall content us at present—they being comprehensive of all the miseries which sin hath brought upon the sons of men. Now my work in this place shall be only to direct the Christian how to frame his prayer in deprecating the one and the other also. (1.) Temporal sufferings—how the Christian is to deprecate and pray against them. (2.) Eternal suffering.

[How the Christian is to pray against temporal sufferings.]

(1.) Temporal sufferings—how the Christian is to deprecate and pray against them.

[1.] Negatively—The Christian is not to pray for an immunity from all temporal sufferings. There is no foundation for such a prayer in the promise; and what God thinks not fit to promise we must not be bold to ask. Temporal promises are to be understood, saith Melancthon, cum exceptione crucis —with exception of the cross. God had one Son without sin, but he will have none in this life without suffering. John writes himself, ‘Your brother, and companion in tribulation,’ Rev. 1:9. He hath too high an opinion of himself that would have God lead him dryshod on a fair causeway to heaven, while he sees the rest of his brethren march through thick and thin to the same place; or who thinks he needs not this thorn‑hedge of suffering, to keep him as well as others from wandering out of his way to glory. The rod and ferule are not more needful among children at school than suffering is to the saints while in their minority here on earth. If thou wert come to that ripeness of ingenuity as to have worn off all thy childishness, thou shouldst stay here no longer under the lash; but while thou art subject to sin thou must submit to his disciplinary rod. Valetudinarious⁶ bodies can as well spare food as physic, and saints in this their crazy state may as well live without ordinances as without sufferings. In a word, to pray absolutely against all suffering is to desire one of the greatest punishments on this side hell. When God said, ‘I will not punish your daughters when they commit whoredom,’ Hosea 4:14, he meant them no good by sparing his rod. If we count him an unwise father that, when he puts his child to school, indents with his master not to whip him; surely much more folly were it in thee to desire God to privilege thee from all suffering.

[2.] Affirmatively—how he may and should pray against sufferings; and in these particulars following.

(a) Deprecate the vindictive justice and wrath of God in all temporal sufferings. Thus Jeremiah shapes his prayer, ‘O Lord, correct me, but with judgment; not in thine anger, lest thou bring me to nothing,’ Jer. 10:24, and, ch. 17:17, ‘Be not a terror unto me: thou art my hope in the day of evil.’ He declines not suffering but deprecates wrath. As if he had said, ‘Let trouble come, but not with this message—to tell me thou art mine enemy; shoot thy darts, my breast is open to receive them; but let them not be envenomed arrows headed with thy punitive justice.’ Without this sting all suffering is innocent and harmless. But if the creature does fear—though without just cause—that they are shot out of justice’s bow, then they drink up his spirits and exanimate him presently. ‘When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth,’ Ps. 39:11. That holy woman, I Kings 17:18, was not so much distressed for her son’s death as for the reflection this sad providence made upon her conscience: ‘Art thou come…to call my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son?’ Thou canst not therefore be too passionately importunate in deprecating this.

(b) Deprecate the snare and temptation that suffering may expose thee to. Satan commonly finds it easy to make some sinful impression upon the saint when he is heated, and his ‘heart made soft,’ as Job phraseth it, ‘in the furnace of affliction.’ He is a rare Christian in whom the stream of his grace runs clear upon such royling. Job was a man of a thousand —God’s nonesuch: ‘None like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man,’ Job 1:8; yet bewrayed many weaknesses in his troubles, and would have done more, had not God in pity to his poor servant taken the devil off before he had quite run him down. Christ teacheth us to pray against suffering under the notion of temptation: ‘Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.’ That is, let us not be led into sin when we fall into suffering, let us not fall into thy hands and Satan’s together. This discovers a holy frame of heart—to be more tender of our conscience than skin; not so much to fear affliction from God, as, left in it, we should be have ourselves unseemly and unholily towards him. Agur is not so much ashamed to beg as afraid to steal, and so take the name of his God in vain, upon which account he chiefly prays against poverty, Prov. 30:8, 9. There is nothing lost by serving God first and preferring his honour before our own private interest in our prayers. Self‑denial is the best for self‑seeking; for, by neglecting ourselves for God’s sake, we oblige him to take the care of us upon himself, and he is the only happy man who hath his stake laid up in God’s hands.

(c) Deprecate the excess of suffering—that thou beest not overladen, thy burden too heavy for thy back. This is promised. Thou mayest therefore present it in faith: ‘I will make a full end of all the nations whither I have driven thee: but I will not make a full end of thee, but correct thee in measure;’ Jer. 46:28. The patient doth not intrench upon the physician’s art by desiring him to proportion his dose according to the weakness of his body, if, when he hath done this, he acquiesceth in his skill and faithfulness for the same. Indeed, to desire God to consider our weakness, and then not to rely on his wisdom and care, but continue jealous and suspicious, or to murmur at his prescriptions, as if the physic he gives were too churlish and strong, this makes a dishonourable reflection upon God. Sometimes the physician exceeds the proportion that his fearful patient thinks strong enough, but withal tells him, ‘You are not so weak as you take yourself to be. Your body may bear so many grains more in the composition. Leave me to my art and all shall be well.’ Thus God, who knows our frame exactly, deals with his people, and is highly pleased to see them satisfied with what he orders them out: ‘In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly,’ Job 1:22; @Û6 §*T6,< •ND@Fb<0< Jè 2,è—so the Septuagint reads it—he did not impute folly to God; indeed the word {Hebrew Characters Omitted} (tiphlah), is a noun. The meaning of the place is, Job did not make any unworthy reflection upon God for the evils he suffered by his providence, as if anything were wanting in his care or wisdom, like some rash physician, who fails either in timing or tempering his physic.

(d) Thou mayest not only deprecate these evils in thy affections, but also pray believingly for a happy issue out of them all. The darkest lane of suffering shall, to the saint, have a lightsome end. And all, we say, is well that ends well. ‘Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful,’ James 5:11. This is that which God so fully intends in all his saints’ troubles, that he takes pleasure in thinking of it beforehand: ‘I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace,’ Jer. 29:11. And that petition comes in a happy time to court, which finds the king thinking of the very business it prays for.

(2.) Eternal suffering. The second kind of suffering is eternal in hell. This is the center in which all the lines of sin and of misery meet—the common shoal into which they all disgorge themselves, as rivers do their streams into the vast ocean. And as rivers, when they are fallen into the sea, lose their several names in one that comprehends them all—the ocean; so all the evils of this life, when resolved into this, forget their private names—sickness, pains, poverty, &c,—and are called hell. Not that these are all formally and literally there, but virtually, in that the torment of the damned doth not only amount to, but, beyond expression, exceed them all. As in heaven there is no belly-cheer, yet a feast; no silks and satins worn, yet all in glorious robes; as silver is in gold, and gold in a jewel, so all these are in heaven—because that which is of infinite more value and worth than such things as are of highest reckoning on earth. Thus the great miseries of this life are incomparably less than the least torment of hell. Never can the creature say he is completely miserable, till the devouring jaws of that infernal pit inclose him. Were the worst of his punishment what he feels here, he might in a manner bless himself; as Paul, on the contrary saith, he should judge the saint miserable above others, if all his hope were here. But there is the sinner’s easeless endless state. There is not so much as one well day to release him a while from his pain, but he shall continue forever in the height of his paroxysm; no change of weather or hope of clearing, but a perpetual storm set in to rain fire and brimstone upon him to all eternity, for so long it will be before the arm of the Almighty is weary of pouring out his wrath, or his heart be brought in love with sin, and reconciled to the sinner. Now, in deprecating this, we should endeavour to keep this threefold notion of hell in our thoughts, for which above all we are to desire to be delivered from it.

(a) Conceive of hell as a state of sin as well as of suffering, yea, in its utmost height. Earth is a middle place betwixt heaven and hell. Neither sin in the wicked, nor grace in the saint, come here to their full ripeness. Grace being an outlandish⁷ slip brought from heaven’s paradise, riseth not to its just height and procerity⁸Tallness; highth of stature. — From Webster’s, till it be transplanted and set in its native climate from whence it came. And sin, being a brat of hell, comes not to its full complexion and monstrosity, till it be sent back to the place it came from. Here poor wretches are tolled on to sin by the pleasure it promiseth. But there they sin out of malice, for nothing else can invite them where this morsel is eaten with such sour sauce. On earth the sinner is maidenly, and conceals the venom that is bagged in his heart; but in hell he spits it out in blasphemies against heaven. In a word, here he sins with wavering thoughts, and some weak purposes of repenting, but there he is as desperate as the devil himself—hardened beyond all relenting. Now, under this notion, thou shouldst pray to be delivered from hell, that thou mayest never be one of that damned crew, who think it not enough to fight against God their Maker on earth, but carry the war with them into the other world also, and there continue their feud with implacable enmity to eternity. Certainly the saints—to whom the notions of sin in this life are so grievous, above all the crosses and losses that befall them, and who count a few years’ neighbourhood among the wicked so great an affliction, that they cry, ‘Woe is me, that I sojourn in Meshech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar’—must needs deprecate that dismal state with their utmost vehemency of spirit, wherein they should be everlastingly yoked with sin, and cooped up with unclean sinners, both which they loathe so perfectly.

It was the speech of a gracious woman when on the very marches of death: ‘O Lord, send me not to hell among such filthy company, which thou knowest I have not liked on earth.’ But as for those that can fadge very well with their lusts, and the company of the wicked here, I know not how they can thus deprecate that place where they shall meet with that which pleaseth them so much on earth. David, Ps. 26, first protests his abhorrency against the ways and society of the wicked: ‘I have not sat with vain persons, neither will I go in with dissemblers; I have hated the congregation of evil-doers; and will not sit with the wicked,’ ver. 4, 5: then his zeal for God, and delight he had in his house to praise and serve him, ver. 6-8. After which, he breaks out into this prayer, ‘Gather not my soul with sinners, nor my life with bloody men,’ ver. 9. As if he had said, I am not of their knot in my life, O let me not be of their bundle at my death. I have praised thee on earth, send me not to blaspheme thee in hell. I have loved the habitations of thy house here, let me not dwell with unclean spirits hereafter.

(b) Hell is a state of separation from the blissful presence of God. Pray to be delivered from it under this notion—as it is the last, yea, everlasting excommunication of the creature from God. ‘Go, ye cursed,’ that is, never to see my sweet face more—called therefore ‘outer darkness,’ because not the least beam or stricture of his favour to enlighten the souls of the damned, nor the least crevice is left open for hope to expect it. The heat of hell-fire is not so dismal, as the want of this light. This makes them cursed; ‘Go, ye cursed.’ The curse lies in their departure from God, the fountain of all blessing. All besides this were tolerable. Would God cast but one kind look upon those miserable souls, as they swim in this lake of fire and brimstone, it were able to change the property of the place, and the joy thereof were enough to take away the sense of their torment. The three worthies in Daniel could walk in the fire, having God to bear them company, as if they had been only in the sunshine. That which a saint prizeth most in heaven is the presence of God: ‘So shall we ever be with the Lord,’ I Thes. 4:17. And hell is most dreaded by them, because a gulf is fixed between the souls in it and God, that no communion can be had with him to all eternity. O how few pray against hell under this notion! how few cry out with David, ‘Cast me not away from thy presence!’ Ps. 51:11. If this were the thing above all they feared should befall them in the other world, would they so willingly live without acquaintance with God in this world? Surely no.

(c) Hell is a state wherein the damned can never actually satisfy God’s justice; for their debt being infinite, and they, because creatures, but finite, will ever be paying. But the last farthing can never be paid, which is the only reason they lie forever in prison, because it can never be said, ‘Now God hath his due.’ But Christ, the saints’ pay-master, discharged their whole debt at once, and took in the bond, which he nailed to his cross, leaving no back-reckoning unpaid, to bring the believer afterward into any danger from the hands of divine justice. Now, as an ingenuous debtor desires his freedom at his creditor’s hands, that thereby he may be capable of paying his debt, as well as to escape the misery that himself should endure by his imprisonment; so an ingenuous soul—and such is every saint—deprecates hell, as well with an eye to God’s glory, as to his own ease and happiness. Lord, saith the sincere soul, if thou packest me away to hell, there I shall pay thee, it is true, by my just torments something in a dribbling way by retail, but never be able to discharge the whole sum; but at Christ’s hands thou mayest receive to the full what thy justice can demand at mine, and also make me thy poor creature a trumpeter of thy praise to eternity. O send me not to blaspheme thee among that wretched crew of damned souls and unclean spirits, who so much desire to join with the choir of holy angels and saints in singing hallelujahs to thy holy and glorious name.

[Third kind of petitionary prayer —the imprecatory.]

Third. Imprecatory prayer; wherein the Christian imprecates the vengeance of God upon the enemies of God and his people. On such a sad and solemn errand are the saints’ prayers sometimes sent to heaven, and speed as effectually as when they go to obtain blessings for themselves and the church of God. And no wonder, for they are perfumed with Christ’s merits, and thereby are as acceptable to God as any other they put up in his name. ‘And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God,’ Rev. 8:4. Now what kind of prayers these were is clear by the next words, ‘And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake,’ ver. 5. By which is signified the dreadful judgments which God in answer to his saints’ prayers would bring upon the wicked world, whose bloody persecutions of the church, and fury against the truth of God, made the saints to cry to heaven for vengeance upon them; and that it should come inevitably come as thunder, lightning, and earthquakes, that can be resisted by no power or policy of the greatest monarch on earth. Thus, as at the firing of some cannon planted against a city, you may see its turrets or wall come tumbling down; so, upon the prayers of the saints, great judgments were certainly to befall the enemies of God and his church. Now, the path wherein the Christian is here to tread being very narrow, he is to be the more cautious that he steps not awry. He is, in this part of prayer which is imprecatory, like one that drives a chariot on the brow of a steep hill, who, if he hath not the quicker eye and steadier hand, may soon spoil all. The highest strains of a saint’s duty run nearest the most dangerous precipices, as the most mysterious truths are soonest perverted into the most damnable errors. I shall therefore first lay down a few particulars which may serve as a rail to compass in this duty, for the better securing the Christian from falling into any miscarriage about it.

1. Take heed thou dost not make thy private particular enemies the object of thy imprecation. We have no warrant, when any wrong us, presently to go and call for fire from heaven upon them. We are bid, indeed, to heap coals upon our enemy’s head, but they are of love, not of wrath and revenge. Job sets a black brand upon this, and clears himself from the imputation of so great a sin: ‘If I rejoiced at the destruction of him that hated me,…neither have I suffered my mouth to sin by wishing a curse to his soul,’ Job 31:29, 30. He durst not wish his enemy ill, much less deliberately form a wish into a prayer, and desire God to curse him. Our Saviour hath taught us a more excellent way: ‘Bless them that curse you,…and pray for them which despitefully use you,’ Matt. 5:44. I know this is counted a poor sheepish spirit by many of our gallants. Go pray for them? No, send them the glove rather, and be revenged on them in a duel by shedding their blood. This is the drink-offering which these sons of pride delight to pour out to their revenge. Or, curse them to the pit of hell with their God damn them oaths! O tremble at such a spirit as this! The ready way to fetch a curse from heaven on thyself, is to imprecate one sinfully upon another. ‘As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him: as he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment, so let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones,’ Ps. 109:17, 18. Moses, I suppose, has as noble a spirit as any of these that style them such men of honour; yet, did he draw upon Aaron, or fall a cursing of Miriam, when they had used him so unworthily? I trow not, but bears all patiently. Nay, when God declares his displeasure against Miriam for this affront put upon him, see how this holy man intercedes for her with God, Num. 12. This is valour of the right make, to overcome evil with good, and instead of seeking revenge on him that wrongs us, to get the mastery of our own corruption so far as to desire his good the more. Thus our Lord, when he was numbered amongst transgressors, even then ‘made intercession for the transgressors,’ Isa. 53:12; that is, those very men which used him so bloodily, while they were digging his heart out of his body with their instruments of cruelty, then was he begging the life of their souls with his fervent prayers.

2. When thou prayest against the enemies of God and his church, direct thy prayers rather against their plots than person. Thus the apostles, ‘And now, Lord, behold their threatenings,’ Acts 4:29. Not, ‘confound their persons,’ but, ‘behold their threatenings;’ and so they leave their case with the Lord to right it for them. So David, ‘O Lord, I pray thee, turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness,’ II Sam. 15:31. Indeed, did do more, he destroyed plot and plotter also; and in this sense the saints may oft say with the prophet, ‘Thou hast done terrible things we looked not for’—by pouring out his vengeance on the persons, when they have only prayed against their wicked designs.

3. When praying against the persons of those that are open enemies to God and his church, it is safest to pray indefinitely and in general: ‘Let them all be confounded…that hate Zion,’ Ps. 129:5; because we know not who of them are implacable, and who not, and therefore cannot pray absolutely and peremptorily against particular persons. There may be an elect vessel for a time in open hostility against God and his church, whom afterward God may consecrate to himself by converting grace, and so make him a holy vessel for the use of his sanctuary. We do, it is confessed, find some in Scripture prayed against by name. So Moses prayed against Korah and his complices, Num. 16:15; and Paul against Alexander the coppersmith, ‘The Lord reward him according to his works;’ but these and other in the Scripture had an extraordinary spirit, and not to be patterns for us in this case. Elias called for fire from heaven upon the captains, but the disciples were soundly chid for a preposterous imitation of this act, who had not his spirit, ‘Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of,’ Luke 9:55. Pray thou for vengeance against all the implacable enemies of God, and leave him to direct thy arrow to its mark. Ahab was hit, though the arrow was shot at a venture by one that may be thought not of him. Prayers are sorted in heaven before their answer returns. Some of those emperors for whom the church in the primitive times prayed, yet proving implacable enemies to God and his people, felt the weight of those imprecations, which in general they put up against the adversaries of the truth.

4. In praying against the implacable enemies of God and his church, the glory of God should be principally aimed at, and vengeance on them in order to that. ‘Arise, O Lord, and let thine enemies be scattered.’ As the sun, when it hath dispelled the vapours that muffled it up from our sight, breaks out in the glory of its beams; so God, by taking vengeance on his enemies, and scattering them in their wicked imaginations with which they endeavoured to obscure his glory in the world, doth display and make visible the splendour of his attributes before his people’s eyes. The saddest consequence which attends the prosperity and success of God’s enemies in the world, is their pride and blasphemy against God, his truth, and church. Then they belch out their horrid blasphemies against heaven; then they mock the poor saints, and pierce them with the sharp sword of their mocking language, while they say unto them, ‘Where is now their God?’ But when God takes to himself power and strength, and confounds these giants and sons of the earth, by tumbling destruction upon their heads in the midst of their wicked enterprises; when he recoils their own plots they have charged against his church upon themselves—making them go off like a pistol in their pocket—to procure their own death and ruin; now the reproach is taken off, and they have an answer given to their question, ‘Where is now your God?’ He is at their throat, he is with his sword of vengeance vindicating his glorious name upon them. When Julian the Apostate was slain—and confessed at whose hand he received his fatal blow, in crying, vicisti Galilæ—thou hast conquered, O Galilean—then Libænius, his scoffing sophister, had his question, ‘What is the carpenter’s son now a doing?’ —which a little before he had put to a Christian in scorn of his Saviour—thrown in his teeth to the confusion of his face, and found the Christian’s answer—that he was making a coffin for his master —prove truer than he was aware of. It cannot but be a joyful day to a saint, that prizeth the honour of his God above his own life, when he sees even the wicked —that before denied a providence, and thought all events were thrown out of blind fortune’s lap, as if the world were but a lottery, wherein everyone had his portion by chance—now forced by the remarkable appearance of his power and wisdom in saving his people, and destroying his implacable enemies, to confess, ‘Verily there is a reward for the righteous: verily he is a God that judgeth in the earth,’ Ps. 58:11. The exaltation of the glorious name of God, every saint doth, and should, aim at, in the prayers wherein he imprecates vengeance. ‘Let them be confounded…let them be put to shame, and perish, that men may know that thou, whose name alone is Jehovah, art the most high over all the earth,’ Ps. 83:17, 18. Now from this head of imprecatory prayer, there is—

(1.) Matter of comfort to the saints against those direful imprecations which the wicked world belcheth out against them. The saints in this sense are a cursed people. The wicked make the greatest part of the world; the church is a little flock, but her enemies a huge herd; and these cannot wish well to the saints. Cain, as Luther saith, will hate and kill Abel to the end of the world; the same spirit that was in him remaineth in his seed. Sometimes when the church of God flourisheth, and hath the sun of outward prosperity on her side, they may cry hosanna in the crowd—as Shimei, when David was going up the hill of honour, then he could worship the rising sun, and crouch to him whom he had bitterly cursed in his distress—but when ‘they bless with their mouth, but they curse inwardly’ in their heart, Ps. 62:4. A wicked man cannot wish well to a saint as a saint, as, on the contrary, a saint cannot bless the wicked as such. ‘Neither do they which go by say, The blessing of the Lord be upon you: we bless you in the name of the Lord,’ Ps. 129:8. They do, indeed, desire their conversion, and therein wish them well, but in the wicked way they are in at present they cannot bless them. So the wicked can desire the saints should come over to their party, do as they do, and then they would applaud and hug them. But, let the saints keep close to God, and refuse to run into riot and excess with them, and they are sure to meet with their curse and imprecation; it is not their unblamable and peaceable will free them from their wrath and fury. ‘I have neither lent on usury, nor men have lent to me on usury; yet every one of them doth curse me,’ Jer. 15:10. But fear not, thou who art a saint, their imprecations. This is but anathema secundum dici; like false fire in the pan of an uncharged gun, it gives a crack but hurts not. God’s blessing will cover thee from their curse; ‘Let them curse, but bless thou,’ Ps. 109:28. When the viper flew out of the fire upon Paul’s hand, the barbarians looked that he should presently drop down dead, but it proved no such matter. Thus the enemies of God and his people have looked one generation after another, when the church, that hath been always laden with their curses, should perish under them; but it lives yet to walk over the graves of all those that have wished it ill. Alas, poor wretches! what is your imprecation worth? Truly as your blessing can do no good, so neither your curse any hurt, till you can get God to set his seal and say amen to it; which is impossible for you to obtain.

Did our Saviour so sharply rebuke the rash request of his disciples, calling for fire to fall on them whom they thought deserved it? and will he gratify the lust of your devilish wrath and fury against his own dear people, by pouring on them what you audaciously, yea blasphemously, desire of him? Will nothing serve you but to have God your executioner to hang whom you condemn? and those no other than his dear children, and for nought else but because they dare not be as wicked as yourselves? Go bid the tender mother imbrue her hands in the blood of her sweet babe, that even now came out of her womb, and now lies at her breast; or the husband betray and deliver the wife of his bosom into the hands of murderers that wait for her life. Would these be an errand to make the messenger that brings them welcome to loving mother or husband? But if any such anomalies in nature’s grammar and monsters among men were to be found, yet remember he is a God thou solicitest whose nature is unchangeable and covenant with his people inviolable. How was God courted by Balak and Balaam with altar after altar, from place to place! But all to no purpose: ‘Nevertheless the Lord thy God would not hearken unto Balaam; but the Lord thy God turned the curse into a blessing unto thee, because the Lord thy God loved thee,’ Deut. 23:5. Never was any design carried on with more zeal and passionate desire to effect it than this; one would think that God had said enough to Balaam at first to make him sick of his enterprise, as a thing infeasible, Num. 22:12: ‘Thou shalt not go with them; thou shalt not curse the people: for they are blessed.’ But the liked the work and loved the wages, and therefore baffles his conscience, not telling the messengers all that God said to him, and they also report not all to Balak what Balaam said to them, so loath were both the work should fall: yet we see by the event, that they took but pains to lose their labour, nay worse, to lose themselves, for God made them, and him that set them on this work, to drink the curse which they would so fain have brewed for Israel.

(2.) A word to the wicked. Take heed that by your implacable hatred to the truth and church of God, yo do not engage her prayers against you. These imprecatory prayers of the saints, when shot at the right mark, and duly put up, they are murdering pieces, and strike dead where they light. ‘Shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily,’ Luke 18:7, 8. They are not empty words—as the imprecations of the wicked poured into the air, and there vanish with their breath—but are received into heaven, and shall be sent back with thunder and lightning upon the pates of the wicked. David’s prayer unravelled Ahithophel’s fine-spun policy, and twisted his halter for him. The prayers of the saints are more to be feared—as once a great person said and felt—than an army of twenty thousand men in the field. Esther’s fast hastened Haman’s ruin, and Hezekiah’s against Sennacherib brought his huge host to the slaughter, and fetched an angel from heaven to do the execution in one night upon them.

[Thanksgiving, or the gratulatory part of prayer.]

Second. The second of the twofold division of the whole matter of prayer, viz. thanksgiving. In handling of this I shall still keep my former method.

First. I shall show what we are to return praises and thanks to God for. Second. How we are to frame our thanksgiving we return.

[What we are to praise and thank God for.]

First. I shall show what we are to return praises and thanks to God for. Now the object of thanksgiving, as of requests, is something that is good, but under another notion. We ask what we want; we bless and praise God for the mercies we have received, or for the hope we have from the promise that we shall in due time receive them. So that we see the Christian hath as large a field for the exercise of his thankfulness in praising God, as he hath in the petitionary part of prayer for his desires. This duty circumscribes heaven and earth; it takes both worlds within its circumference. As God does nothing but he aims at his own glory thereby, Prov. 16:4; so no act of God towards his people, wherein he intends not their good, and as such becomes the subject of their thanksgiving. Hence we are bid ‘in everything give thanks.’ O what a copious theme hath God given his people to enlarge their meditations upon—‘in everything!’ The whole course and series of divine providence towards the saints is like a music‑book, in every leaf whereof there is a song ready pricked for them to learn and sing to the praise of their God. No passage in their life of which they can say, ‘In this I received no mercy for which I should bless God.’ Now, as a partial obedience is not good, so partial thanks is stark naught. Not that any saint is able to keep all the commands, or reckon up all the mercies of God, much less return particular and express acknowledgement for every single mercy. But, as he hath respect to all the commandments, Ps. 119:6, so he desires to value highly every mercy, and to his utmost power give God the praise of all his mercies. ‘What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me?’ Ps. 116:12. This is an honest soul indeed; he would not sink any debt he owes to God, but calls his soul to an account for all his benefits, not this or that. The skipping over one note in a lesson may spoil the grace of the music; unthankfulness for one mercy disparageth our thanks for the rest. But to sort the mercies of God into several ranks, that you may see more distinctly your work in this duty lie before you.

1. Mercies are either ordinary or extraordinary —our everyday commons or exceedings, with which God now and then feasts us. Thou must not only praise God for some extraordinary mercy which once in a year betides thee—a mercy that comes with such pomp and observation, that all thy neighbours take notice of it with thee, as the mercy which Zacharias and Elizabeth had in their son, that was ‘noised abroad throughout all the hill country,’ Luke 1:65—but also for ordinary, everyday mercies. For,

(1.) We are unworthy of the least mercy, Gen. 32:10; and therefore God is worthy of praise for the least, because it is more than he owes us.

(2.) These common ordinary mercies are many. Thus David enhanceth the mercies of this kind: ‘O God! how great is the sum of them? if I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee,’ Ps. 139:17, 18. As if he had said, There is not a point of time wherein thou art not doing me good; as soon as I open my eyes in the morning, I have a new theme, in some fresh mercies given in since I closed them overnight, to employ my praiseful meditations. Many little items make together a great sum. What less than a grain of sand? yet what heavier than the sand on the sea-shore? As little sins—such as are vain thoughts and idle words —because of their multitude, arise to a great guilt and will bring in a long bill, a heavy reckoning, at last; so ordinary mercies,what they want in their size, particularly and individually considered, of some other great mercies, they have it compensated in their number. Who will not say that a man shows as great, yea greater, kindness to maintain one at his table with ordinary fare all the year, as in entertaining him at a great feast twice or thrice in the same time?

(3.) The sincerity of the heart is seen more in thankfulness for ordinary mercies than extraordinary. As it shows a naughty heart upon every ordinary occasion to fall into sin, so the soul very gracious that takes the hint of every common mercy to bless his God. Some, they are bound up in their spirits, that none but strong physic will work upon them; they can digest little afflictions, and swallow ordinary mercies, without humbling themselves under the one or praising God for the other. That is the upright heart which gentle physic prevails with, little chastisements humble, and ordinary mercies raise to thankfulness.

2. Mercies are complete or imperfect—begun mercies, or finished. We must not make God stay for our praises till he hath finished a mercy, but praise him at the beginning of a mercy. We should be as ready to return our praises for a mercy, as God is to hear our prayers when begging a mercy. Now God comes forth early to meet a praying soul: ‘At the beginning of thy supplications the commandment came forth,’ Dan. 9:23. ‘I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest,’ Ps. 32:5. Thus should we echo in our thankfulness to the first intimation that God gives in his providence of an approaching mercy. If you do but hear the king is on the road toward your town, you raise your bells to ring him in, and stay not till he be entered {through} the gates.

The birds, they rise betimes in the morning, and are saluting the rising sun with their sweet notes in the air. Thus should we strike up our harps in praising God at the first appearance of a mercy. Notable instances we have for this: Moses did not promise God, when he had saved them from Pharaoh’s wrath and the sea’s waves, that, at his landing them safe in Canaan, and lodging his victorious colours at the end of their journey in their full rest, he would then praise him for all his mercies together. No, but he presently pens a song, and on the bank, within sight of the howling wilderness, which they were now to enter into, he sings it with Israel in thankfulness for this first handsel after their march out of Egypt. So, II Sam. 6:13, ‘And it was so, that when they that bare the ark of the Lord had gone six paces, he sacrificed oxen and fatlings.’ And, I Chr. 15:26, which is a place parallel to this, and speaks of the same passage, ‘When God helped the Levites that bare the ark,…they offered seven bullocks and seven rams.’ That is, so soon as, by going a few paces or steps, they perceived God graciously to favour their enterprise—making no breach as formerly he had done upon them—they presently express their thankfulness upon the place for this hopeful beginning, well knowing no way was better to engage God in the continuance and enlargement of this mercy, than by a praiseful entertainment thereof at its first approach.

In a word, thus the Jews in Babylon at the very first peep of day, when their deliverance began to break out, are at their praises: ‘Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing: then said they among the heathen, The Lord hath done great things for them,’ Ps. 126:2. It was now but coming tide, as I may say, with them; the water was newly turned, and their affairs began to look with a more smiling face, yet now they salute their infant mercy with joy and thankfulness. May be, Christian, thou art upon a sick‑bed, and some little reviving thou hast, though far from thy former health—O bless God for this little lift of thy head from thy pillow. May be thou hast been, as to thy spiritual state, in great distress—as it were in the belly of hell—swallowed up with terrors from the Lord, but now thy agony abates; though the Comforter be not come, yet thou hast some strictures of divine light let into thy dungeon, that raise a little hope to wait for more: O, let not this handsel of mercy pass without some thankful acknowledgment. Some, alas! are like great ships that cannot be set afloat but with the spring-tide and highwater of a mercy completed; if they have not all they would, they cannot see what they have, nor tune their hearts into a praiseful frame.

3. Mercies are such as are received in this life or reserved for the next—mercies in the hand or mercies in hope. There are promises which God will have us stay till we come to heaven for the performance of, and these we are to praise God for, as well as what we receive here; bless God for what he hath laid up for thee in heaven, as well as that he lays out upon thee on earth. The more our hearts are enlarged in thankfulness for these mercies, which we now have only in hope, the more honour we put upon his faithful promise. He that bestows much cost upon a house he hath in reversion, shows his confidence is great one day to be possessed of it. When a bill of exchange is paid at sight, it shows the merchant whose it is to be a man of credit and ability. By the joy thou takest up, and the thankfulness thou layest out for what the bare promise tells thee thou shalt at death receive, thou glorifiest the truth of God that is the promiser.

4. There are bitter mercies and sweet mercies —some mercies God gives in wine, some in wormwood. Now we must praise God for the bitter mercies as well as the sweet. Thus Job, ‘The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ Too many are prone to think nothing is a mercy that is not sweet in the going down, and leaves not a pleasant farewell on their palate; but this is the childishness of our spirits, which, as grace grows more manly, and the Christian more judicious, will wear off. Who that understands himself will value a book by the gilt on the cover? Truly none of our temporals—whether crosses or enjoyments—considered in themselves abstractly, are either a curse or a mercy. They are only as the covering to the book. It is what is written in them that they must resolve us whether they be a mercy or not. Is it an affliction that lies on thee? If thou canst find it comes from love, and ends in grace and holiness, it is a mercy though it be bitter to thy taste. Is it an enjoyment? If love doth not send it, and grace end it—which appears when thou growest worse by it—it is a curse, though sweet to thy sense. There are sweet poisons as well as bitter cordials. The saints commonly have greater advantage from their afflictions in the world, than enjoyments of the world. Their eyes are oftener enlightened with wormwood than honey—those dispensations that are bitter and unpleasing to sense, than those that are sweet and luscious.

5. Mercies are either personal, or such as we receive in partnership with others—and these must be recognized as well as the other. ‘Pardon, O God,’ said he, ‘my other men’s sins.’ Thus, ‘Blessed be God,’ say thou, ‘for my other men’s mercies.’ Haply, Christian, thou hast prayed for a sick friend, and he is restored to health: for another in distress of spirit, and the Comforter at last is come to him. Now thou who hadst an adventure in his bottom, hast a mercy also in the return that is made to him, and therefore art to bless God with him. He that prays for his friend, and joins not with him in thankfulness when the mercy is given, is like one that is a means to bring his friend into debt, but takes no care to help him out. Thy friend, Christian, needs thy aid much more to pay the thanks, than to borrow the mercy, because this is the harder work of the two. But above all mercies to others, be sure church mercies and nation mercies be not forgot.

[Ten directions how to frame our thanksgivings.]

Second. You have heard what is the subject of our praises and thanksgivings; we shall now lay down some directions how we are to frame our thanksgivings.

1. Direction. Be sure the thing thou prayest God for be found among the good things of the promise. That is the compass by which we are to steer our course, as in the petitionary, so also in the gratulatory, part of prayer. If it be not in the promise it is not a mercy, and so not the subject of thanksgiving. When some prosper in their wickedness, they are so bold as to thank God they sped so well. Now, if it be grievous sin for a man to bless himself in any wicked way, Deut. 29:19, much more horrid is it to bless God for prospering therein. By the former, he only voucheth his own sin—which indeed is bad enough—but by the other he makes God a party with him, and tempts the Lord to own it also. It is a good speech of Bernard to this purpose, who, comparing those that on the one hand thank God for their success in wickedness, with hypocrites, who praise him for the good things they receive, saith, isti impiè mala suo Deo, isti dei bona fraudulenter intorquent sibi (Serm. 45 super Cant.)—the one impute their sin to God, the other ascribe the glory of his mercies to themselves. God cannot accept thy praise, unless he first approve thy fact. He that receives a bribe is guilty of the fault. And dare you thus tempt the holy One? If the God you serve were like the heathens’ idols, the matter were not much. When the Philistines had practiced their cruelty on Samson, they present his head to their god. The devil desires no better sacrifices than the fruit of men’s sins. But the holy One of Israel abhors all wicked praises. ‘The hire of a whore, was not to be offered,’ Deut. 23:18.

2. Direction. Let all your praises be offered up in Christ. ‘By him…let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God,’ Heb. 13:15. ‘Ye…are…an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ,’ I Peter 2:5. Couldst thou pen never so rare a panegyric⁹, couldst thou flourish it with never so much art or rhetoric, and deliver it with the greatest passion and zeal possible, all this would be harsh and grate the Almighty’s ear except sounded through Christ. It is not the breath poured into the open air but passing through the trumpet or some other instrument—where it is formed into a tunable sound—that makes it pleasing music. Possibly when thou prayest for a mercy thou shelterest thyself under Christ’s wing, and usest his name to procure thy admission —because conscious of thine own unworthiness to receive what thou askest—but, when thou praisest God, thy errand being not to beg and receive but to give, thou expectest welcome. He that brings a present shall surely find the door open. Yes, if thy gift were suitable to the great God. But who art thou that the great God should take a present at thy hand? If thou beest not worthy of the least mercy thou beggest, then surely thou art unworthy of this honour to have thy thank-offering accepted. Thou needest Christ’s mediation for the one as much as for the other.

3. Direction. Stay not in generals, but descend to the particular instances of God’s mercy towards thee in thy thanksgivings. Est dolus in generalibus —there is guile in generals. It bewrays a slighty spirit, if not a false, when in confession of sin we content ourselves with a general indictment, ‘I am a sinner—a great sinner,’ and there to stop, without a particular sense of the several breaches made in the law of God. Neither is here a better symptom when a man puts God off with a compliment at distance for his goodness and mercy in general, but takes no notice of the particular items which swell and make up the total sum. Now, to be able to do this, it will be necessary that thou takest special notice of God’s daily providence to thee and thine, yea, and to the church of Christ also. Lay up these in thy heart, as Mary did our Saviour’s words, for the matter of thanksgiving against the time of prayer; this true good husbandry for thy soul. You do not expect to find that money in your chest which you never laid up there; neither will you readily find in your heart to praise God for those mercies which you never committed to your memory. It is to be feared the man means not to pay that debt honestly which he doth not set down in his book. Ps. 107, when the psalmist there had stirred them up to thankfulness for the mercies of God in creation and providence, his conclusion is worthy of remark, ‘Whoso is wise, and will observe these things, even they shall understand the lovingkindness of the Lord,’ ver. 43. As if he had said, The reason why so little praise is given for such great works of mercy, is because men see not the lovingkindness of God in them; and they see not this because they observe not those; and they observe not those because they have not wisdom. It is not a library that makes a scholar, but wisdom to observe and gather the choice notions out of his books. None want mercies to bless God for. Divine providence is a large volume, written thick and close with mercies from one end of our life to the other; but few, alas! have a heart to read in it, and fewer have wisdom to collect the choice passages of it for such a holy purpose as this is.

4. Direction. Excite thy praising graces. David stirs up all that is within him to praise God, Ps. 103; that is, all the powers and graces of his soul. To instance but in two or three.

(1.) Humility. A proud man cannot well tell how to beg, yet selfishness may make him stoop to it; but in thankfulness he must needs be a bungler, for this is a high piece of self-denial. ‘Not unto us, Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name be the praise.’ The proud man’s gift will cleave to his hand; he is unfit to set the crown on God’s head that hath a mind to wear it himself. We find indeed the tool in the Pharisee’s hand, but he cuts his work into chips. He seems to honour God with his mouth, but eats his words as he speaks them, and discovers plainly that he intends more to exalt himself than God: ‘I thank God I am not as this publican.’ This, ‘I thank God,’ comes in pro formâ; it is the publican he disdains, and himself that he applauds. You may easily think what a look ambitious Haman gave Mordecai when he held his stirrup, who desired himself to have been in the saddle. How, alas! can a proud heart give God that which he covets himself? No man, saith Luther, can pray sanctificetur nomen tuum till he first be able to pray profanetur nomen meum—sanctified be thy name, till he be willing his own name should be debased.

Labour therefore to vilify, nullify thyself; then, and not till then, thou wilt magnify, omnify thy God. None so zealous in begging as he that is most pinched with his want; none so hearty in his thanks as he that hath most sense of his unworthiness. And who can think better of himself that is thoroughly acquainted with himself? If God had not set thee up, what stock couldst thou have found of thy own? Thou wert as bare as a shorn sheep, naked camest thou into the world, and ever since thou hast been cast upon thy God, even as a poor child upon the charge of the parish. What hast thou earned by all the service thou hast done him? Not the bread of thy poorest meal. And art thou yet proud? Bernard compares Joseph’s carriage with his master and the grateful soul’s with God thus together: Joseph, saith the father, knew that his master, who put all he had into his hands, yet excepted his wife, and therefore accounted it too base an ingratitude to take her from his master’s bed who had been so kind to him in his house. Thus, saith he, God freely gives his mercies into the saint’s hands but excepts his glory. Therefore the gracious soul takes what God gives thankfully; but leaves the praise of them, which God reserves for himself humbly.

(2.) Love and joy. Amour et gaudium faciunt musicum—love and joy, it is said, make a musician. Indeed then this music of praise is best—in heaven, I mean—where the graces are perfect.

(a) Excite thy love. This is an affection that cannot keep within door, but must be sallying forth in the praises of God. Austin, speaking of heaven, breaks out thus, ibi vacabimus et videbimus, videbimus et amabimus, amabimus et laudabimus, laudabimus et cantabimus—in heaven we shall have nothing to do but to behold the face of God, and seeing him we shall love him, loving him we shall praise him, and praising we shall sing and rejoice. Love and thankfulness are like the symbolical qualities of the elements—easily resolved into each other. David begins with ‘I love the Lord, because he hath heard my voice,’ Ps. 116:1. And, to enkindle this grace into a greater flame, he aggravates the mercies of God in some following verses; which done, then he is in the right cue for praises, and strikes up his instrument, ‘What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits?’ Ps. 116:12. The spouse, when once she was thoroughly awake, pondering with herself what a friend had been at her door, and how his sweet company was lost through her unkindness, shakes off her sloth, riseth, and away she goes after him. Now, when with running after her beloved she had put her soul into a heat of love, then she breaks out into an encomium of her beloved, praising him from top to toe, Song 5:10. That is the acceptable praising which comes from a warm heart; and he that would warm his heart must use some holy exercise to stir up his habit of love, which, like natural heat in the body, is preserved and increased by motion.

(b) Excite thy joy. I will sing ‘with joyful lips,’ Ps. 63:5. A sad heart and a thankful hardly can dwell together—I mean, sad with worldly sorrow. The disciples for sorrow could not hold open their eyes to pray, much more sure were they unfit to praise. This indeed makes the duty of praise and thanksgiving more difficult than to pray, because our joy here is so often quenched and interrupted with intervening sins and sorrows that this heavenly fore seldom burns long clear on the Christian’s altar from which his praises should ascend. Temptations and afflictions, they both drive the soul to prayer and more dispose it for prayer; but they untune his instrument for praise. Hannah, she wept and prayed, but durst not eat of the peace-offering, the sacrifice of praise, because she wept. It behoves us therefore the more to watch our hearts lest they be indisposed by any affliction for this duty. Do with thy soul as the musician in wet weather doth with his instrument, which he hangs not in a moist nasty room, but where it may have the air of the fire. Art thou under affliction? let not thy soul pore too long on those thy troubles, but bring it within the scent of God’s mercies that are intermingled with them. Sit near this fire of God’s love in Christ —warm thy heart with meditation on spiritual promises—while thou art under bodily pressures, and thou shalt find, through God’s blessing thy heart in some comfortable tune to praise God in the saddest and most rainy day that can befall thee in all thy life. Thus David could make music in the cave: ‘My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed: I will sing and give praise,’ Ps. 57:7.

5. Direction. Content not thyself with a bare narrative, but give every mercy its proper accent according to the enhancing circumstances thereof. There is great difference in two that sing the same song. From one you have only the plain song; the other descants and runs division upon it, in which consists the grace of music. The mercies of God affect our hearts as they are dressed forth. If we put on them their rich habiliments—the circumstances, I mean, that advance them, they appear glorious to our eyes and enlarge our hearts in praises for them; but considered without these, we pass them slightly. God himself, when he would express the height of his love to his people, presents them to his own eye, not as now they are, but as clothed with the glory he intends them. ‘As the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee,’ Isa. 62:5. At the wedding day the best clothes are put on. Thus do thou, to draw out thy thankfulness for mercies, consider them in the circumstances that may render them most glorious in thine eye. Some emperors have not suffered every one to draw their picture, lest they should be disfigured by their bungling pencil. Truly, slighty praises disfigure the lovely face of God’s mercy. They are but few that draw them to life. To do this much study and meditation are requisite. ‘The works of the Lord are sought out of them that have pleasure in them.’ The curious limner studies the face of the man before he makes his draught. Praise is a work not done in a trice, the lesson must be pricked before it can be sung. Read therefore the word, and learn from the saints there recorded what aggravating circumstances they have observed in recognizing their mercies.

Sometimes we have them setting the accent upon the speedy return of their prayers, ‘In the day when I cried thou answeredst me,’ Ps. 138:3. This is a print that superadds a further excellency to the mercy. It was but knock, and have; come, and be served. While the church were at God’s door praying for Peter’s deliverance, Peter is knocking at theirs to tell them their prayer is heard.

Sometimes from the sinful infirmities which mingled with their prayers. Now that mercy would come with a ‘notwithstanding these,’ and steal upon them when they had hardly faith to wait for them, this hath exceedingly endeared the goodness of God to them. ‘I said in my haste, All men are liars. What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits?’ Ps. 116:11, 12.

Sometimes from the greatness of their strait: ‘This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.’ ‘O taste and see that the Lord is good,’ Ps. 34:6, 8. So, ‘Who remembered us in our low estate: for his mercy endureth for ever,’ Ps. 136:23. Indeed this must needs raise high appreciating thoughts of the mercy. The water that God gave Israel out of the rock is called honey, because it came in their extreme want, and so was as sweet to them as honey. Silver is gold when given to a poor man that must else have died for lack of bread.

Sometimes from the frequent returns of God’s goodness and expressions of his care; thy mercies ‘are new every morning,’ Lam. 3:23. ‘Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth: yet they have not prevailed,’ Ps. 129:2. ‘Hitherto hath the Lord helped us,’ I Sam. 7:12. This gives such an accent as, without it, the mercy cannot be pronounced with its due emphasis. A course of sin is worse than an act of sin. ‘Their course is evil,’ Jer. 23:10. So a course of mercy from time to time speaks more love. Some that could beteem¹⁰ a single alms on a beggar, would beat him from their door should he lie there and make it a trade.

Sometimes from the peculiarity of the mercy, they take notice of the distinction God makes in issuing out his favours: ‘He hath not dealt so with any nation: and as for his judgments, they have not known them. Praise ye the Lord,’ Ps. 147:20. ‘Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world?’ John 14:22—Let these few hints suffice to set thee on work to find out the other. Without this, we rob God of the best part of our sacrifice; as if a Jew had stripped off the fat and laid the lean on God’s altar; or, as he did by his idol, who took off the cloak of silver it had and put on his own threadbare one in the room of it. The mercies thou receivest are great and rich; give not him thy beggarly praises. He expects they should bear some proportion to his mercy: ‘Praise him for his mighty acts: praise him according to his excellent greatness,’ Ps. 150:2.

6. Direction. Distinguish between mercy and mercy; let the choicest mercies have thy highest praises. It shows a naughty heart to howl and make a great noise in prayer for corn and wine, and in the meantime to be indifferent or faint in his desires for Christ and his grace. Nor better is it, when one acknowledges the goodness of God in temporals, but takes little notice of those greater blessings which concern another life. You shall have sometimes a covetous earthworm speak what a blessed time and season it is for the corn and the fruits of the earth —that fit his carnal palate, as the pottage did Esau’s —but you never hear him express any feeling sense of the blessed seasons of grace, the miracle of God’s patience that such a wretch as he s out of hell so long, the infinite love of God in offering in offering Christ by the gospel to him. He turns over these as a child doth a book, till he hits on some gaud and picture, and there he stays to gaze. Christ and his grace, with other spiritual blessings, he skills not of, he cares not for, except they would fill his bags and barns. Now, shall such a one pass for a thankful man? will God accept his praises for earth that rejects heaven? that takes corn and wine with thanks, and bids him keep Christ to himself with scorn? saying, as Esau when his brother offered him his present, ‘I have enough?’ A gracious heart is of another strain: ‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ,’ Eph. 1:3. Indeed God gives temporals to make us in love with spirituals, yea, with himself that gave them; as the suitor sends the token to get the love of the person.

Again, as we are to distinguish between mercy and mercy, so even in these lower mercies that concern this life, because thou layest the accent of thy thankfulness on the spiritual part of them. In every outward mercy there is food for the flesh and food for the spirit; that which pleaseth the sense and that which may exercise our grace. Is it health? The carnal heart is most taken with it, as it brings the joy of his natural life to him, which sickness deprived him of; but that which, above all, pleaseth a saint, is the opportunity that comes with it for his glorifying God in his place and generation: ‘I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God,’ Ps. 42:11. Is it an estate that God casts in? The carnal wretch values it for his private accommodation, as if it were given for no higher end than to spend it upon himself, or enrich his family; but the gracious soul blesseth God that gives him to give to the necessity of others, and counts a large heart to be a greater mercy than a full purse. David did not bless himself in his abundance, but blessed God that gave him a heart to return it again into the bosom of God, from whom he received it: ‘But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort?’ I Chr. 29:14.

7. Direction. Let not thy praises be transient—a fit of music, and then the instrument hung by the wall, till another gaudy day of some remarkable providence makes thee take it down. God will not sit at such a niggard’s table, who invites him to a thanksgiving feast once for all the year. God comes not guestwise to his saints’ house, but to dwell with them; he ‘inhabits the praises of Israel,’ Ps. 22:3. That day thou blessest not God thou turnest him out of doors. David took this up for a life-work, ‘As long as I live I will praise thee.’ ‘A lying tongue is but for a moment,’ saith Solomon, Prov. 12:19. Something drops from a liar within a while that discovers his falsehood; the tongue that lies in praising of God is thus for a moment. He can curse God with that tongue to‑morrow with which he praiseth him to‑day.

8. Direction. Thou must not only continue, but grow in thy praises. As the tide increaseth the ship is lift higher on the waters; as your crop increaseth your barns are enlarged; as you grow richer you advance in your garb and port; in a word, as your bodies grow so you make your clothes bigger. Every day swells the tide of your mercies, adds to your heap, increases your treasure, and heightens your stature. They are ‘new,’ saith the prophet, ‘every morning,’ Lam. 3:23; they grow whether thou sleepest or wakest. Now, as the coat thou didst wear when thou wert a child would not become thee now thou art a man; so neither will the garment of praise, which thou didst clothe thy soul with when a young convert, become thee now thou art an old disciple. Thou standest deeper in God’s books than before, and God expects according to what every man hath received. Yourselves are not so bad husbands, but you would improve your estates to the height. Would you let a farm now by the rate it bare forty or fifty years ago? why then may not God raise the rent of his mercies also? Look back, Christian, and see how well the world is mended with thee since thou didst first set up. May be thou canst say with Jacob, ‘I passed over with my staff, and behold now I am become two bands.’

Well, see what thou hast more, in health, estate, in gifts, graces, or comforts, than thou hadst formerly, and then compare thy present thankfulness with what it was before these additions were made to thy stock and treasure. Would it not be a shame to thee if it should be found not to have grown as the goodness of God to thee hath done, much more if it hath shrunk and grown less? And yet how common are such instances of ingratitude? The freer God is with his mercy, the more close and gripple they are in their thankful returns. When poor, they could be thankful for a short meal of coarse fare, more than they are now for their varieties and dainties. When sick, a few broken sleeps that amounted to an hour or two rest in a night, O how affected were their hearts for this mercy! Whereas now they can rise and take little notice of the goodness of God, that gives them their full rest night after night without interruption. Thus as the days lengthen, so the cold strengthens. But is it not strange to see a man grow colder in his love to God, as the sun of God’s mercy riseth higher and shines hotter upon him? O it is sad to see the heap increase, and the heart waste; to find a man grow richer in mercy, and poorer in thankfulness.

9. Direction. Let thy praises be real. Words, we say, pay no debts. There goes more to thankfulness than a mouthful of windy praises, which pass away with the sound they make. A gracious heart is too wise to think God will be put off with a song. He will give God that, but it is the least he intends. ‘The Lord is my strength and song,…and I will prepare him an habitation,’ Ex. 15:2. Aye, here it sticks, building is chargeable; thankfulness is a costly work. Shall I offer to God that which cost me nothing? saith David to Araunah. Cheap praises are easily obtained, but when it comes to charges, then many grow sick of the work. The Jews could sing a ‘song’ when delivered from Babylon, Ps. 137; but it was long before they could find in their hearts to build God ‘a habitation.’ The time was not come for that. They might have said, their heart was not come. They had money and time enough to build their own nests, but none for God, though herein they played the fools egregiously, for as fast as they built at one end, God pulled down at the other. Some have been of their mind in our times; instead of finding God a habitation and loving our nation to build synagogues, they have pulled them down and carried the beams to their own houses. Excellent artists, in taking down ministers, ministry, and their maintenance, whereby the gospel should be upheld! If this be the way to thrive, God gave his people ill counsel when he said, Consider now from this day I will bless you, Hag. 2:18. But you will ask what I mean by real praises?

[What is meant by real praises.]

(1.) Our praises are real when they are cordial —‘All that is within me, bless his holy name,’ Ps. 103:1—when his mercies beget amiable thoughts of God in our hearts. We read of ‘cursing God in the heart,’ Ps. 106.1 {better: Job 1:5}; which then is done when we have base, low, unbecoming thoughts of his greatness and goodness. And, on the contrary, when the mercies of God imprint such an image in the heart of him as livelily represents these his attributes, then thou blessest God in thy heart, by adoring his majesty, reverencing his holiness, delighting in his love, and fearing his goodness. Here is real thankfulness. What is laus—praise or honour, but a reflection of the person’s excellency we commend? Now, as the glass represents the image of the person that looks on it, so the thankful soul reflects those glorious attributes again upon God which he puts forth in his mercies. Thus God sees his face in a true glass, which the thankful soul holds up while he praiseth him. Whereas an unthankful heart, like a broken glass, distorts and disfigures the beautiful face of God, by conceiving such low thoughts of God as are unworthy of his glorious attributes.

(2.) Our praises are real when they are obediential. God accounts those mercies forgotten which are not written with legible characters in our lives, ‘They forgat God their Saviour,’ Ps. 106:21. That of Joshua is observable, ch. 8:32. Upon their victory over the city Ai, an altar is built as a monument of that signal mercy. Now mark, what doth God command to be written or engraved on the stones thereof? One would have thought the history of that day’s work should have been the sculpture, but it is ‘the copy of the law of Moses, which he wrote in the presence of the children of Israel,’ ver. 32, whereby he plainly showed the best way of remembering the mercy was not to forget to keep the law. Saul could not blind Samuel’s eyes with his many good‑morrows, that the people saved the best of the cattle for sacrifice: ‘Hath the Lord,’ saith he, ‘as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams,’ I Sam. 15:22. As if he had said, ‘What, Saul! thinkest thou to bribe God with a sacrifice, while thou art disobedient to his command? Dost thou take the swan, and stick the feather in the room? deny him thine own heart to obey his word, and give him a beast’s heart in sacrifice for it? Is this the oblation which he hath required, or will accept?’ Truly God riseth hungry from our thanksgiving-dinners, if obedience be not a dish at the table. Without this we and our sacrifices may burn together. God will pluck such from the horns of the altar, and take them off their knees with their hypocritical praises, to pay this debt in another kind. ‘If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land,’ Isa. 1:19. Then, and not till then, will God eat of your sacrifices, and yourselves taste the sweetness of your enjoyments. ‘He meeteth him that rejoiceth and worketh righteousness,’ Isa. 64:5. Not either apart, but both together are required; not rejoice without working righteousness, nor that without rejoicing in the work. The threatening is levelled against Israel not barely because they served not God, but because they served him not ‘with gladness in the abundance of his mercies,’ Deut. 28. God delights to have his mercy seen in the cheerful countenance of his servants while they are at his work, which may tell the spectators they serve a good master.

(3.) Then they are real praises when they end in acts of mercy. Very observable is that place, ‘By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name,’ Heb. 13:15. Now mark the very net words, ‘but to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.’ As if he had said, Think not you may thank God to save charges, be willing to both or neither. God’s goodness to us should make us merciful to others. It were strange indeed a soul should come out of his tender bosom with a hard uncharitable heart. Some children do not indeed take after their earthly parents; as Cicero’s son, that had nothing of his father but his name. But God’s children partake all of their heavenly Father’s nature. Philosophy tells us that there is no reaction from the earth to the heavens. They, indeed, shed their influences upon the lower world, which quicken and fructify it, but the earth returns none back to make the sun and stars shine the better. David knew very well that ‘his goodness extended not unto God,’ but this made him reach forth to his brethren, ‘to the saints that are in the earth,’ Ps. 16:2, 3. Indeed, God hath left his poor saints to receive his rents we owe unto him for his mercies. An ingenuous guest, though his friend will take nothing for his entertainment, yet to show his thankfulness will give something to his servants. At Christ’s return, how doth he salute his saints? Not, ‘Come ye blessed,’ ye have kept such a thanksgiving day, and filled the air with your songs of praise; but, When ‘I was an hungered and ye gave me meat, naked and ye clothed me,’ Matt. 25. Alms-deeds in Saint Paul’s language are called fruit: ‘When therefore I have performed this, and have sealed to them this fruit,’ Rom. 15:28; implying that all our profession without these good works are but leaves. This is the solid fruit of our faith —love to God and thankfulness for his mercies. Neither must these acts of charity be restrained to the money in thy purse or bread in thy cupboard, though these are included: there are poor souls as well as poor bodies, that need relief.

Hath God plucked thee out of Sodom—out of Satan’s bondage? Where are then thy bowels of compassion to those who are yet chained to the devil’s post? What means dost thou use to redeem these captives out of their worse than Turkish slavery? The argument God urgeth to Israel to use strangers kindly, is to remember they were once so, Deut. 23:7. Hast thou, after long lying in the dungeon of spiritual darkness and troubles of conscience, had thy head lift up with the comforts of the Spirit—received into the presence of God, as Pharaoh’s butler was to his prince’s court? how canst thou think thyself thankful, while thou forgettest others that lie in the same prison-house, under as sad fears and terrors as once thyself did? ‘Unto the upright there ariseth light in the darkness: he is gracious, and full of compassion, and righteous,’ Ps. 112:4. Surely this will hold, if in any, then in this case. In a word—that I may not be thought to make you hard to the outward man, while I stir up your charity to the inward—hath God raised thee to an estate? May be thy pilgrim’s staff, with Jacob’s, is turned to two troops? Dost thou now show the kindness of God to his poor members? as David, who inquired if there were none of the house of Saul. O how unlike are we to the saints of primitive times! They would run to meet an object for their charity, and we run from them. They considered the poor, what they wanted, how they might relieve them, yea, they ‘devised liberal things;’ but we consider and contrive how we may save our purse best. They were willing to part with all in case of extremity, while we grudge a little from our superfluity; laying that, by pride, on our backs which should cover the poor’s; throw that to our hawks and hounds which should refresh the bowels of the poor; yea, spend more in our drunken meeting, a miser’s feast, or a wrangling suit at law, than we can be willing to give in a year to the necessitous members of Christ.

(4.) Our praises are real when they produce a stronger confidence on God for the future. Who will say that man is thankful to his friend for a past kindness that nourishes an ill opinion of him for the future, and dares not trust him when he needs him again? This was all that ungrateful Israel returned to God for his miraculous broaching the rock to quench their thirst, ‘Behold, he smote the rock, can he give bread also?’ Ps. 78:20. This indeed was their trade all along their wilderness march. Wherefore God gives them their character, not by what they seemed to be while his mercies were piping hot, and the feast stood before them—then they could say, ‘God was their Rock, and the high God their Redeemer’—but by their temper and carriage in straits. When the cloth was drawn, and the feast taken out of their sight, what opinion had they then of God? Could they sanctify his name so far as to trust him for their dinner to‑morrow who had feasted them yesterday? Truly no. As soon as they feel their hunger return, like froward children they are crying, as if God meant to starve them. Wherefore God spits on the face of their praises, and owns not their hypocritical acknowledgments, but sets their ingratitude upon record, ‘They forgat his works, and waited not for his counsel.’ O how sad is this, that after God had entertained a soul many a time at his table with choice mercies and deliverances, these should be so ill husbanded, that not a bit of them all should be left to give faith a meal, thereby to keep the heart from fainting, when God comes not so fast to deliver as we desire! He is the most thankful man that ponders up the mercies of God in his memory, and can feed his faith with the thoughts of what hath done for him, so as to walk in the strength thereof in present straits. When Job was on the dunghill, he forgot not God’s old kindnesses, but durst trust him with a knife at his throat, ‘Though he slay me yet will I trust in him.’ He that distrusts God, after former experience, is like the foolish builder, Matt. 7—he rears his monument for past mercies on the sand, which the next tide of affliction washeth away.

10. Direction. Thou must not only praise God thyself while on the stage of this earth, but endeavour to transmit the memorial of his goodness to posterity. The psalmist, speaking of the mercies of God, saith, ‘We will not hide them from their children, shewing to the generation to come the praises of the Lord,’ Ps. 78:4. Children are their parents’ heirs, they enter upon their estates. It were unnatural for a father, before he dies, to bury up his treasure in the earth, where his children should not find or enjoy it. Now the mercies of God are not the least part of his treasure, nor the least of his child’s inheritance, being both helps to their faith, matter for their praise, and spurs to their obedience: ‘Our fathers have told us, what work thou didst in their days, in the times of old; how thou didst drive out the heathen,’ &c., Ps. 44:1-3. From this they ground their confidence, ‘Thou art my King, O God: command deliverances for Jacob,’ ver. 4; and excite their thankfulness, ‘In God we boast all the day long, and praise thy name for ever,’ ver. 8. Indeed, as children are their parents’ heirs, so they become in justice liable to pay their parents’ debts. Now, the great debt which the saint at death stands charged with, is that which he owes to God for his mercies, and therefore it is but reason he should tie his posterity to the payment thereof. Thus mayest thou be praising God in heaven and earth at the same time.

USE OR APPLICATION.

[Reproof to the ungrateful world, and exhortation to saints.]

We shall wind up this head with a double application of reproof and exhortation.

Use First. Of reproof to the ungrateful world. How few, alas! can we find so ingenuous as to pay this little quit-rent to the great Lord of this world’s manor for all the mercies they hold of him! Some are such brutes that, like swine, their nose is nailed to the trough in which they feed. They have not the use of their understanding so far as to lift up their eye to heaven and say, there dwells that God that provides this for me, that God by whom I live, and from whom I have my livelihood. It were well if we knew not in all our towns where such brutes as these dwell. You would count it a sad spectacle to behold a man in a lethargy, with his senses and reason so blasted by his disease, that he knows not his nearest friends, and takes no notice of those that tend him or bring his daily food to him. How many such senseless wretches are at this day lying on his hands? Divine providence ministers daily supplies to their necessities, but they take no notice of his care and goodness. Others there are, that feloniously, yea sacrilegiously, set the crown of praise on their own head which is due alone to God. Thus Nebuchadnezzar writes his own name upon his palace, and leaves God out of the story: ‘Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?’ Dan. 4:30. Proud wretch! was not every stone he used in that pile cut out of God’s quarry? and for every skep of sand did he not come upon God’s ground? Thus the atheistical husbandman cons his plough and dung‑cart more thanks than the God of heaven, who ‘crowns the year with his goodness.’ The proud soldier stands upon his sword, daring to take the honour of his victory to himself, and not ascribe it to the Lord of hosts, who at his pleasure gives and takes away the heart from the mighty.

Yea, some, rather than God shall have it, will give it to any other. Thus Pope Adrian, in his blasphemous inscription on the gates of a college he built, abuseth God with Scripture language, ‘Utrecht planted me, Lovian watered me, and Cæsar gave the increase;’ which made one underwrite, nihil hic Deus fecit—it seems God did nothing for this man. Not that I think it unlawful to acknowledge our benefactors, as instruments in God’s hand for our good, but to blot out the name of God, our chief founder, to write the name of an underling creature, is a high piece of wickedness and ingratitude. I like that form which a good man used to his friend for a kindness: ‘I bless God for you, I thank God and you.’ He that will exact more, requires what we owe him not.

In a word, some, the worst of the three, instead of returning thanks to God for his mercies, abuse them to his dishonour. It is not more sad than true, that the goodness of God with many serves but to feed and nourish their lusts. They eat and drink at God’s cost, and then rise up to play the rebels against God; no weapons will serve them to use but the mercies he hath given them. It is too bad if the tenant pays not his easy rent; but to make strip and waste of the trees on his landlord’s ground, this is more intolerable. Yet such outrages are daily practised in the wicked world with the mercies of God.

Michael Balbus is infamous for his horrid ingratitude, who, the same night that the emperor had pardoned and released him, barbarously slew his saviour. And do not many, whom God lets out of the prison of affliction, lift up their traitorous knife at God, wounding his name with their oaths, drunkenness, and profaneness, as soon almost as the sentence of death is taken off and their prison door set open? To conclude, others that will needs pass for thankful, yet all the return is but windy praise—honour him with their lips, and pour contempt upon him in their lives. What music more harsh and unpleasing than to hear a harper sing to one tune with his voice and play another with his hand? O it grates in God’s ears when Jacob’s voice is attended with Esau’s rough hands. Truly, when I consider how the goodness of God is abused and perverted by the greatest part of mankind, I cannot but be of his mind that said maximum miraculum est Dei patientia et munificentia—the greatest miracle in the world is God’s patience and bounty to an ungrateful world. If a prince hath an enemy got into one of his towns, he doth not send them in provision, but lays close siege to the place, and doth what he can to starve them. But the great God, that could wink all his enemies into destruction, bears with them, and is at daily cost to maintain them. Well may he command us to bless them that curse us, who himself ‘does good to the evil and thankful.’ O what would not God do for his creature if thankful, that thus heaps the coals of his mercies upon the heads of his enemies!

But think not, sinners, that you shall escape thus. God’s mill goes slow, but it grinds small; the more admirable his patience and bounty now is, the more dreadful and unsupportable will that fury be which ariseth out of his abused goodness. Nothing blunter than iron, yet when sharpened it hath an edge that will cut mortally. Nothing smoother than the sea, yet when stirred into a tempest nothing rageth more. Nothing so sweet as the patience and goodness of God, and nothing so terrible as his wrath when it takes fire. Be therefore, in the fear of God, stirred up to bethink yourselves what you mean to do. It is the trick, they say, of distracted people to spite their dearest friends and nearest relations most. These above all they seek to mischief. But what folly and madness is it in thee to fly at the face of God with thy sins, that hath done more for thee than all thy friends, and can do more against thee than all thy enemies thou hast in the world! But the more to move thee,

1. Consider that God keeps an exact account of all his mercies thou receivest. You cannot steal God’s custom. He that could tell the prophet where his servant Gehazi had been, and what he had received of Naaman, will one day tell thee to a farthing every talent thou hast received of him. God hath, as a bag for thy sins, so a book for his mercies, and what he books he means to reckon for.

2. Consider how severely he hath dealt with those that never had so much mercy from him as thyself. If heathens are speechless in judgment, when God reckons with them for their mercies, O how confounded wilt thou be that goest from gospel dispensations to hold up thy hand at the bar before the Judge of all the world! ‘They are without excuse, because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful,’ Rom. 1:21. If the heathen that was not thankful for his penny, cannot lift up his hand in the day of the Lord, where wilt thou appear that hast so many hundred talents in thy hand to answer for?

Question. But may be, poor wretch, thou mayest now ask, what thou shouldst do to give God the praise of his mercies?

Answer. In a word, thou hast but one way to pay God this his tribute, and it is a strange one—even by running deeper into his debt than by all the mercies that yet thou hast received of him. Hear therefore, poor sinner, what I mean: That God—who hath given thee life and being—that hath exercised unspeakable patience towards thee—been at a vast expense in his daily providence upon thee, to preserve, feed, clothe, and maintain thee—all which have been most wretchedly abused by thee, and for it thy life become forfeited to his justice—doth yet offer a greater mercy than all these, even the Lord Jesus, whom, if thou wilt, with shame and sorrow for thy past sins, but come unto, and accept to be thy Lord and Saviour, then wilt thou be in a posture, and not till then, to give God the praise of his other mercies. He that rejects this, that is the greatest of all mercies, can never be thankful for any. It is Christ who alone can give thee a spirit of thankfulness. Not a Christian person in the world but is an unthankful person. ‘Evil’ and ‘unthankful’ are inseparable. O what a blessed gospel is this, that teacheth us here to pay debts by running deeper into the score!—to be thankful for less mercies, by accepting that which is infinitely greater!

Use Second. For exhortation to the saints; not to call you to this duty, which if you answer your name is undoubtedly your practice, but to quicken you in it, and make you more in love with it.

1. Consider it is a duty that becomes you well, ‘Praise is comely for the upright,’ Ps. 33:1. This garment of praise sits so well on none as on your back; you should not think yourselves dressed in a morning till you have it on. An unthankful saint carries a contradiction with it. ‘Evil’ and ‘unthankful’ are the twins that live and die together. As any ceaseth to be evil, he begins to be thankful.

2. Consider it is that which God both expects and promiseth himself at your hands; he made you for this end. When the vote passed in heaven for your being, yea happy being, in Christ, it was upon this account, that you should be ‘a name and a praise’ to him on earth in time and in heaven to eternity. Should God miss of this, he would fail of one main part of his design. What prompts him to bestow every mercy, but to afford you matter to compose a song for his praise? They are ‘a people, children that will not lie: so he became their Saviour,’ Isa. 63:8. He looks for fair dealing, you see, at your hands. Whom may a father trust with his reputation, if not a child? Where can a prince expect honour, if not among his courtiers and favourites? Your state is such as the least mercy you have is more than all the world can show besides. Thou, Christian, and thy few brethren, divide heaven and earth among you. What hath God that he withholds from you? Sun, moon, and stars are set up to give you light, sea and land have their treasure and store for your use. Others do but ravish them, you are the rightful heirs to them. They groan that any other should be served by them. The angels, bad and good, minister unto you; the evil, against their will, are forced, like scullions, when they tempt you to scour and brighten your graces, and make way for your greater comforts. Like Haman, they hold your stirrup, while you mount up higher in favour with God. The good angels are servants to your heavenly Father, and disdain not to carry you, as the nurse her master’s child in her arms. Your God withholds not himself from you. He is your portion, father, husband, friend, and what not. The same heaven you shall have to dwell in with him; the same table and fare. God is his own happiness, and admits you to enjoy himself. O what honour is this, for the subject to drink in his prince’s cup! ‘Thou shalt make them drink of the rivers of thy pleasures,’ Ps. 36:8. And all this, not as the purchase of your sweat, much less blood; the feast is paid for by another hand, and you are welcome; only he expects your thanks to the founder of it, at whose cost you are entertained. No sin-offering is imposed upon you under the gospel; thank-offerings are all he looks for.

3. God hath a book of remembrance for your services; he takes kind notice of the little good that is in you, and done by you. Not the least office of love to his name and house is overlooked, though mingled with much evil; he commands the one, pardons and pities you for the other. ‘There is found some good thing toward the Lord God of Israel,’ it was said of Jeroboam’s son, I Kings 14:13. What an honourable testimony doth God give of Asa, that ‘his was perfect all his days,’ II Chr. 15:17, though we find many wry steps he took. The little strength Philadelphia had must not be forgot. What a favourable apology doth Christ make for Joshua, accused by Satan for his filthy garments—‘Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?’ and for his drowsy disciples—‘The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak?’ Now shall God take notice of the little good in his saints, apologize for their infirmities, commend and reward their weak services, yea eternize their memory with honour, ‘The righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance,’ Ps. 112:6; and doth not he deserve to be exalted for his infinite perfections? praised and loved, who is all good, ever good, and doing good to them? Shall not he be tender of thy name, and thou be regardless of his honour, so as to entomb his precious mercies in the sepulchre of unthankfulness?

4. Consider what an ornament a thankful frame of heart is to religion. This commends God to the unbelieving world, who knows little more of him than your lives preach to them. They read religion in that character you print it, and make their report of God and his ways as they see you behave yourselves in the world. If you walk disconsolately, or grumble at divine providence, how they can believe the ways are so pleasant as they are told? We listen what the servant saith of his master. If he commends him, and goes cheerfully through his work, this gains him credit among his neighbours. It was a convincing testimony Daniel gave to the goodness of God, when he would praise him thrice a day with the hazard of his life. To see a poor Christian thankful for his little pittance, yea, in the midst of his afflictions, as if he had crowns and kingdoms at his dispose, an ordinary understanding would reason thus, Surely this man finds some sweetness in his God that we see not, and is better paid for his service than we know of. The joyful praise of dying saints in the midst of fiery flames, have made their spectators go home in love, not only with religion, but with martyrdom.

5. Consider the honour that is put upon you in this duty. To attend on a prince, though bareheaded and on the knee, is counted more honour for a nobleman, than to live in the country, and have the service of his fellow-subjects. Though we serve God all the day long, yet in acts of worship we have the honour immediately to attend on him, and minister to him. O blessed are they who may thus stand about him! Praise is the highest act of worship, and therefore to be continued in heaven’s blissful state. Whereas other graces shall be melted into love and joy, so other duties of worship, as hearing, praying, &c., into praise and thanksgiving. The priesthood was a great honour under the law. He chose Aaron and his tribe from among their brethren to serve at his altar; he would take that gift from their hand which he would not at a king’s. But in this gospel state every believer hath a more honourable priesthood, because he brings better sacrifices, the spiritual sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving. And while thou art honouring thy God, thou honourest thyself. The whole body shines with the beams of that crown which is put on the head.

6. Consider that thy praises will render thy prayers more grateful and successful. It was thought a good omen for Alexander’s future victories, that he was liberal to the gods in his sacrifices, throwing frankincense by handfuls into the fire. He is a niggard to himself that is so to his God. Remittatur in suum principium cæleste profluvium, quo uberius terræ refundatur (Bern. Serm. 42 in Cantic.)—let the river of God’s mercies be returned to pay its tribute to God, their source and fountain, that they may refund more abundantly to us again. You shall observe the saints in their greatest straits, when they have most to beg, deliver their prayers praise-wise. Jehoshaphat sends his priest praising God into the field, and God fights for him. David, in the cave, My heart is fixed, I will sing and give praise.’ Daniel, when a trap was laid for his life, ‘praiseth God thrice a day.’ Christ himself, when he would raise Lazarus, lifts up his eyes and blesseth God, ‘I thank thee, O Father,’ &c.; when he was to suffer, sings a hymn. A thankful heart cannot easily meet with a denial. ‘Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hand,’ Ps. 149:6.

—Sdb

— From Webster’s.

—From Webster’s.

— From Webster’s

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Footnotes

1. Niggard: a stingy or miserly person. From Webster’s. ↩

2. Feoffee, one put in possession of anything.—Ed. ↩

3. Used in this context, awful means to inspire awe, or filled with awe and respect; and not the more common and purely colloquial: terrible, bad, or objectionable. ↩

4. Progging;—(poss. derived from M.E. prokken, to beg) to prowl about, as in search of food or plunder; forage. >From Webster’s. ↩

5. Jakes:—an outdoor toilet, privy, outhouse. ↩

6. Valetudinarious; sickly, ill, in poor health. ↩

7. By outlandish, Rev. Gurnall means foreign or alien here. —SDB ↩

8. procer’ity, n. [L. proceritas, from procerus, tall.] ↩

9. panegyric: — A formal speech or writing praising a person or event; a high or hyperbolic praise; laudation. ↩

10. Beteem, sometimes beteeme, to give, bestow.—Ed. ↩