To pray always, is as much as if he had said, Pray in everything, according to what the same apostle says in another epistle : ' In everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.' Prayer is a catholic duty, with which, like a girdle, we are to be encompassed in all our affairs : it is to be as bread and salt on our table ; whatever else we have to our meal, these are not forgotten to be set on : whatever we do, or would have, prayer is necessary, be it small or great : not as the heathen, who prayed for some things to their gods, and not for others ; if poor, they prayed for riches ; if sick, for health ; but as for the good things of the mind, such as patience, contentment, and other virtues, they thought they could carve well enough in these for themselves, without troubling their gods. O, how proud is ignorance ! Let God give the less, and man will do the greater. But their folly is not so much to be wondered at as the irreligion of many among ourselves, who pro- fess to know the true God, and have the light of his word to direct them what worship to give him. Some are so brutish in their knowledge that they hardly pray to God for anything, others not for everything. May b^e they look upon pardon of sin, and salvation of their souls, as fruit on the toj) branches of a tree, out of the reach of their own arm ; and therefore now and then put up some slight prayers to God for them. But as for temporals, which seem to hang lower, they think they can pluck them by their own industry, without setting up the ladder of prayer to come at them. When we see how busy some are in laying their plots, and how seldom in pi-ayer, we cannot but think that they expect their safety from their own policy, and not fi-om God's providence ; or when we observe how hard they work in their shop, and how seldom and lazy they are at pi-ayer for God's blessing on their laboiu-, in their closet, we must conclude that these men promise themselves their estates more from their own labour than the Divine bounty. In a word, it is some great occasion that must bring many upon their knees before God in prayer : may be, when they have an extraordinary enterprise in hand, wherein they look for strong opposition or great difhculty, in such a case God shall have them knocking at his door, for now they are at their wits' end, and know not what to do ; but the more ordi- nary and common actions of their lives they think they can master at their pleasure, and so pass by God's door without bespeaking his presence or assist- ance ; thus one runs into his shop, and another into the field, and takes no notice that God is concerned in their employments. If to take a long journey by sea or land, where imminent dangers and hazards present themselves luito their thoughts, then God hath their company ; but if to stay at home or walk to and fro in their ordinary employments, they bespeak not the providential wing of God to overshadow them. This is not to pray always. If thou wilt, therefore, be a Christian, do not thus conduct thyself towards God, committing the greater transactions of thy life to him, and trusting thyself with the less, but ' acknowledge God in all thy ways, and lean not to thine own understanding in any.' By this thou shalt give him the glory of his universal providence, with which he encircles all his creatures and all their actions ; as nothing is too great to be above his power, so nothing too little to be beneath his care : he is the God of the valleys as well as of the mountains. The sparrow on the hedge, and the hair on our head, are cared for by him ; and this is no more derogatory to his glorious majesty than it was to make them at first. Nay, thou shalt by this not only give God his glory, but secure thyself; for there is no passage in thy whole life so minute and inconsiderable which (if God should withdraw his care and providence) might not be an occasion of a sin or a danger to thee ; and that which exposeth thee to these, calls upon thee to engage God for thy defence. First, The least passage in thy life may prove an occasion of sin to thee : at what a little wicket many times a great sin enters ! David's eye did but casually light on Bathsheba, and the good man's foot was presently in the devil's trap : hast thou not then need to pray that God would set a guard about thy senses wherever thou goest, and to cry with him, ' Keep back mine eyes from beholding vanity 1 ' Dinah went but to give her neighbours, the daughters of the land, a visit, and we may imagine that she little thought, when she went out, of playing the striunpet before she came home; yet, alas! we read how she was deflowered. What need, then, hast thou, before thou goest forth, to charge God with the keeping of thee, that so thou mayest be in his fear from
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