Christian's freight, but liis ballast, and therefore are to be desired to poise, not load the vessel ; they are not his portion, but his spending-nioney in his journey ; and no wise traveller desires to carry moi-c money about him than will defray his expenses.
CHAPTER LIII.
OF DEPRECATORY TRAYER.
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. 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,- — sin or suffering. First, Sin : this indeed is the evil of evils, against which chiefly we are to i)ray. This is the only thing that is intrinsically evil in its own nature : suffering is rather an evil to us, than an evil in itself; and our suft'erings have both their being and malignity from the evil of our sins. Had there been no sin, there had been no suft'ering ; where that ceaseth, this is not to be found. There is no sorrow in heaven, because no sin. ' If thou doest evil, 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. First, Guilt : this is the proper effect and consequence 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 receives pardon ; — as a felon, who, may be, is not presently after the fact taken and brought into judgment, yet abides a debtor to the law, till he can obtain his pardon. Now, need I say anything to set out the dismal 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 but be in the gall of bitterness, they are joined together, Acts viii. 23. Guilt is a burden which the sinner can neither stand under nor throw off. This lies throbbing in his soul like a thorn in the flesh, and will not let him rest by day, or sleep l)y night : he turns himself on his bed, as Regulus in his barrel stuck with nails, not an easy part can he find in it. This makes him afraid of every disease, lest it should arrest him, and bring him by death to judgment. The mark that God set upon Cain, Gen. iv. 15, is by many 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 reads thus, ' Thou shalt be sighing and trembling in the earth.' No convulsive fit so distorts the body as sin doth the soul. Now, in this prayer against guilt, and for pardon, observe particidars.
First, 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 sins deprecated, or of the mercy desired. Nothing more hardens the heart of God against our prayer than the hardness of our heart in prayer ; and, on the contrary, there is no such way to melt God into pity, as for oiu* own hearts to dissolve into sorrow. He that would have us give wine to the sad heart, Prov. xxxi. 6, saves the promise of pardoning mercy, which holds the sweetest wine in God's cellar, 'to revive the heart of the contrite ones,' Isa, Ivii. 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 embellishment of expressions in it can do. While the publican smote on 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 can shed no tears for thy sin ? Here lies the difficultj' 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 a tender-hearted surgeon more willing to bind np the woimd of his fainting patient, than God is,
WITH ALT, PRAYER AXD SUPPLICATION. 70}