aloud,' saith one, ' not with thy tongue, but with thy eyes ; not with thy words, but with thy tears ; for that is the prayer that maketh the most forcible entry into the ears of the great God of heaven.' Penitent tears are undeniable ambassadors that never return from the throne of grace without a gracious answer. Tears are a kind of silent prayers, which, though they say nothing, yet they obtain pardon ; and though they plead not a man's cause, yet they obtain mercy at the hands of God. As you see in that great instance of Peter, who, though he said nothing that we read of, yet weeping bitterly, he obtained mercy, Mat. xxvi. 75. I have read of Augustine, who, coming as a visitant to the house of a sick man, he saw the room full of friends and kindred, who were all silent, yet all weeping : the wife sobbing, the children sighing, the kinsfolk lamenting, all mourning ; whereupon Augustine uttered this short ejaculatory prayer, ' Lord, what prayer dost thou hear, if not these V Ver. 9, ' The Lord hath heard my supplication ; the Lord will receive my prayer.' God sometimes answers his people before they pray : Isa. Ixv. 24, ' And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer.* And sometimes while they are praying ; so it follows in the same verse, ' And while they are yet speaking I will hear.' So Isa. XXX. 19, 'He will be very gracious unto thee at the voice of thy cry : when he shall hear it, he will answer thee.' And sometimes after they have prayed, as the experiences of all Christians can testify. Sometimes God neither hears nor receives a prayer ; and this is the common case and lot of the wicked, Pro v. i. 28, Job xxvii. 9, Isa. i. 15. Sometimes God hears the prayers of his people, but doth not presently answer them, as in that case of Paul, 2 Cor. xii. 7-9 ; and sometimes God both hears and receives the prayers of his people, as here he did David's. Now in this instance of David, as in a glass, you may run and read the preva- lency of private prayer and of secret tears.
You may take another instance of this in Jonah : chap. ii. 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, * Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord hisGod out of thefish's belly,and said, I cried by reason of my affliction unto the Lord, and he heard me ; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice. For thou hadst cast me into the deep, into the midst of the seas, and the floods com- passed me about : all thy billows and thy waves passed over me. The waters compassed me about, even to the soul : the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head. When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord ; and my prayer came in unto thee, into thy holy temple. And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.' When Jonah was all alone, and in the midst of many dangers and deaths, when he was in the whale's belly, yea, in the belly of hell, — so called because horrid and hideous, deep and dismal, — ^yet then private prayer fetches him from thence. Let a man's dangers be never so many, nor never so great, yet secret prayer hath a certain omnipotency in it that will deliver him out of them all In multiplied afflictions, private prayer is most prevalent with God, In the very midst of drowning, secret prayer will keep both head and heart above water. Upon Jonah's private prayer, God sends forth his mandamus, and the fish serves Jonah for a ship to sail safe to shore. When the case is even desperate, yet then private prayer can do much with God. Private prayer is of that power tliat it can open
J 82 THE PRIVY KEY OF HEAVEN. [MaT. VI. 6.
the doors of leviathan, as you see in this great instance, which yet is reckoned as a thing not feasible, Job xli. 14.
Another instance of the prevalency of private prayer you have in that 2 Kings iv. 32-35, ' And when Elisha was come into the house, behold, the child was dead, and laid upon his bed. He went in there- fore, and shut the door upon them twain, and prayed unto the Lord.' Privacy is a good help to fervency in prayer. ' And he went up, and lay upon the child, and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands ; and he stretched himself upon the child, and the flesh of the child waxed warm. Then he re- turned, and walked in the house to and fro ; and went up, and stretched himself upon him : and the child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes.' Oh the power, the prevalency, the oinnipotency of private prayer, that raises the dead to life ! And the same effect had the private praj^er of Elijah in raising the widow's son of Zarephath to life, 1 Kings xvii. 18, et seq. The great prevalency of Moses his private prayers you may read in the following scriptures : Num. xii. 1, 2, ' And when the people complained, it displeased the Lord : and the Lord heard it : and his anger was kindled : and the fire of the Lord burnt among them, and consumed them that were in the uttermost parts of the camp. And the people cried unto Moses ; and when Moses prayed unto the Lord, the fire was quenched.' Moses by private prayer rules and overrules with God ; he was so potent with God in private prayer that he could have what he would of God. So .Num. xxi, 7-9 ; Ps. cvi. 23; Exod. xxxii. 9-14; Exod. xiv. 15-17. The same you may see in Nehemiah, chap. i. 11, compared with chap. ii. 4-8. So Luther, perceiving the cause of God and the work of reformation to be greatly strained and in danger, he went into his closet, and never left wrestling with God till he had received a gracious answer from heaven ; upon which he comes out of his closet to his friends leaping and triumphing with ViciTnus, mciTnus, we have overcome, we have overcome, in his mouth. At which time it is observed that there came out a proclama- tion from Charles the Fifth, that none should be further molested for the profession of the gospel. At another time, Luther being in private prayer for a sick friend of his, who was very comfortable and useful to him, had a particular answer for his recovery ; whereupon he was so confident, that he sent word to his friend that he should certainly re- cover ; and so it fell out accordingly. And so Latimer prayed with great zeal for three things : ,
(1.) That Queen Elizabeth might come to the crown ;
(2.) That he might seal the truth with his heart blood ; and
(3.) That the gospel might be restored once again, once again, which he expressed with great vehemency of spirit : all which three God heard him in.'
Constantino commanded that his effigies should be engraven, not as other emperors in their armour leaning, but as in a posture of prayer, kneeling, to manifest to the world that he won more by secret prayer tlian by open battles.
Mr Dod reports, that when many good people had often sought the Lord in the behalf of a woman that was possessed with the devil, and ' Foxe ; and cf. Sibbes sub nomine. — G.
Mat. VI. 6.] the privy key of heaven. 183