tempers, 1 Tim. ii. 8 ; for when passions are up, holy affections are down, and this is a very unfit season for closet-prayer ; for such prayers will never reach God's ear which do not first warm our own hearts. In the Muscovy churches, if the minister mistake in reading, or stammer in pronouncing his words, or speak any word that is not well heard, the hearers do very much blame him, and are ready to take the book from him, as unworthy to read therein. And certainly God is no less offended with the giddy, rash, passionate, precipitate, and inconsiderate prayers of those who, without a deliberate understanding, do send their petitions to heaven in post-haste. Solomon's advice is worthy of all commendation and acceptation : ' Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thy heart be hasty, to utter any thing before God,' Eccles. v. 2. ; or as the Hebrew may be read, ' Let not thy heart through haste be so troubled or disturbed, as to tumble over, and throw out words with- out wisdom or premeditation.' Good men are apt many times to be too hasty, rash, and unadvised in their prayers, complaints, and depre- cations. Witness David, Job, Jeremiah, Jonah, and the disciples.' No Christian to him that doth wisely and seriously weigh over his prayers and praises before he pours out his soul before the Lord. He never repents of his requests, who first duly deliberates what to re- quest ; but he that blurts out whatsoever lies uppermost, and that brings into the presence of God his rash, raw, tumultuary, and indigested peti- tions, confessions, complaints, &c., he doth but provoke God, he doth but brawl with God, instead of praying to him or wrestling with him. Suitors at court observe their fittest times and seasons of begging ; they com- monly take that very nick of time, when they have the king in a good mood, and so seldom or never come off but with good success.
Sometimes God strongly inclines the heart to closet-prayer ; some- times he brings the heart beforehand into a praying frame ; sometimes both body and soul are more enlivened, quickened, raised, and divinely inflamed than at other times ; sometimes conscience is more stirring, working, and tender, &c. Oh now strike while the iron is hot ! Oh now lay hold on all such blessed opportunities, by applying of thyself to private prayer. 0 sirs ! can you take your fittest times, seasons, and opportunities for ploughing, and sowing, and reaping, and buying and selling, and eating, and drinking, and marrying, &c. And cannot you as well take your fittest times and seasons to seek the Lord in your clo- sets ? Must the best God be put off with the least and worst of your time ? The Lord forbid. Neglect not the seasons of grace, slip not your opportunities for closet-prayer ; thousands have lost their seasons and their souls together.
(3.) My third advice and counsel is this, Be marvellous careful that you do Tiot perform closet duties merely to still your consciences. You must perform them out of conscience, but you must not perform them only to quiet conscience. Some have such a light set up in their under- standings, that they cannot omit closet-prayer, but conscience is upon their backs, conscience is still upbraiding and disquieting of them, and therefore they are afraid to neglect closet-prayer, lest conscience should
> Pa. xxxi. 2, 8 ; Pb. civi. 11 ; Job x. 1-3; Jer. xviii. 15, 18; Jonah iv. 2-4 ; Mat. XI. 20, 21.
Mat. VI. 6.] the privy key of heaven. 253
qiiestion, arraign, and condemn them for their neglects.^ Sometimes when men have greatly sinned against the Lord, conscience becomes impatient, and is still accusing, condemning, and terrifying of them ; and now in these agonies they will run to their closets, and cry, and pray, and mourn, and confess, and bitterly bewail their transgressions, but all this is only to quiet their consciences ; and sometimes they find upon their performance of closet-duties, that their consciences are a little allayed and quieted ; and for this very end and purpose do they take up closet-prayer as a charm to allay their consciences ; and when the storm is over, and their consciences quieted, then they lay aside closet-prayer, — as the monk did the net when the fish was caught, — and are ready to transgress again. O sirs ! take heed of this, for this is but plain hypocrisy, and will be bitterness in the end. He that performs closet-prayer only to bribe his conscience that it may not be clamorous, or to stop the mouth of conscience that it may not accuse him for sin, he will at length venture upon such a trade, such a course of sinning againt conscience, as will certainly turn his troubled conscience into a seared conscience, 2 Tim. iv. 2 ; and a seared conscience is like a sleepy lion, when he awakes he roars, and tears his prey in pieces; and §o will a seared conscience, when it is awakened, roar and tear the secure sinner in pieces.
When Dionysius's conscience was awakened, he was so troubled with fear and horror of conscience that, not daring to trust his best friends with a razor, he used to singe his beard with burning coals, as Cicero reports. All the mercy that a seared, a benumbed conscience doth afford the sinner, when it doth most befriend him, when it deals most seemingly kind with him, is this, that it will not cut, that it may kill ; it will not convince, that it may confound ; it will not accuse, that it may condemn ; it will spare the sinner a while, that it may torment him for ever ; it will spare him here, that it may gnaw him hereafter ; it will not strike till it be too late for the sinner to ward off the blow. Oh cruel mercy, to observe the sin, and let alone the sinner till the gates of mercy be shut upon him, and hell stands gaping to devour him : Gen. iv. 7, ' Sin lieth at the door.' The Hebrew word robets signifies to lie down, or couch, like some wild beast at the mouth of his cave, as if he were asleep, but indeed watcheth and waketh, and is ready to fly at all that come near it. 0 sirs ! sin is rather couchant thaij dormant ; it sleeps dog's sleep, that it may take the sinner at the greater advan- tage, and fly the more furiously in his face. But,
(4.) My fourth advice and counsel is this. Take heed of resting upon closet-duties, take heed of trusting in closet-duties.^ Noah's dove made use of her wings, but she did not trust in her wings, but in the ark ; so you must make use of closet-duties, but you must not trust in your closet-duties, but in Jesus, of whom the ark was but a type. There are many that go a round of duties, as mill horses go their round
1 An ill conscience, saith Austin, is like a scolding wife ; a man, saith he, that hath an 111 conscience, he cares not to be at home, he cares not to look into his own soul, but loves to be abroad.