4. The fourth use is for advice. If the Lord have given us liberty at any time this way, that our hearts have been opened and enlarged, our faith strengthened, our eyes cleared, our consciences eased, so that our confessions have been large, bless God for this, and reckon it a most sin- gular mercy. We fail all herein for want of thanksgiving. We can com- plain in wants, strivings, deadness, and senseless hardness. Oh my wants ! Oh my ignorance ! Oh my blockishness ! Oh my hardness of heart ! Oh my infidelity ! But when our suit is granted, where is our thanksgiving ? If thou bring forth a right prayer, let God have a sacrifice. It is a great matter.
5. A fifth use is, for e.i:hortation, to set on prayer as a icork of great diffi- culty. We must learn to whet and sharpen our tools first. As the pro- phet David out of meditations thus made prayers, thus must we prepare matter ere we pray. As the blood runs to the veins from the liver, made of the best and purest food concocted and digested ; so we should prepare and digest fit matter, and not set on the same rashly and unpreparedly, as some think they may. Hear me : What will not men do in great important matters to compass them ? So doth it much behove thee to consider what may humble thee, what may raise thee, what may encourage thee, and draw thee on before thy God, that thou mayest in thy distress make a right and proper use of the nature of God, and all these excellent things considerable in him. When we set on it slightly, it is no marvel though our return of consolation be of the same stamp. So in our general prayers we should have a fellow-feeling to set on edge our desires ; but spe- cially if we would be men of prayer. Christ would have set our faith on work
THE KNOT OF PRAYER LOOSED. 247
that this might fly to heaven, to fetch from thence whatsoever is good for us. Now in this case it is a marvellous cunning to dung our faith, as men dung the root of a tree to make it fruitful ; though I confess some- what else is to be done to the body, as the pruning and lopping of the branches, such as the increasing and scouring of our hope and love, with other graces, by the Spirit, which, as it hath an office in the branches, so doth it also descend into the root and help us there ; so that the root of all prayer is the Spirit, but the root to thee is faith.
Now by what means should this be done, to dung our faith ?
As in war they use a double help for their further security and strength.
1. The main ;
2. The auxiliary helps ;
So is it with our faith. The helps are divers.
(1.) First, To labour to know and make clear our title to God, as a Father : which is here implied : ' How much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask them ?' To this, two main things belong : first, to consider the right how we come to this title ? Only by faith in the Son of God: as it is John i. 12, ' But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.' Nothing can make them become the sons of God, but by faith in the Son of God. To clear this, it must be by the sign as well as by the cause. The apostle tells us, Gal. iv. 6, ' And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, cry- ing, Abba, Father.' Dost thou think thyself now in a blessed estate ? Art thou one of the sons of God^for all his children are sons and daugh- ters by adoption ? Dost thou say thou art one of his sons and daughters ? And dost thou say thou believest, being one with Christ, and so art justi- fied by him ? Take this also with thee ; then he hath ' sent forth the Spirit of his Son into thy heart, to cleanse and sanctify thee : and hereby,' saith the apostle, 1 John iii. 21, ' we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.' If we make claim to justification, and omit sanctification : if no Spirit, we have no title of sons ; for we know the same apostle saith, ' "Whosoever is born of God, doth not commit sin, for his seed remaineth in him ; neither can he sin, because he is born of God,' 1 John iii. 9.
(2.) Next, To be careful to keep the evidences of our adojytion always in repair: I mean that we keep those graces which build us up hereunto, as fresh and flourishing as may be, that we read them fair in the time of trial. A man that in the country lays up his deeds and writings in the smoke, may find them so eaten and darkened, that when he should use them they cannot be read ; so I doubt many of our evidences are smoky, and so blotted, that in our need we cannot read them. Our care hath not been to lay them up safe, and keep them in repair, by which it comes to pass that now we are to seek in those things which belong to our peace.