278 WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN PRATER. [BOOK VII.
of unbelief with respect unto Jesus Christ, nor instruct them in the nature of faith in him. No innate notions of our minds, no doctrines of the law, will reach hereunto. And to think to teach men to pray, or to help them out in praying, without a sense of unbelief, or the remainders of it, in its guilt and power, the nature of faith, with its necessity, use, and efficacy, is to say unto the naked and the hungry, " Be ye warmed and filled," and not give them those things that are needful to the body. This, therefore, belongs unto the work of the Spirit as a Spirit of supplication. And let men tear and tire them- selves night and day with a multitude of prayers, if a work of the Spirit of God in teaching the nature and guilt of unbelief, and the nature, efficacy, and use of faith in Christ Jesus, go not with it, all will be lost and perish. And yet it is marvellous to consider how little mention of these things occurreth in most of those composi- tions which have been published to be used as forms of prayer. They are generally omitted in such endeavours, as if they were things wherein Christians were very little concerned. The gospel positively and frequently determines the present acceptation of men with God or their disobedience, with their future salvation and condemnation, according unto their faith or unbelief; for their obedience or dis- obedience are infallible consequents thereon. Now, if things that are of the greatest importance unto us, and whereon all other things wherein our spiritual estate is concerned do depend, be not a part of the subject-matter of our daily prayer, I know not what deserveth so to be.
2. The matter of our prayer respects the depravation of our na- ture, and our wants on that account. The darkness and ignorance that is in our understandings; our unacquaintedness with heavenly things, and alienation from the life of God thereby; the secret work- ings of the lusts of the mind under the shade and covert of this darkness; the stubbornness, obstinacy, and perverseness of our wills by nature, with their reluctancies unto and dislike of things spiri- tual, with innumerable latent guiles thence arising, — all keeping the soul from a due conformity unto the holiness of God,- — are things which believers have an especial regard unto in their confessions and supplications. They know this to be their duty, and find by experi- ence that the greatest concernment between God and their souls, as to sin and holiness, doth lie in these thing's; and they are never more jealous over themselves than when they find their hearts least affected with them. And to give over treating with God about them, — for mercy in their pardon, for grace in their removal, and the daily reno- vation of the image of God in them thereby, — is to renounce all re- ligion and all designs of living unto God.
Wherefore, without a knowledge, a sense, a due comprehension of
CHAP. V.] THE SPIRIT'S WORK AS TO MATTER OF PRAYER. 279
these things, no man can pray as he ought, because he is unac- quainted with the matter of prayer, and knows not what to pray for. But this knowledge we cannot attain of ourselves. Nature is so cor- rupted as not to understand its own depravation. Hence some abso- lutely deny this corruption of it, so taking away all necessity of labouring after its cure and the renovation of the image of God in us; and hereby they overthrow the prayers of all believers, which the ancient church continually pressed the Pelagians withal. Without a sense of these things, I must profess I understand not how any man can pray. And this knowledge, as was said, wre have not of ourselves. Nature is blind, and cannot see them • it is proud, and will not own them ; stupid, and is senseless of them. It is the work of the Spirit of God alone to give us a due conviction of, a spiritual insight into, and a sense of the concernment of, these things. This I have else- where so fully proved as not here again to insist on it.
It is not easy to conjecture how men pray, or what they pray about, who know not the plague of their own hearts; yea, this ignorance, want of light into, or conviction of, the depravation of their nature, and the remainders thereof even in those that are renewed, with the fruits, consequents, and effects thereof, are the principal cause of men's barrenness in this duty, so that they can seldom go beyond what is prescribed unto them. And they can thence also satisfy themselves with a set or frame of well-composed words ; wherein they might easily discern that their own condition and concernment are not at all expressed if they were acquainted with them. I do not fix measures unto other men, nor give bounds unto their understand- ings ; only I shall take leave to profess, for my own part, that I can- not conceive or apprehend how any man doth or can know what to pray for as he ought, in the whole compass and course of that duty, who hath no spiritual illumination, enabling him to discern in some measure the corruption of his nature and the internal evils of his heart. If men judge the faculties of their souls to be undepraved, their minds free from vanity, their hearts from guile and deceit, their wills from perverseness and carnality, I wonder not on what grounds they despise the prayers of others, but should do so to find real humiliation and fervency in their own.