Only let your present and past distress make you feel and acknowledge this two-fold great truth: _First_, That in and of yourself, you are nothing but darkness, vanity, and misery. _Secondly_, That of yourself, you can no more help yourself to light and comfort, than you can create an angel. People at all times seem to assent to these truths; but then it is an assent that has no depth or reality, and so is of little or no use: but your condition has opened your heart for a full conviction of them. Now give way, I beseech you, to this conviction, and hold these two truths in the same degree of certainty as you know two and two to be four, and then you are with the prodigal _come to yourself_, and above half your work is done.
*Being now in the full possession of these two truths, feeling them, as you feel your own existence, you are to give up yourself entirely to God in Christ Jesus, as into the hands of infinite love; firmly believing that God has no will towards you, but that of _infinite love_, and infinite desire to make you a partaker of his divine nature; and that it is as impossible for the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to refuse all that life and salvation which you want, as it is for you to take it by your own power.
*O drink deep of _this cup_! for the precious water of eternal life is in it. Turn unto God with _this faith_; cast yourself into this _abyss of love_: and then you will be in that state the prodigal was in, when he said, _I will arise, and go to my father, and will say unto him, father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son_; and all that will be fulfilled in you, which is related of him.
*Make this, therefore, the two-fold exercise of your heart: _now_, bowing yourself down before God, in the deepest sense and acknowledgment of your own nothingness and vileness; _then_, looking up unto God in faith and love, consider him as always extending the arms of his mercy towards you, and full of an infinite desire to dwell in you, as he dwells in angels in heaven. Content yourself with this simple exercise of your heart for awhile; and seek nothing in any book, but that which nourishes it.
*_Come unto me_, says the holy Jesus, _all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you_. Here is more for you to live upon, more light for your mind, more of unction for your heart, than in volumes of human instruction. Pick up the words of the holy Jesus, and beg of him to be the light and life of your soul: love the sound of his name: for Jesus is the love, the sweetness, the compassionate goodness, of the _Deity_ itself; which became man, that so men might have power to become the sons of God. Love and pity and wish well to every soul in the world; _dwell in love_, and then you _dwell in God_; hate nothing but the evil that stirs in your own heart.
*Teach your heart this prayer, till your heart continually saith, though not with outward words; “O holy Jesus: meek Lamb of God! Bread that came down from heaven! Light and life of all holy souls! help me to a true and living faith in thee. O do thou open thyself _within me_, with all thy holy nature, spirit, tempers, and inclinations, that I may be born again of thee, quickened and revived, led and governed by thy Holy Spirit.”
Prayer so practised, becomes the _life of the soul_, and the true _food of eternity_. Keep in this state of application to God; and then you will infallibly find it to be the true way of rising out of the vanity of time, into the riches of eternity.
The poverty of our fallen nature, the depraved workings of flesh and blood, cannot destroy us, so long as the _spirit of prayer_ works contrary to them, and longs for the light and spirit of heaven. Our natural evil loses its poison and death, and only becomes our _holy cross_, on which we happily die from ourselves and this world, into the kingdom of heaven.
Would you have done with error, scruple, and delusion? Consider the Deity to be the greatest love, the greatest meekness, the greatest sweetness, the _eternal unchangeable will to be a good and blessing to every creature_; and that all the misery, darkness, and death of fallen angels and fallen men, consist in their having lost their _likeness to this divine nature_. Consider yourself and all the fallen world, as having nothing to wish for, but by the _spirit of prayer_ to draw into your soul this divine, meek, loving, nature of God. Consider the holy Jesus as the _gift of_ God to your soul, to begin and finish this within you, in spite of every inward or outward enemy. These three infallible truths, heartily embraced, and made the nourishment of your soul, shorten and secure the way to heaven, and leave no room for error, scruple, or delusion.