ledge ourselves vile sinners, corrupt by nature, and of the same sinful mass with the rest of mankind, and then we confess our particular iniquities, and our special guilt. So in our petitions, we pray first for the churches of Christ all over the world, and his interest and his gospel throughout the earth, and then we petition for the churches in this nation, in this city, or that particular church of Christ to which we belong. Sometimes indeed there is a beauty also in summing up all the particulars at last in one general; as when we have praised God for his several perfections to the utmost of our capacity, we cry out, Lord, thou art exalted above all our praises; thou art altogether great and glorious. Or, when we have confessed several particular sins, we fall down before God, as persons that are all over defiled and guilty. When we have petitioned for particular mercies, we then ask that God who is able to do for us above what we can ask or think, that he would bestow all other comforts, and every blessing that he knows needful for us. But still this rule must be observed, that general and particular heads ought to be so distinguished, as to make our method of prayer natural and agreeable, II. Let things of the same kind, for the most part be put together in prayer. We should not run from one part to another, by starts and sudden wild thoughts and then return often to the same part again, going backward and forward in confusion: this bewilders the mind of him that prays, disgusts our fellow worshippers, and injures their devotion. This will lead us into vain repetitions, and we shall lose ourselves in the work. Yet I would give this limitation, that sometimes the same matter may come in naturally, under two or three parts of prayer, and be properly disposed of in two or three places by a judicious worshipper. As the mention of some of the attributes of God under the head of adoration, where we praise him for his own perfections: and under the head of pleading for mercy, when we use his power, his wisdom, or his goodness as an argument to enforce our petitions; and under the head of thanksgiving also, when we bless him for the benefits that proceed from his goodness, his power, or his wisdom; so in the beginning of a prayer in our invocation of God, we put in a sentence or two, of confession of our unworthiness, and of petition for divine assistance: so towards the conclusion of prayer, it is not amiss to use a sentence or two consisting of such matter as may leave a suitable impression upon our minds, though perhaps something of the same matter may have been before mentioned: as, to ask forgiveness of all the imperfections of our holy things: To entreat that God would hear all our requests in the name of our Lord Jesus: to recommend our prayers into the hands of our Redeemer, our great High-Priest, and to commit our whole selves to the conduct of divine grace, till we are brought safe to glory. But then all this must be done with such a variety of expression, and with some proper connexions, as will render it agreeable in itself, and will entertain the minds of those that join with us, and give them delight rather than hinder their devotion.

III. Let those things, in every part of prayer, which are the proper objects of our judgment, be first mentioned, and then those that influence and move our affections; not that we should follow such a manner of prayer as is more like preaching, as some imprudently have done, speaking many divine truths without the form or air of prayer: It is a very improper custom, which some persons have taken up and indulged, when divine truths come to be mentioned in prayer, they run great lengths in a doctrinal way; yet there is occasion frequently in prayer, under the several parts of it, for the recollect

ing of divine truths, and these lay a proper foundation for warm and pathetical expressions to follow. As, O Lord, thou art good, and thou dost good; why should I continue so long without partaking of thy goodness? My sins are great, and my iniquities have many aggravations; O that I might mourn for them before thee in secret! O that I could pour out my soul before thee in sorrow because of multiplied offences! Thus let the language of affection follow the language of our judgment, for this is the most rational and natural method.

Having laid down these general rules, the best particular method I can direct you to, is, that division of the parts of prayer mentioned in the foregoing chapter. I know not a more natural order of things than this is. To begin with invocation, or calling upon God; then proceed to adore that God whom we invoke, because of his various glories we are then naturally led to the work of confession, considering what little contemptible creatures we are in the presence of so adorable a God, and to humble ourselves, because of our abounding sins, and our many necessities: When we have given praise to a God, of such holiness, and having spread our wants before God, petitions for mercy naturally follow, and pleading with such divine arguments as the Spirit and the word of God put into our mouths, should accompany our requests; after all, we resign ourselves into the hands of God, and express our self-dedication to him: Then we recollect the mercies we have received, and out of gratitude pay him our tribute of honour and thanks. And as he is glorious in himself, and glorious in his works of power and grace, so we bless him, and ascribe everlasting glory to him. I cannot but think it a very useful thing for young beginners in the work of prayer to remember all these heads in their order, to dispose of their thoughts and desires before God in this method, proceeding regularly from one part to another. And as this must needs be useful to assist and teach us to pray in public, so sometimes in our secret retirements it may not be improper to pursue the same practice.

Yet it must be granted, there is no necessity of confining ourselves to this, or to any other set method, no more than there is of confining ourselves to a form in prayer. Sometimes the mind is so divinely full of one particular part of prayer, perhaps of thanksgiving, or of self-resignation, that high expressions of gratitude, and of devoting ourselves to God, break out first. Lord, I am come to devote myself to thee in an everlasting covenant, I am thine through thy grace and through thy grace I will be thine for ever. Or thus, Blessed be thy name, O Lord God Almighty, for thine abundant benefits, that fill my soul with the sense of them, for thou hast pardoned all my iniquities, and healed all my diseases. Sometimes, even in the beginning of a prayer, when we are insisting on one of the first parts of it, we receive a divine hint from the Spirit of God, that carries away our thoughts and our whole souls with warm affection into another part that is of a very different kind, and that usually perhaps comes in near the conclusion: And when the Spirit of God thus leads us, and our souls are in a very devout frame, we are not to quench the Spirit of God, in order to tie ourselves to any set rules of prescribed method. There is no necessity that persons of great talents, of divine affections, of much converse with God, and that have attained to a good degree of this gift by long exercise, should bind themselves to any one certain method of prayer. For we find the prayers recorded in holy scripture are very various in the order and disposition of them, as the Spirit of God and the divine affections of those saints led and guided them: But still there is some method observed, and may be traced and demonstrated. I am persuaded, that if

young christians did not give themselves up, in their first essays of prayer, to a loose and negligent habit of speaking every thing that comes uppermost, but attempted to learn this holy skill, by a recollection of the several parts of prayer, and disposing their thoughts into this method, there would be great numbers in our churches that would have arrived at a good degree of the gift of prayer, and be capable afterwards of giving a more glorious and unbounded loose to their souls, without breaking the rules of just and natural method; and that to the great edification of our churches, as well as of their own families.

SECTION V.

OF EXPRESSION IN PRAYER.

III. The third thing that relates to the gift of prayer, is expression. Though prayer be the proper work of the heart, yet in this present state, in secret as well as in social prayer, the language of the lips is an excellent aid in this part of worship. A person indeed may pray heartily and effectually, and yet make use of no words: sometimes the desires of the heart may be too big to be expressed, when the Spirit of God is with us in plentiful operations, and assists us to plead with sighs and groans which cannot be uttered, as Rom. viii. 26. Persons that are dumb may think over their wants, and raise their souls to God in longing desires and wishes for grace in a time of need: Nor is there any necessity of using language upon God's account, for he knows the desires of our hearts, and our most secret breathings towards him. He that hears without ears, understands us without our words. Yet as language is of absolute necessity in social prayer, that others may join with us in our addresses to God; so for the most part we find it necessary in secret too: For there are few persons of so steady and fixed a power of meditation, as to maintain their devotion warm, and to converse with God, or with themselves profitably, without words.

Expressions are useful, not only to dress our thoughts, but sometimes to form and shape, and perfect the ideas and affections of our minds. The use of words makes us doubly sensible of the things we conceive. They serve to awaken the holy passions of the soul as well as to express them. Our expressions sometimes follow and reveal the warmer motions of the heart, and sometimes they are dictated by the judgment, and are a means to warm the heart, and excite those holy motions. They fix and engage all our powers in religion and worship, and they serve to regulate as well as to encrease our devotion. We are bid to take unto us words, and turn to the Lord, and say unto him, take all iniquity, and receive us graciously: Hosea xiv. 2. And in the psalms of David, we often read of his crying to the Lord with his voice, and making supplication with his tongue, when the matter of his prayer is such, that we have abundant reason to believe that it was performed in secret. Here I shall first lay down some directions how to attain a rich treasure of expression in prayer. And secondly, give several rules about the choice and use of words and expressions. The directions to attain a treasure of expressions, are these.

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I. Besides the general acquaintance with God and with yourselves, that was prescribed under a former head, labour after the fresh, particular and lively sense of the great, ness and grace of God, and of your own wants, and sins, and mercies, whenever you

come to pray. This will furnish you with abundance of proper expressions. The pass sions of the mind, when they are moved, do mightily help the tongue. They fill the mouth with arguments. They give a natural eloquence to those who know not any rules of art; and they almost constrain the dumb to speak. There is a remarkable instance of this in ancient history,' when Atys the son of Croesus the king, who was dumb from his childhood, saw his father ready to be slain, the violence of his passion broke the bonds wherewith his tongue was tied, and he cried out to save him. Beggars that have a pinching sense of hunger and cold, and find out variety of expressions to tell us their wants, and to plead for relief. Let our spiritual senses therefore be always awake and lively, and our affections always warm, and lead the duty; then words will follow in a geater or less degree.

II. Treasure up such expressions especially as you read in scripture, and such as you have found in other books of devotion, or such as you have heard fellow-christians make use of, whereby your own hearts have been sensibly moved and warmed. Those forms of speaking, that have had great influence and success upon our affections at one time, may probably have a like effect also at other seasons; if so be we take care not to confine ourselves to them constantly, lest formality and thoughtlessness should grow thereby. Though the limitation of ourselves to a constant set form of words be justly disapproved; yet there is great use of serious, pious, and well-composed patterns of prayer, in order to form our expressions and furnish us with proper praying language. And I wish the assistances that might be borrowed thence, were not as superstitiously abandoned by some persons, as they are idolized by others. But I suppose no persons will disapprove the advice, if I desire them to remember the more affectionate sentences in the psalms of David, and the complaints of Job, and other holy men, when they breathe out their souls to God in worship. These in a nearer and more particular sense may be called the words which the Holy Spirit teacheth; and whenever they suit our circumstances, they will always be pleasing to God: Besides, they are such as christians are most acquainted with, and pious souls are most affected with them. The Spirit of God in praying and preaching will often bless the use of his own language: And I am persuaded, this is one way whereby the Spirit helps our imfirmities, and becomes a Spirit of supplication in us, by suggesting to us particular passages of scripture, that are useful to furnish us both with matter and expression in prayer.

The most authentic judge of fine thoughts and language that our age has produced, assures us of the beauty and glory of the style of scripture, and particularly in this respect, that it is most proper to teach us how to pray. I cannot forbear transcribing this paragraph from the Spectator, June 14, 1712. "It happens very well, says he, that the Hebrew idioms run into the English tongue with a peculiar grace and beauty: Our language has received innumerable elegancies and improvements from that infusion of hebraisms, which are derived to it out of the poetical passages of holy writ; they give a force and energy to our expressions, warm and animate our language, and convey our thoughts in more ardent and intent phrases, than any that are to be met with in our own tongue; there is something so pathetic in this kind of diction, that it often sets the mind in a flame, and makes our hearts burn within us. How cold and dead, saith he, doth a prayer appear that is composed in the most elegant and polite forms of speech which are natural to our tongue, when it is not heightened by that solemnity of phrase which may be drawn from the sacred writings? It has been said by some of the ancients, that if the

gods were to talk with men, they would certainly speak in Plato's style; but I think we may say with justice, that when mortals converse with their Creator, they cannot do it in so proper a style as that of the holy scripture."

It would be of excellent use to improve us in the gift of prayer, if in our daily reading the word of God we did observe what expressions were suited to the several parts of this duty: adoration, confession, petition, or thanksgiving: And let them be wrought into our addresses to God that day. Nay, if we did but remember one verse every day, and fix it into our hearts by frequent meditation, and work it into our prayers morning and evening, it would in time grow up to a treasure of divine sense and language, fit to address our Maker upon all occurrences of life. And it has been observed, that persons of mean capacity, and no learning, have attained to a good measure of this holy skill of prayer, merely by having their minds well furnished with words of scripture; and have been able to pour out their hearts before God in a fluency of proper thoughts and language, to the shame of those that have been blessed with brighter parts, and have enjoyed the advantage of a learned education. Yet I would lay down two cautions. about the use of scripture-language.

One is, That we should not affect too much to impose an allusive sense upon the words of scripture, nor use them in our prayers in a signification very different from the true meaning of them. Not that I would utterly disallow and condemn all such allusive expressions; as for instance, that which is frequently used when we desire mercies for our souls and bodies, to ask the blessings of the upper and the nether springs, There may be some such phrases used pertinently enough: The commonness of them also makes them something more agreeable; yet if we affect to shew our wit or ingenuity by seeking pretty phrases of scripture, and using them in an allusive sense, very foreign to the original purpose of them, we shall be in danger of leading ourselves into many mistakes in the interpretation of scripture, and expose ourselves sometimes to the peril of mistaking the true sense of a text, by having frequently fixed a false meaning upon it in our prayers.

Another caution, in using scripture language, is this, that we abstain from all those expressions which are of a very dubious sense, and hard to be understood; if we indulge the use of such dark sentences in our speaking to God, we might as well pray in an unknown tongue, which is so much disapproved by the apostle; 1 Cor. xiv. 9, 14. Let not therefore the pomp and sound of any hard Hebrew names, or obscure phrases in scripture, allure us to be fond of them in social prayer, even though we ourselves should know the meaning of them, lest we confound the thoughts of our fellowworshippers.

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III. Be always ready to engage in holy conference, and divine discourse. will teach us to speak of the things of God. Let it be your delightful practice to recollect and talk over with one another the sermons you have heard, the books of divinity you have been conversant with, those parts of the word of God you have lately read, and especially your own experiences of divine things. Hereby you will gain a large treasure of language to clothe your pious thoughts and affections. It is a most profitable practice, after you have heard a sermon, to confer with some fellow-christian that heard it too, and run over all the particulars of it that you can retain in your memory; then retire, and pray them over again, that is, make them the matter and substance of your address to God; plead with him to instruct you in the truths that