our own consciences And to violate thy holy and good Laws have offered violence to the dictates of our own minds We judge our selves O Lord and acknowledge we have justly deserved all that wrath that might make us everlastingly miserable and made our selves liable to those threatned punishments which we can neither escape nor endure but O our merciful Father do not thou condemn us we are ashamed and confounded in the sense and remembrance of our transgressions comfort us O Lord we beseech thee with a sense of thy pardoning mercy in our blessed and all-sufficient Redeemer Help us by a sincere and hearty repentance to return to thee from whom in our own crooked and perverse ways we have gone astray Let the time past of our lives suffice us to have 1 Pet. 4. 3. wrought the wills of the flesh and seeing we have already by the frequent commissions of sin too much offended thee and endangered our Souls let us not by the repeated and continued practice of it heighten the offence and add to our guiltiness Let the Blood of thy dear 1 Joh. 1. 7. Son Jesus Christ cleanse us from all sin and through his precious Sacrifice and meritorious sufferings that was pure and perfectly innocent discharge and acquit us that have been foul offenders Let thy holy Spirit sanctifie and renew us after thine own Image in righteousness and true holiness and as we hope to be pardoned by the precious death of Christ grant that crucifying our Lusts upon his Cross we may follow the example of his holy Life and in all holiness and humility meekness and charity zeal for thy Glory and submission to thy Will patience heavenly mindedness and self-denial contentment and the contempt of this World we may walk as Christ walked and be filled with all Phil. 1. 11. the fruits of righteousness which are through him unto thy praise and glory Help us to live by faith in thy promises in all varieties of thy providence let this be our great support and comfort that thou hast said thou wilt never Heb. 13. 5. leave us nor forsake us and in all difficulties and temptations let this be our great care that we do not leave nor forsake thee But sanctifie the Lord God 1 Pet. 3. 15. in our hearts and with a zealous faithfulness endeavour to please and approve our selves to thee in all our ways and seeing we call on the Father who without respect of persons judges according to every mans work let us pass the time of our sojourning here in fear 1 Pet. 1. 17. And give diligence to make our calling and election sure that 2 Pet. 1. 10 11. we may never fall either into scandalous sins or insupportable miseries but an entrance may be ministred to us abundantly into the everlasting Kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Col. 3. 4. and when Christ who is our life shall appear we may also appear with him in glory Shew thy favour and goodness to all mankind and grant O Lord we beseech thee that the course of this world may be so peaceably ordered by thy governance that thy Church may joysully serve thee in all godly quietness and being delivered from the Plots and Combinations the Oppositions and Persecutions of its Enemies may alway walk before thee in truth and holiness and all that profess the Gospel of our Lord Jesus may hold fast his pure and heavenly Doctrines and express the power of them in their lives Bless this sinful and provoking Nation wherein we live pardon our many great and crying sins heal our wide breaches unite our divisions compose our distractions and remove from us whatever may provoke the Eyes of thy Jealousie and Glory and deprive us of thy long continued temporal and spiritual blessings and lay us open to thy dreadful and desolating Judgments Send thy blessed Spirit into our hearts a spirit of wisdom and knowledge and of the fear of the Lord a spirit of truth and holiness of peace and unity of righteousness moderation meekness and charity and instead of loading one another with slanders and scandals foul reproaches and bitter censures help us to bear one anothers Gal. 6. 2. burdens and so fulfil the Law of Christ Bless our Sovereign Lord King Charles with the choicest of thy blessings fill his heart with wisdom and piety with a mighty sense of the great Trust thou hast committed to him and the great obligations thou hast laid upon him with courage and resolution to support and promote Righteousness and true Religion And grant that all in places of Power and Authority may exert and use it for the punishment of evil doers and the praise of them that do well as it becomes them that have received their Power from thee and are accountable for it unto thee Order all publick Affairs to thy glory and the comfort and encouragement of all that fear thee Support and comfort all those whom thou hast fed with the Bread of Tears and mingled their drink with weeping And we humbly beseech thee for a blessing upon our selves as thou hast preserved us this night direct assist and prosper us in all the affairs and enterprizes of this day and let us all the day long be in thy fear remembring thou observest and thou wilt judge us and let a sense of this preserve us from all sin and quicken us to the doing of whatever may be pleasing in thy sight through our blessed Redeemer who when we pray hath taught and commanded us to say OVr Father which art in Heaven hallowed be thy Name Thy Kingdom come Thy Will be done in Earth As it is in Heaven Give us this day our daily Bread And forgive us our Trespasses As we forgive them that Trespass against us And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from Evil For thine is the Kingdom and the Power And the Glory For ever and ever Amen Wednesday Evening BLessed Lord God the high and lofty One that inhabitest Isai 57. 15. eternity whose Name is Holy who dwellest in the high and holy place with him also that is of a contrite and humble Spirit We wretched and miserable sinners most humbly beseech thee to look down upon us from the habitation of thy Holiness and glory in the multitude of thy tender mercies and work in us that humble and contrite Spirit that is so pleasing and acceptable in thy sight that our hearts hardned by the deceitfulness of Sin may be softned by the effectual working of thy Grace By commanding us to call upon thee thou hast made Prayer our Duty and by promising to hear us when we Pray thou hast made it no less our priviledge in obedience to thy command and in the incouragement of thy Promise we are here before thee to offer up our Evening Sacrifice of Prayer desiring thee both to prepare our Hearts to Pray and bow down thine ear to hear We are not of our selves sufficient to perform
FORMS OF PRAYER FOR EVERY Day in the Week MORNING and EVENING Composed for the use of PRIVATE FAMILIES By John Meriton D. D. Rector of St. Michael Cornhill London and Lecturer at St. Martins in the Fields LONDON Printed by H. H. for Robert Boulter at the Turks Head in Cornhill 1682. THE PREFACE THat all Men are obliged to worship God by praising and praying to him is so evident by the light of natural Reason as well as the Revelation of Scripture that none can question it but they whose Immoralities and improved Debaucheries have laid such a foundation of Atheism as makes them inclinable to deny the Being of God and loath to acknowledge their dependance upon him lest this should involve them in the dreadful consequence of their being accountable to him And that men ought dayly to pay this Homage and Tribute of Praise and Prayer unto God as they stand linked in the relations of Families though all readily grant that are sensible of the Sins there committed that need his Pardon of the many Temporal and Spiritual blessings either wanted and to be sought at his Hands or injoyed and to be thankfully acknowledged yet the too common neglect of Family Prayer is it 's to be feared and he must have a very easie and credulous charity that can be otherwise minded not only one of the many instances of the decay of Piety and Religion but one of the provoking Sins that cry aloud to Heaven for vengeance It is no doubt by many totally omitted from an insensible stupidity an irreligious profane disregard of God and their Duty but by others not a few as was well and charitably suggested by the Good Man that earnestly pressed me to this undertaking only from a consciousness of their inabibility decently to perform it Now that this might be neither a feigned pretence nor a real hinderance But that they that like Joshua are willing and resolved to serve God with their Families might have Materials of Devotion ready at hand As the Water near the Road offered it self to the Eunuch willing to be Baptized I have for the help of such as can read complyed with my Friends desire and composed a Form of Weekly Prayers Morning and Evening And though their length will not I hope be complained of by any whose leasure may allow and whose Affections can vigorously attend one quarter of an hours solemn and religious Address to God Yet in consideration of others multiplicity of Business and that flatting and depression of Spirits that may follow from it all the Prayers are printed in many distinct Paragraphs that some of the Confessions or Petitions or both may easily and without disturbing their Devotion be pass'd over and the Prayer thereby so contracted as to suit their convenience And I desire they would rather do so than wholly omit the Duty for better a short Prayer than none at all Lord's Day Morning ALmighty most high and holy Lord God who art the glorious Creator Preserver and Governour of all things in Heaven and in Earth and most worthy to be praised and honoured by all Creatures And with infinite kindness and compassion hast redeemed lost and undone Sinners by thine only beloved Rom. 4. ult Son whom thou hast delivered to death for their offences and raised again for their justification and so thou art for ever to be loved and delighted in obeyed and worshipped praised and honoured by thy redeemed ones We thy poor Creatures and Children are here before thee this Morning humbly sensible of this our great and bounden duty and of our own inability without the assistance of thy Grace to perform it And in a deep sense both of our duty and insufficiency we desire to offer up our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to thy Divine Majesty our mighty Creator and most merciful Redeemer and humbly desire that thou wouldest sanctifie and prepare both our Souls and Bodies by the Grace of thy Holy Spirit that we may present unto thee acceptable thank-offerings We acknowledge O Lord that besides the sins of our Callings common Imployments and even those of the Week last past whereby we have greatly offended thee the sins of our holy duties and our profanation of this thy holy day have given thee a just provocation to withdraw the grace of thy good Spirit from us and leave us to the ignorance and vanity of our own minds the wandrings and distractions of our thoughts the earthliness and sensuality of our affections the hardness impenitency and unbelief of our hearts And then by all the duties of thy Worship and Service we should dishonour thee and by offering the Sacrifices of Fools increase our own guilt before thee But we humbly beseech thee most merciful Father forgive us all our past offences that they may not stand as a partition Wall between thy Majesty and us to hinder either thy Grace from coming down upon us as Rain upon the tender Herb or our Prayers from coming up before thee as Incense Fill every one of our hearts with awful thoughts of thee as a God that searchest hearts and art throughly acquainted with our most secret imaginations dispositions and purposes and because thou art a God of purer Eyes than to behold iniquity Let us worship thee with an holy worship so as to fear thy Goodness and love thy Justice to delight in thy Mercy trust and rely upon thy Power and Faithfulness to admire praise and imitate thy Holiness In the publick Duties and Services of this thy Day help us so to joyn with the Assembly of thy Servants that our hearts may be inflamed with a love of thee and delight in thee and in the vigour and fervency of devout affections we may together glorifie thy holy and great Name set forward our own edification and comfort and advance in those ways of holiness that lead to everlasting happiness And seeing in great mercy and compassion to our Souls thou art pleased to continue to us thy Sabbaths and the use of thine ordinances which by our many and great sins we have long since forfeited Let us not like Children sitting in Mat. 11. 16. the Market-place trifle away the precious opportunities and means of Grace and Salvation Help us seriously to consider when we are in thine House the Habitation of thine Holiness Psal 26. 8. and the place where thine Honour dwelleth the glorious Majesty and spotless perfect purity of that God with whom we have to do and let us behave our selves in thy sacred and dreadful presence with that reverence and holy fear that humility and lowliness of mind that simplicity and godly sincerity that heavenly mindedness and purity of affection that firm constancy of resolution to devote our selves to thee by our hearty obedience to thy Laws as it becomes dust and ashes vile Creatures that dwell in houses of Clay when they worship and do homage to that Sovereign Majesty the Throne of whose Glory is in the highest
any duty to bear any burden to resist any temptation to mortifie any lust 2. Cor. 3. 5. To think one good thought but all our sufficiency is of thee thou O Lord canst pardon our Sins supply our wants heal our distempers enlighten our blindness soften our hardness strengthen our weakness we have no whither to go but unto thee nor can we come to thee but in thine own Power into such a wretched condition have our Sins brought us that we are both unable to help our selves and unworthy that thou shouldst help us but our comfort is that thy Grace doth not use to find Sinners worthy but make them so nor dost thou shew favour and kindness to them because they please thee but because thou art pleased with thine own Mercy and Goodness Our Iniquities we acknowledge have been many and great a sinful nature as a corrupt Fountain hath sent forth polluted streams in the thoughts words and actions of our Lives and we have often offended against thy holy Laws and expressed the enmity of our carnal minds Though all thy Laws are in themselves most equal just and good and thou hast both encouraged our obedience by the gracious promises of thy favourable acceptance and an eternal recompence and affrighted from sin by threatning it with everlasting punishment yet lightly esteeming thy Promises and contemning thy threatnings we have troddâ—n thy holy Laws under our Feet and broken through the restraints wherewith â—…ou hast hedged us in from finding our own ways Our pride and earthliness our unbelief unthankfulness our hypocrisie sensuality and hardness of heart witness against us to our faces and give us great cause to blush and be confounded to mourn and grieve in the sense of them Who of us hath had that due sense of thy holiness power and goodness thine omnipresence and all-seeing Eye as to be thereby driven from our Sins or quickned to the exercise of Virtue and Godliness Who of us hath been so affected with that Grace that hath appeared bringing Salvation as to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts and make it our study and business to please and approve our selves to thee Who of us hath so felt the burthen and tasted the bitterness of our sins as to loath and leave them with dislike and abhorrency Who of us hath been so delighted in thy love as to return thee our hearty love in a sincere and uniform obedience Who of us hath so firmly believed the rewards and punishments of the future state as to press toward the mark for the obtaining the prize and make hast to escape and flee from the bottomless Pit and burning Lake The zeal and earnestness that we should have shewn in matters of Religion we have expressed in following our worldly interests and that coldness and indifferency that would have been well bestowed upon the little and short lived benefits of the present Life hath attended the performance of our holy duties We have in some measure known our Masters Will and yet have done our own and to please our corrupt and fleshly Appetites have done what we have well understood to be displeasing in thy sight Though thou hast often commanded us to repent and turn from our evil ways and we have been convinced that to hear thy Voice to day is both our duty and our wisdom we have demurred by lingring delays and not cast off our Sins by a speedy repentance We are ashamed O Lord of this our folly and beseech thee so to awaken and assist us by thy Grace that we may not receive it in vain nor longer delude our own Souls with the deceitful purposes of a future repentance but let us make haste to hearken to thy loud and earnest 2 Cor. 6. 2. Calls now while it is the accepted time and the day of Salvation And let thy pardoning mercy freely forgive all our Sins thy Grace having by true repentance made us meet partakers of that inestimable benefit So set them before our face as that we may mark and consider them mourn for and confess loath and forsake them and so cast them behind thy back as not to observe them with a wrathful countenance or punish them with a justly deserved vengeance By the precious blood of thy dear Son that immaculate Lamb that was offered to take away the Sins of the World Psal 51. 2. Wash us throughly from our Iniquities and cleanse us from our Sins and through his perfect righteousness let the free gift come upon us unto justification Rom. 5. 18. of Life Deliver us we pray thee as from the guilt and damnation of Sin by his precious Sacrifice so from its power and dominion by his sanctifying Spirit and though like a Leprofie in the Walls of an infected house Sin will remain in us while we are in the world let it not reign Rom. 6. 12. in our mortal Body that we should obey it in the lusts thereof But as the Flesh in us lusteth against the Spirit let thy Gal. 3. 17. Spirit in us resist and subdue the lusts of the Flesh Let not an inordinate love of the allurements and intangling vanities of this World quench or weaken in our Souls that entire and most hearty love that is due to thee and heavenly things nor distracting cares for the conveniencies of the Body eat out and destroy the care of our Souls nor hinder a timely provision for their future and eternal happiness But for as much as our stay here below is very short and the time of our departure hence into an everlasting state very uncertain let us with fear and trembling earnestness and diligence work out our own Salvation and carry our selves with upright and inoffensive Consciences toward thee and all men whilst we are in the World as we shall wish to have done when we come to leave it Help us to run the race of holy obedience meekness and patience charity contentment constancy and perseverance to fight a good fight finish our course and keep the faith that we may receive a Crown of righteousness which the righteous Judge shall at the last day 2 Tim. 4. 7. 8. give unto all them that love his appearing And let the contemplation of that glory and happiness and the well-grounded hope of our attaining it make us diligent and faithful in the discharge of our duty watchful against all fleshly defilements patient and cheerful under all crosses and troubles cold and indifferent to all the profits and pleasures of this Life and let our whole conversation on Earth be such as may become the Heirs of an heavenly glorious and eternal inheritance that when our earthly 2 Cor. 5. 1. house of this tabernacle shall be dissolved we may have a building of God an house not made with hands eternal in the Heavens and be found meet to be Col. 1. 12. partakers of the inheritance of the Saints in Light Look in mercy upon all the Sons of Men