AN Help to Prayer FOR THE Catechised YOUTH OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND â—ery useful for Parents and Masters to teach their Children and Servants how to Pray â—mprimatur Guil. Sill. Martii,22 â—678 LONDON â—â—inted for Charles Brome at the Gun at the West end of St. Pauls 1686. A PREFACE TO THE Christian Readers PRayer is the most comprehensive Instance of Religious Worship which we all ought to give unto God from our Youth up and to say nothing of its other Benefits of greatest influence into a good and vertuous life It is great pity therefore that any should neglect thus to Honour God and profit themselves for want of some plain and useful help for the due performance of it Those that stand most in need of Assistance this way are the younger and more ignorant sort of People Children and Servants whose Capacities are well to be considered of That neither their understandings be confounded with things above their reach nor their memories over-burthened with too great a length or variety And for such as these methinks nothing can be more apposite than the pious and wholesome Direction of a Reverend Divine in his late Treatise of Prayer That they would learn the Lords Prayer Dr. Bright Treat of Prayer Cap 5. Sect. 19. p. 387. with the Explication of it and the sum of the Ten Commandments in the Church Catechism turned into Prayer and other short comprehensive Forms and that Parents would be careful to teach their Children such and see they say them In pursuance of which Excellent Advice I do heartily recommend the ensuing Platform to all whose hearts God shall incline to make use of it where I have prefixed the open and personal Profession of Christianity it self according to our Baptismal Vow a Point which I conceive of great usefulness in it self and the greater still because Confirmation is so much neglected This Religious course will make the Plain and Godly Principles of the Church Catechism which is too commonly despised to take the deeper Root and stick the faster in the minds and affections of those that have learnt it and help exceedingly to reduce those fruitful Principles into practice being a continual Monitor both of the threefold Engagement we are under as Christians and the chief Rules we are taught to observe in Order to our discharge thereof I will say no mare of it farther but this that it seems to me a good expedient against many extravagancies which attend Arbitrary and Extempore Devorions and may possibly train up a Generation of Honest and Orderly Christians to succeed us Only I must admonish those who make use of this Plat-form these two things in the General I. That they bethink themselves what they are going about namely to Address unto and Worship the Great God of Heaven and Earth who is present with them though they see him not to behold and observe all their carriage And II. That they say and repeat every clause Leisurely Gravely Distinctly and labour to keep their Eyes from wandring and their Thoughts as intent as may be to the words they utter and as they grow in years improve in the considering more deliberately of them and being affected with them And so I leave this Charitable Help intended for Beginners to their kind acceptance and God Almighty's Blessing upon the conscionable use of it AN Help to Prayer Fall down upon thy Knees with Reverence and say GOD be merciful to me a Sinner Enter not into judgment with thy Servant O Lord for in thy sight shall no man living be justified A Form of daily acknowledging and confirming our Baptismal Vow I Do before God and his Holy Angels Acknowledg and Renew the Solemn Promise and Vow made in my name at Baptism and do verily think that I am bound in Conscience I. To renounce the Devil and all his Works the Pomps and Vanities of this wicked World and all the sinful Lusts of the Flesh II. Heartily to Believe and openly to profess All the Articles of the Christian Faith and III. To keep God's Holy Will and Commandments and walk in the same all the days of my Life And Thus by God's help I will do And I heartily thank our Heavenly Father that he hath called me to this state of Salvation through Jesus Christ our Saviour That is That he hath made me a Member of Christ a Child of God and an Inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven upon these Gracious Terms and Conditions which are all for my greatest Good But knowing that I am not able to do these things of my self I pray unto God for his Grace which he hath promised unto them that ask it that I may both perform and continue in the same unto my lives end Amen Then say the Lords Prayer 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 And add this Paraphrase upon it O Lord God our Heavenly Father the giver of All Goodness Send thy Grace I beseech thee unto me and All people That we may Worship Thee Serve Thee and Obey Thee as we ought to do even as Saints and Angels do in Heaven And I pray unto Thee O God That Thou wouldst send us All things that be needful both for our Souls and Bodies for this Life and a better And that Thou wouldest be Merciful unto us and forgive us our Sins upon our True Repentance As thou hast commanded us and by Thy Grace we are disposed to forgive those that Treaspass against us And that it will please Thee to save and defend us in all dangers Ghostly and Bodily That we be not hurt by the Assaults of the one or other And that Thou wouldest keep us from all Sin and Wickedness which is the greatest evil and from that evil one our Ghostly Enemy the Devil and from Everlasting Death the most dreadful of penal evils which is the due wages of Sin And all this O Heavenly King and Father as Thou art able to do by thy Power so I trust Thou wilt do for us of Thy Mercy and Goodness which is Thy cbiefest Glory through our Lord Jesus Christ and therefore to testifie both my earnest Desire and Hope I say Amen So be it So by the Grace of God it shall be Instead of the Creed this Doxology Then rise up and instead of the Creed which thou mayst sometimes also Rehearse say this Doxology devoutly which takes in the Three things that we chiefly learn from thence Glory be to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ the Creator Preserver and Governour of all things visible and invisible who hath made doth Preserve and Govern me and all the World And to