part in Spirit and in Truth We thankfully acknowledge our dependance upon thee and that our lives and all the comforts of our lives are the effects of thy bounty and goodness thy hands have both made and fashioned us in the Womb and brought us into the World and ever since we saw the Light thou hast all along opened thine hands and filled us with variety of good things though for our many and great sins thou mightest have left us naked and miserable and brought upon us all the punishments that the threatnings of thy holy and righteous Law have made justly due to the Transgressors of it and had thy ways been as the ways of a Man are or thy thoughts towards us like unto our thoughts we had long since been past the Thank-offering of Praise the benefit of Prayer and the hope of Pardon for our trangressions have been multiplied against thee and our Iniquities have gone over Psal 38. 4. our Heads as a burthen too heavy for us The corruption of our nature is opposite to thy holy Law that requires no less holy principles than holy practises and by the transgressions of our lives we have broken it in thought word and deed We confess O Lord with sorrow and shame our ignorance of thy will and in many things our acting contrary to the knowledge we have had of it our pride earthliness and hypocrisie our injustice uncharitableness and sensuality our inordinate self-love eagerness in the pursuit of worldly things and indifferency in matters of Religion our impenitency and unbelief the hardness of our hearts notwithstanding all the ways and methods thou hast taken to soften them our unthankfulness for all thy mercies our incorrigibleness under all thy chastisements our unfruitfulness under the means of Grace our unfaithfulness under all our vows and promises and resolutions of service and obedience We have sinned against a clear revelation of thy Will and against the greatest obligations to compliance with it against the expressions of a tender kindness in thy multiplyed mercies and the evidence of a righteous severity in thy justly deserved chastisements we have sinned against thine inviting promises and dreadful threatnings against the frequent warnings of thy Word the renewed motions and powerful convictions of thy Spirit and the precious blood of thy dear Son we have sinned against the light of our understandings against our promises and purposes of obedience against the checks of our own consciences we cannot recount the number of our sins they are so exceeding many nor set in order the aggravating circumstances whereby they are become exceeding sinful But O Lord have mercy upon Psal 51. 1. us according to thy loving kindness according to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out our transgressions Help us to forsake our sinful Isa 55. 7. thoughts and crooked ways and by unfeigned repentance to return unto thee that thou mayest have mercy on us and abundantly pardon us Speak peace to us most merciful Father through the death and sufferings of thy dear Son who gave up himself in Sacrifice to expiate the guilt of our sins and by that precious ransom to buy off the punishment that was due to our transgressions O sprinkle our consciences with that blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things Heb. 12. 24. than the blood of Abel work in us a true and lively faith that we may be justified and have Rom. 5. 1. peace with thee through our Lord Jesus Christ For though we have no righteousness of our own that we dare plead to the strictness of thy Law and the severity of thy Justice thou hast treasured up an alsufficient righteousness in thy Son that believing in him we may be pardoned and through his stripes be healed And let thy pardoning mercy be accompanied with thy purifying grace that we may be both delivered from the guilt and punishment of our sins and cleansed from the filth and impurity of them And as our Lord Christ dyed unto sin to condemn it in the flesh let us dye unto sin to crucific it in ours that it may never reign in our mortal bodies that we Rom. 6. 10 11 12. should obey it in the lusts thereof Help us heavenly Father to put off the old man which is corrupt according to deceitful Eph. 4. 22 23 24. lusts and to put on that new man which is created after thine own image in righteousness and true holiness and as by the natural birth we have in sin and corruption born the image of the first Adam that was made a living Soul so let us by the spiritual birth in sanctification and holiness bear the image of the second Adam that was made a quickning Spirit Give us a new Ezek. 36. 26 27. heart and put within us a new Spirit take away the stony heart out of our flesh and give us an heart of flesh put thy Spirit within us and cause us to walk in thy Statutes that we may keep thy Judgments and do them Wean our hearts from an excessive and inordinate love of all the things of this World and let us never place our happiness in the pomps and pleasures the profits and honours or any transitory injoyments of this Life where we are told not only in thy Word but by our own experience it is not to be found but let us weep as though we wept not and 1 Cor. 7. 30 31. rejoyce as though we rejoyced not and buy as though we possessed not and use this World as not abusing it because the fashion of this World passeth a-away Let us never adventure upon sin with the foolish and deceitful hopes of getting any thing by it but let our minds be influenced with the great and certain truth of what our Saviour hath taught us that the gaining of the whole World can be 〈◊〉 16. 26. no recompence for the loss of our Souls Let the great and strict account that we must ere long make be often in our serious thoughts and the course of our Lives be thereby so ordered that we may think of it with a joyful expectation and never allow our selves to do to speak or think any thing that may make the thoughts of the day of Judgment a terrour to us Let us so obey the Laws of our great Lord and Saviour and follow the steps of his example that when Christ who is our life shall appear we may lift up our heads with joy and appear with Col. 3. 4. him in glory Show forth the favour and loving kindness of a Father to all the Children of Men and as thou hast made them capable of eternal life and happiness make known unto them the way of thy Salvation that leads unto it Let the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in his Mal. 4. 2. Wings and dispel the darkness of Heathenish and Mahometan Superstition and Idolatry that the Kingdoms of the Earth may become the Kingdom of thy Son
coming into this world and as little laid to heart whaâ— will become of us when wâ— shall go hence and be no morâ— and as though we were to dyâ— as the Beasts dye we have livâ—… too much as the Beasts live In our selves O Lord wâ— have no hope but in the muâ—titude of thy tender mercies wâ— cannot despair and thougâ— we have deserved wrath and vengeance and have nothing of our own to plead why we should escape it we are greatly encouraged to sue to thine offended Majesty for pardon and forgiveness by that Proclamation which thou hast made Exod. 34. 6 7. of thy glorious Name the Lord the Lord God merciful and gracious long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth keeping mercy for thousands and forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin and because thou hast said thou wilt not clear the guilty take away our guilt by a sincere hearty repentance and a true and lively faith in the merits and righteousness of thy Son Let all our sins be more bitter and burthensom in the review of them than they have ever been pleasant and delightful in the commission of them and grant gracious Lord that â—e may be so sorrowful for 〈◊〉 sins as to loath them so 〈◊〉 them as to take up firm Resolutions against them and so resolve as that by the powerful assistance of thy holy Spirit we may never renew the practice of them and having done iniquity Job 34. 32. we may do so and offend no more Wash and cleanse our sinful Souls from their guilt and filthiness in that fountain of thy dear Sons most precious blood Zech. 13. 1. which thou hast set open for sin and uncleanness and by the grace of thy holy Spirit subduing and mortifying our sins in us convince and satisfie us that thou hast pardoned them create in us clean hearts O God Psal 51. 10. and renew right spirits within us And as we call thy Son Jesus Christ our Saviour and hope to be for ever happy in the light and injoyment of him in Heaven let us make him our example and purifie our selves even as he is pure 1 Joh. 3. 3. Make us as he was holy and humble meek and merciful patient and charitable heavenly minded and self-denying let 's be zealous for thy glory contented with our present condition satisfied with all the wise allotments of thy providence and make it our meat and drink to do the will of our heavenly Father and in all things wherein he was a most lively and admirable pattern for our imitation seeing we profess our selves Christians and say we abide 1 Joh. 2. 6. in him let us walk as he also walked Settle and root in our hearts a stronger and more firm belief of thy holy Gospel and so fix our thoughts and affections upon that unseen happiness that our Saviour in our name and place is possessed of that nothing here below may either allure or affright us from our duty or make us remiss cold and negligent in it but we may be zealous of good works and with fervency of spirit alway serve that gracious Lord from whom we expect the reward of a glorious and immortal inheritance Fill every one of our hearts with a quick and a constant sense an humble and awful dread an ardent and intire love of thee together with an active and vigorous delight in thee and a vigilant and circumspect care universally and in the whole course of our lives to please and approve our selves to thee Let us never adventure to commit any sin as a little one because it will offend and dishonour thee the great and infinite Majesty of Heaven and deserve the eternal punishment and misery of an immortal Soul Keep us by thy grace from every evil way and those sins especially to the which we may be most inclined and easily prevailed upon by custom or example the naughtiness and general corruption of the age we live in our Callings our company or our constitution so that laying aside every weight Heb. 12. 2. and the sins that easily beset us and running with patience and perseverance the race that thou hast set before us we may at length obtain that prize of our High Calling which thou hast prepared and promised in Christ Jesus our Lord. And in his Name we humbly recommend to thy compassion and goodness all the Sons of Men that dwell upon the Face of the Earth beseeching thee that thou wouldst make known thy Will to them and help them to practise according to what they know and whatever affliction or calamity may lye upon them in mind body or estate let them by thy mercy and clemency be supported under them and in thy due time be delivered from them Shew favourable regards of care and kindness towards thy Church engrave her upon the Palms of thine Hands and let Isa 49. 16. her Walls be continually before thee Appoint Salvation for the Walls and Bulwarks of the Nation wherein we live pardon our many crying sins avert thy deserved feared Judgments heal our back-slidings and heal our breaches continue thy Gospel and grant that we may walk worthy of that inestimable favour Bless our dread Sovereign with the blessings of thy right and left hand let his Government be happy and peaceable long and prosperous and a publick blessing to all that are under it and grant that all subordinate Governours in Church in State may faithfully use their power to the discouragement of Vice and ungodliness and the promoting and supporting peace and good order truth righteousness and holiness and let all men by a serious repentance and a through reformation of their ways strive to save the Land from those confusions and miseries into which they have plunged it by their manifold offences Comfort all that mourn give them beauty for ashes and the garments of praise for the spirit of heaviness and let all that groan under thy heavy hand triumph in thy salvation Be with us thy servants this day and let that good providence that hath this night preserved and refreshed us direct assist and bless us in all our ways and keep us from the dangers and mischiefs the sins and offences the snares and temptations that we might otherwise fall into Let us be in thy fear all the day long and so order our lives as if it were the last day we had to live in this world that as in the evening we shall be one day nearer our death we may be nearer eternal life and happiness grant us all these our requests most gracious Father and whatever else thou knowest to be needful for us for the sake of thy dear Son in whose Name and Words by his own direction we further implore thy merciful goodness 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 Tuesday Evening ALmighty and most merciful God and Father the Maker and Governour of all Creatures in Heaven and Earth and exalted in thy glorious perfections above the thoughts and services the praises and acknowledgments of the highest and best of them thine understanding is infinite and thou seest the hearts and ways of all the sons of men thy holiness is infinite and thou hatest all the sin and iniquity thou espiest in them thy power infinite thou canst easily punish them for the sins that provoke and displease thee and 〈◊〉 yet thine infinite mercies thou pardonest the sins of all that by sincere repentance and a through amendment of their ways return to thee We thy poor Servants in a deep sense of our guilt and wretchedness and the strong encouragements of thy declared mercy and goodness humble our Souls at thy Foot-stool beseeching thee to have mercy upon us and through the righteousness of thy dear Son whom thou hast given to be a propitiation and price of redemptition for us to pardon our many and great transgressions whereof we are guilty before thy Majesty in thought and word and deed and whereby we have deserved to be punished with overlasting destruction from thy presence by thy glorious power Hadst thou O Lord taken advantages against us or been forward to pour out that wrath and vengeance that we have been forward to provoke we had not now been begging thy mercy or cherish'd with the hopes of it but had in vain lamented the bloody and severe effects of thine incensed Justice We are not only by Nature the Children of Wrath but have in the course of our Lives actuated the sinful corrupt principles of our Nature and gone astray from thy holy just and good Laws that thou hast given to be the rule and measure of our actions and though both as thy Creatures thy Servants and thy Children thou hast laid upon us the greatest obligations to obedience and a dutyful complyance with thy Will yet have we in the eager and violent pursuit of our lusts Psal 2. 3. broken thy bonds asunder and cast away thy cords from us We have professed the pure and holy Religion of thy Son but have shamefully dishonoured him and his Religion by impure and unholy practises and 2 Tim. 2. 19. naming the Name of Christ we have not departed from iniquity we have given up our Names to him in Baptism and solemnly vowed obedience to the Laws of his holy Gospel but we have started aside like broken Bows and walked in the imaginations of our own hearts and fulfilled our vile and foolish lusts as if there were no God to be served no Soul to be saved no Hell to be feared no Heaven to be expected and as if the Name of Christians would have carryed us to Heaven we have done those things that many Heathens would have blushed at and been ashamed to have practised so that this might be our condemnation which of all other is the most grievous and insupportable that Light is come into the World and we have loved Darkness rather than Light Joh. 3. 19. because our deeds have been evil So many and undeserved have been thy mercies towards us so kind and unwearied the expressions of thy bounty that all our disobedience is by a shameful and odious ingratitude become exceeding sinful and we cannot without sorrow of heart and confusion of Face reflect upon our wearying thee with our sins when thou hast loaded us with thy benefits But we beseech thee O most merciful Father in the tenderest compassions of thy sounding bowels look down upon us and for thy Names sake the most powerful argument and such as uses to prevail O Lord hear O Lord spare O Lord forgive by a serious and hearty repentance and a true and lively Faith in thy Son make us fit partakers of thy pardoning mercy Though our deserts are thine indignation and vengeance the merit of his righteousness is remission and forgiveness though we have affronted thy Justice he hath satisfied it though we have incensed thy wrath he hath appeased it the chastisement of Isa 53. 5. our peace was upon him O let the merit of his righteousness be upon us And because the holy Jesus together with the guilt and punishment of sin alway delivers from the power of it and they that are Christs crucifie the Gal. 5. 24. flesh with its affections and lusts by the subduing and mortification of our sins convince and comfortably satisfie us that thou hast pardoned them and by thy sanctifying grace help us to cleanse our selves from 2 Cor. 7. 1. all filthiness of the flesh and spirit and to perfect holiness in thy fear sanctifie us wholly 1 Thes 5. 23. and let our whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ Quicken us holy Father by the spirit of life and holiness to run the ways of thy Commandments and as thou hast given our blessed Saviour to be Head of thy Church and anointed him with an unmeasured fulness of thy Spirit that he might communicate and impart it to the Members of his Body let some drops of that holy Oil fall down upon us that was so plentifully poured upon the Head of our High Priest and out of his fulness let us receive Joh. 1. 16. Grace for Grace and so renew the Image of his Holiness in our Souls that as his true Children we may shew forth all the Features and Lineaments of our heavenly Father And because we are not sufficient of our selves to avoid any evil or perform any good be graciously present with us to preserve us from the one and assist us in the other Make us perfect in every good work to do thy will working in us that which is well pleasing in Heb. 13. 21. thy sight through Jesus Christ Make us wise to Salvation and seeing our days are very few and uncertain and repentance both necessary and out of our own power let us not put it off till to morrow not knowing what a day may bring forth nor deceive our selves with vain purposes of parting with our Sins hereafter when this very night our Souls may be Luk. 12. 20. taken from us But seeing the Heavens and the Earth at 2. Pet. 3. 15. length and our selves ere long must be dissolved let us be diligent that we may be found of thee in peace without spot and blameless Bless thy whole Church scattered far and near over the Face of the Earth pour out upon it the Spirit of Truth and Holiness and grant that all that confess thy holy Name may agree in the truth of thy holy Word and live in unity and godly love be thou that art the Lord and
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
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