under the whole Heaven is mine But some people are his in peculiar above others and in a more neer and special relation belong unto him in as much as he fixeth a more peculiar property in them and settleth a more special dominion over them and placeth a more intimate presence among them Moses saith unto Israel The Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself above all people that are upon the face of the Earth Deut. 7.6 10.14 15 Behold the Heaven and the Heaven of Heavens is the Lords thy God the Earth also with all that therein is only the Lord had a delight in thy fathers to love them and he chose their seed after them even you above all people as it is this day It must be noted further of these his peculiar people 1. Some are in this relation by external vocation union communion and profession only that is they are appropriated to God by outward acts of Ordinances and Worship and enjoy external ministerial and temporary priviledges and benefits The description of these in Scripture is They are Gods people and Saints that have made a Covenant with him by sacrifice Psa 50.5 2 Chro. 7.14 Neh. 1.10 they are his people which are called by his Name or upon whom his Name is called These are thy servants and thy people whom thou hast redeemed by thy great power and by thy strong hand viz. from Egypt They are they to whom pertaineth the Adoption and the glory Rom. 9.4 and the Covenants and the giving of the Law and the service of God and the Promises that is they have those things as to the outward signs tokens expressions and actions of them 2. Some have over and above this stile and relation a neerer appertainency unto God to wit by inward and effectual grace calling union and communion He that is of this number is called an Israelite indeed in whom is no guile a Jew inwardly Joh. 1.47 Rom. 2.29 that hath the Circumcision of the heart and in the spirit of such the Lord speaketh Surely they are my people children that will not lye Isai 63.8 so he was their Saviour These are such as God hath peculiarly loved freely chosen dearly purchased efficaciously called absolutely covenanted with and singularly qualified and sanctified for this relation and the benefits and glory that ensue upon it The Scripture is industrious in distinguishing betwixt the people of God in the former and in the latter way and shewing the difference which there is between them in sharing of the priviledges of Gods people They that are his in the former way only are set out under this character They are Jews outwardly they are born after the flesh they are the sons of the Bond-woman Rom 2.28 Gal. 4.29 30 Isai 48.1 they are called by the name of Israel and are come forth out of the waters of Judah which swear by the Name of the Lord and make mention of the God of Israel Matt. 7.22 but not in truth nor in righteousness They will say unto Christ Lord Luk. 13.26 Lord have we not prophecyed in thy Name and in thy Name have cast out Devils and in thy Name done many wonderful works we have eaten and drunken in thy presence and thou hast taught in our streets These because they are meer nominals and remain without the spiritual part of this relation without those graces vertues and effectual workings that are in Saints indeed and without the truth power and life of Sanctification therefore they are in the upshot disclaimed Hos 1 9. Ro. 9.6 7 1 28 1 Joh. 2.19 Mat. 7.23 and declared to be not the people of God not Israel though of Israel not children though the seed of Abraham not Jews not of us and Christ will profess unto them I never knew ye depart from me ye workers of iniquity But they that are Gods people in the latter more peculiar and intimate respect they are noted out thus They are the little flock to whom it is their fathers good pleasure to give the Kingdom Luk. 12 32 Mat. 20.16 the few that are chosen of the many that be called his people which he fore-knew Ro. 11.2 5 9.7 8 23 27.4.12 the remnant according to the Election of Grace the children of the Promise Abrahams seed by Isaac the vessels of mercy the remnant that shall be saved not of the Circumcision only but walkers in the steps of the faith of our father Abraham Gal. 4.29 3â— sons of the free-woman born after the Spirit As there is betwixt these two sorts viz. the people of God by external vocation only and they that are his by internal transformation also much difference in other respects so there is particularly in respect of success in prayer and though the Lord may in some sort hide himself from them both when they pray yet not from them both alike the difference will be shewn after SECT II. Of the groundedness of Prayers upon Divine Promises COncerning the groundedness of Prayers upon Divine Promises we are well to observe divers things First That prayer unto God hath in Scripture a twofold ground There is 1. A ground of precept 2. A ground of promise There is a ground of Precept by which prayer is authorized and made necessary and a ground of promise by which it is supported and encouraged The precept is the ground of Conscience for the undertaking of it the promise is the ground of confidence and assurance for the success of it The precept shews the subject for what and the manner how to pray the promise gives us the inducement why we should pray Both these grounds we have delivered together in divers places as in that of the Psalmist Psa 50.15 Call upon me in the day of trouble I will deliver thee Call upon me in the day of trouble there 's the ground of precept I will deliver thee there 's the ground of promise And in that of the Apostle James If any of you lack wisdom Jam 1.5 let him ask it of God that 's the ground of precept and it shall be given him that 's the ground of promise And in that of our Saviour Matt. 7.7 Ask and it shall be given you seek and ye shall find knock and it shall be opened unto you there 's a treble precept Ask seek knock and a treble promise It shall be given you Ye shall find It shall be opened unto you I will not deny but in some kind the promise may be accounted a ground of warrant or precept for prayer yea in some cases it is the only warrant that is where the thing prayed for is a peculiar blessing out of the common road 2 Sam. 7.16.25 27 as was that promise of God to David of a sure House and Kingdom upon which he built his prayer And that made to the Prophet Elijah 1 Kin. 17.1 Jam. 5.17 that there should
without scruple 2. Others are bent against the persons of men and these are also differenced into 1. Such as are not for mens destruction but correction only by some temporal evil or affliction which is desired to befall them for this end that they may be brought to understand humble themselves repent of their iniquity and turn to God As is that of the Psalmist Psal 83.16 Fill their faces with shame that they may seek thy Name O Lord. So Elihu is conceived to pray concerning Job My desire is that Job may be tryed or O my Father Job 34 36. let Job be tryed unto the end because of his answers for wicked men that is as Diodate paraphraseth it Do not O God withdraw thy visitations from Job until thou hast brought him to the duty of a child and to the only means of obtaining pardon which is humility and confession Neither is the lawfulness of Imprecations like to these stuck at by Divines 2. Such as are against mens persons for their subversion and these are of a threefold nature or Consideration 1. Some are against men as they are Gods Enemies a Psa 68.1 69 2.109.6 Rom. 11.9 Judg. 5.31 2. Some are against men as they are the Churches Enemies b Psa 79.6 137.7 Lam. 3.64 Neb. 4 4 3. And some are against men as they are their own Enemies that pray c Ps 55.15 59.13 71 13 Jer. 15.15 17 18 18.21 20.12 2 Kin. 1.10 2.24 2 Tim. 4.14 Now these three kinds of Malediction are those that are called into question and that two ways 1. Whether they were Justifiable in them that used them in sacred writ 2. Whether they be imitable lawfully in by us against the like Enemies First For the former Question The Justifiableness of them in them that used them in holy Writ is generally assented unto and thus cleared 1. Many of those Execrations may be taken to be uttered by a Spirit of Prophecy and so to be rather Prophetical Predictions and Denunciations of divine Judgments certainly foreseen to come upon the parties then meer wishings and desirings of evil to them proceeding originally from the wills of them that pray d Verba praedicantium non vota imprecantium * August contra Faustum idem de Serm. Dom. li. 1. Optativo modo usi sunt pro Indicativo 2. Others of them if they came not from a divining Spirit yet they might come from a discerning Spirit peculiarly given to them whereby they might be able to discover those against whom they so prayed to be implacable and desperate Enemies of God his Church and Truth 3. The Utterers of those prayers being Penmen of holy Writ or otherwise extraordinary persons may well be deemed to have been moved with a pure zeal of God and his Cause and clear of those base incentives of private passion malice and impatience more incident to others And whereas those prayers may seem to oppugn the Rules of charity and prayer for our Enemies it may be said Those Rules are to bind where there is no special Warrant for exception and charity to men must be subordinate and secondary to our love and zeal towards God 2. But if any vitiosity may be supposed in any of those Instances as some incline to admit in those votes of the Prophet Jeremiah e H. Bullinger in Jer. 15. â—5 And Scultet de prec c. 16. p. 76. such doubtless are to be born with in them and passed over by us without following them therein Secondly For the latter Question about them viz. their Lawfulness for us to practise This may not simply be granted but we are to distinguish of the manner of conceiving such prayers which may be 1. Either generally or indefinitely as when one prayeth against the Enemies of God and Christ whomsoever they be not pitching upon any particular persons and without eyeing or judging these or those to be such but leaving it to God to find them out and deal with them accordingly Of this nature is that of Deborah and Barak So let all thine Enemies perish O Lord Judg. 5.31 And that of the Apostle not only pronounced by him but imposed upon others to concur in If any man love not the Lord Jesus 1 Cor. 16.22 let him be Anathema Maran atha Such like Imprecations keeping within the general denunciation both with tongue and eye are not inconvenient for Christians now 2. Or particularly conceived that is personally applyed and fixed on this or that man or people and these Maledictions are to be held unwarrantable for us ordinarily we having no special or infallible gift of prophecy or discerning whereby we may be enabled to see into mens spiritual estate or to foresee what is absolutely the portion of their cup from the Almighty or to dictate unto us such prayers we falling short also of that clearness of zeal and immixture of Love to God which in some in times past hath been We having no such special call or assistance as others have had our safest and clearest way is to take notice of that rebuke of our Saviour unto James and John Luk. 9.55 Mat. 5.44 Ro. 12.14 19. 1 Pet. 3.9 1 Pet. 2.23 Lu. 23.34 Acts 7.60 when they would have called for fire down from Heaven upon certain Samaritans And to walk by those Rules which on the other hand are given us in the Gospel of Loving doing good to blessing praying for our Enemies Cursers and Persecutors and of refraining cursing self-avenging and wrong-retaliating And for which we have the practise of our blessed Saviour and of his servants set before us in Scripture We have thus an Extract of the Rules of Scripture concerning the Subject of prayer both as it respecteth things and persons There is yet another branch of this preceptive ground of prayer to be viewed viz. that which prescribeth the way in which prayer must be performed and put up to God This hath included in it two things 1. The means or assistance by which we must pray 2. The manner how Briefly of both First The means or assistance by which we must pray this is twofold 1. It must be in Christ 2. It must be in the Spirit We are to make use of both these by way of Intercession or Advocateship Christ maketh Intercession for us in Heaven a Ro. 8.34 at the right hand of God The Spirit maketh Intercession within us in the heart b Ro. 8.26 Christ is our Advocate with the Father c 1 Joh. 2.2 The Spirit is our Advocate abiding with and in us d Jo. 14 16 The Spirit is called another Advocate in relation to Christ who is also our Advocate The Spirit is another because different from him both in person and in the nature of his Advocateship Christ is our Advocate in Heaven by way of Expiation of our sins Attonement Reconciliation and Representation of our persons and of our prayers before God The Spirit is our
Advocate here on Earth by way of Instruction and Excitation of us to pray and animating or enlivening our requests within us We labor of a double incapacity to go to God in prayer 1. Of guilt and unworthiness as being enemies and transgressors against God 2. Of ineptitude or infirmity both in point of understanding and will as being both ignorant and liveless to ask any thing of God Wherefore we have need of and have given us a double Advocate First Of Propitiation in Heaven the Lord Jesus Christ Secondly Of Interpellation or Efficiency with and in us this is the proper work of the Holy Ghost And therefore we are said to have access unto the Father through Christ and by the Spirit The Rule then in this place to be followed is We must pray 1. In Christ Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my Name Ask and you shall receive that your Joy may be full At that day ye shall ask in my Name Io. 16 24.26 Rom. 3.25 Psal 80.1 Exod. 30.6 Christ is our Propitiatory or Mercy-seat As in the time of the Law the Lord afforded his presence over the Mercy-seat and thence gave Answers to the Enquiries of the high Priest and people of Israel so are we now without such visible and local types brought near unto God and vouchsafed audience through Jesus Christ 2. We must pray in the Spirit Praying in the Holy Ghost Iudâ— 20. Eph. 6.18 Tim. 5. â—6 Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit The Apostle James saith The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much Prayer is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 effectual Dr Downham doctr of pâ—ayer cap. 6. p. 27. when it hath the inward 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or working when it is actuated and effectuated by the Spirit of God in generating this inward efficacy in our prayers which we are not able to give them saith a most judicious Author Our prayer must not be the work of our lip or voyce nor of our brain wit memory nor of our will and carnal desire only it must not be a meer humane work or but from a common acquired gift of prayer serving only to put our case into a form of words and method but it must be the work of the Spirit upon the heart it must be made of impressions and expressions that are inward and proceed of the Spirit of God impressions of softness tenderness and mourning Zech. 12. â—0 Rom. 8.27 expressions of groanings that cannot be uttered We see this part of the way in which prayer must be offered up viz. the Means by which Secondly The Manner There are certain particular Qualifications and Affections that must accompany prayer Those are these following or the main of them 1. Understanding a 1 Cor. 14 15 2. Faith b Mat. 21.22 Iam. 1 6. Rom 10.4 3. Repentance c Ps 66 18 Lam. 3 40 41 4 Sincerity d Heb. 10.22 Psa 145.8 Ro. 12 12 5. Fervencye. 6. Charity f Mark 11 25 1 Tim. 2.8 7. And lastly Perseverance g Luk 18.1 Eph. 6 18. I leave the Reader for brevities sake to search the places quoted in the Margin I have thus given a brief description of the ground of Precept layd down for prayer in the Word of God I am now to come to the ground of Promise and to do the like by it I shall for our survey of this propose unto observation two things 1. The several kinds of promise upon which prayer is to ground it self 2. The right sence and acception in which those promises are made and to be taken by us in building our prayers upon them and consequently of the grounding of prayers upon the promises First The several kinds of promises for the bottoming of prayer The Promises of God upon which prayer may fix and hold are of two sorts 1. Irrespective or such as are made of doing good without any express mention of or relation to prayer 2. Relative or such as are made to prayer as of hearing or of giving this or that blessing upon prayer The former promiseth the matter or thing prayed for the latter promiseth it unto prayer So that the former I may term the material the latter the formal ground of prayer First For the irrespective promises I need not may not be particular upon them they are so huge a multitude they make a principal part of Scripture and for their nature they are great and precious of a vast and various comprehension they are extended to all things times persons states and uses they are by themselves a subject large enough for a whole Treatise and so they are put forth by a learned and worthy Author with much diligence * Mr Leigh Treat of Divine Promises now a 3d time imprinted Only I shall note one distinction of them 1. They are either such as concern all are made and propounded and so in some sort appertain to all or any whomsoever so they come duly qualified to them such are the main bulk and current of Scripture-promises 2. There are that belong to some special persons only who are usually by name spoken to or of in them such was that promise made to David of a lasting family and succession in the Kingdom over Israel 2 Sam. 7.16 Isai 38.5 and that promise made to Hezekiah of recovery from sickness and of an addition of fifteen years unto his life and of defence of himself and the City Jerusalem from the King of Assyria and as a sign of the same of the return back of the shadow upon the Sun-dyal of Ahaz ten degrees and that promise made to the captive Jews of a return home from Babylon after seventy years accomplished in captivity Secondly For the relative promises or those that are made expresly to prayer they are as the former 1. Either peculiar to some persons as God promised Abraham upon his prayer to spare Sodom Gen. 18.26 20.7 according to the conditions by him inserted touching the number of the righteous to be there found and he promised Abimelech King of Gerar life upon Abrahams praying for him 1 Kin. 17 1. Jam. 5.17 And he promised Elijah that there should not be dew nor rain for some years but according to his Word which was his prayer 2. Or universal and layd down for all and these are the promises now of use to us for the grounding of our prayers upon them and therefore we are to take these into our more special consideration They are all general in regard of object or extent to persons but in regard of their subject or the matter promised 1. Some are more generally propounded as when the Lord promiseth to hear Isai 58.9 Psâ—l 144.18 19 50 15 86.5 Rom. 10 12 13 to answer to save to be plenteous in mercy to be nigh to be rich over them that call upon them or that they that ask shall receive and the like These are promises
of good success to prayer without descending to any express or determinate way or manner of their speeding or the return to be made 2. Other promises run more particularly and precisely upon the doing or giving of the thing prayed for As that Whatsoever ye shall ask in my Name Joh. 14.13 14.15.7 that will I do And that If ye shall ask any thing in my Name I will do it So in divers particular promises as unto prayer for wisdom Jam. 1.5 the promise is It shall be given to him that asks it and for a Brother that hath sinned 2 Joh. 5.16 He shall ask and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death For the holy Spirit Luk. 11.13 Your heavenly Father shall give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him It may be observed by the way that these promises that run particularly upon the doing or giving of the thing are at least for the most part promises of spiritual things and this difference of promises to prayer that some are for hearing and return others for a grant or performance of the thing may be of use to us in the sequel Secondly It follows that we come to enquire into the sence and manner wherein the promises both the irrespective and the relative are made and to be taken by us in bottoming our prayers upon them and so we come home to the point of the groundedness of prayers upon the promises For this we must heedfully observe in every promise two things 1. The thing promised as this or that benefit or an audience or accomplishment of prayer 2. The condition circumspection or qualification of the promise for God never promiseth that be men what ever they will or can be they shall have such blessings neither is his Word out that whosoever puts up a prayer or howsoever it is put up or whatsoever it be for he will hear and do it but there are certain bounds limits or proviso's inserted in his promises by which he confineth them and unto which we must keep in our dependance upon them These limits or proviso's as far as I observe are reducible to six heads 1. Concerning the person praying 2. The manner of the prayer 3. The matter 4. The order 5. The circumstances of time means and the like 6. The end 1. For the person praying the promise is to the prayer of a righteous man a Jam. 5.16 1 Pet. 3.12 Pro. 10.24 15.29 of a godly man b Ps 32.6 of him that feareth God c Ps 145.19 of an humble man d Isa 66.2 of one that is in Christ e Joh. 15.7 and one that keepeth the Commandments of God f Joh. 3.22 These are to be the qualifications of the person praying and he that is not such a one is an unpromised person if he cometh to God in prayer he comes without the promise 2. For the manner of prayer The promise is to the prayer 1. That is made in the mediation of Christ a Joh. 16.23 24 2. In the help of the Spirit b Ro. 8.27 3. In Faith c Mat. 21.22 4. In Truth d Psal 145 18 and Sincerity 5. In Fervency e Jam. 5.16 6. In Love and Charity f Mark 11 25 7. With Humility g Ps 10.17 8. With constancy h Luk. 18 1 7 These must be the accomplishments of the prayer besides those foregoing of the person And let it here be noted that the person may be furnished with those conditions above required in him and yet his prayer may be without these The man may be a righteous and a godly man one that feareth God humble obedient and that which inferreth all these one in Christ and yet his prayers may be not in the mediation of Christ or not in the help of the Spirit or not in Faith Truth c. For that the prayer may be so qualified there is required an actual recourse to Christ operation of the Spirit exercise of Faith Sincerity Zeal Love Humility and Constancy Now that which the person hath in the root principle or habit may lie unacted may not reach or be put forth into the action of prayer but the promise requireth them both to wit both that the Suppliant and the Prayer be qualified each with those their proper characters 3. Concerning the matter There is for this a double limitation 1. The promise is to what we pray for Joh. 5.14 so it be according to the Will of God This 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his Will here I conceive to intend not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his Will of Purpose or Decree for that is to us in most things unrevealed but his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his Will of warrant or his revealed Will to be done by us his Will of precept or approbation made known to us in his Word for a Rule to us To pray for anything according to his Will then is to pray for that which is lawful and allowed us by his Word to be prayed for All the promises of God are arguments and encouragements to the obedience of his Will and therefore certainly none of them may be understood to hold out or promise any benefit to irregular desires 2. The promise is to what is prayed for that is a good thing Your Father which is in Heaven shall give good things to them that ask him Mat. 7.11 Good here is to be taken not in genere moris for good or appropriated in Gods Word or good according to the precept for that was the meaning of the last restriction before but good in genere utilis that is profitable or beneficial and that not only so good simply or in it self but good complexedly or in its circumstances that is good for the party pro hic nunc as the case is now with him and good comparatively that is better then the want of it or another thing put in the room of it or into the ballances with it Indeed the subject of all Gods promises is some good thing as is the object of all rational desires but good here is understood to be a note of restriction to confine the matter of other indefinite and irrespective promises of good things to a complexed circumstantiated and comparative goodness as to the exercise and expectation of prayer Some things indeed are absolutely good that is invariably both in their own nature or kind and in whatsoever individual circumstances of person time or the like you can clothe them and this is because they are absolutely and universally necessary so are all spiritual blessings in respect of essence or Being and therefore to them this limitation reacheth not but other things are of a variable goodness and necessariness to us such are temporal things and some spiritual gifts in regard of us or of this or that degree of them These are all good in themselves but any of them may be inexpedient if not
10.4.31 Psa 18.6 they come up for a memorial before God David saith His cry came before God even unto his ears The Priests the Levites when they arose and blessed the people at Zedekiahs Passover the Text saith 2 Chro. 30 27 Their voyce was heard and their prayer came up to his holy dwelling place even unto Heaven And when it is thus the Scripture saith of God in relation to prayers His ears are open to their cry He harkens and hears Psa 34.15 Mal. 3 16 Psal 86.1 10.17 66.16 102.17 Prov. 15.8 Cant. 2.14 Psa 145.18 Lam. 3.57 Job 33.26 Isai 30.19 Jer. 31.20 Mal. 3.16 Jer. 29.14 Ezra 8.23 Gen. 19.21 Cant. 2.14 He bows down his ear and hears He causeth his ear to hear He attendeth to the voyce of prayer He regardeth and despiseth not their prayer The prayer is his delight the voyce is sweet And it saith of God in relation to the Petitioner He is nigh He draweth neer to them that call upon him He is favorable He is very gracious to them at the voyce of their cry He doth earnestly remember them still His bowels are troubled for them A book of remembrance is written before God for them He is found of them He is entreated of them He accepteth their face their countenance is comely In such terms as these the Scripture travelleth to deliver and explain to us the respâ—ct and welcome which God gives to his childrens prayers And this is the first part of prayers succeâ—s or taking with God it 's heard or received The second is Gods answer or making return to prayer The Lord appears to prayers by answering them and this is the appearance whereof we are more sensible this is that we find in the Prophet Then shalt thou call and the Lord shall answer thou shalt cry Isai 58.9 and he shall say Here am I. David tells us That when in his distress he called upon the Lord Psal 18 6 and cryed unto his God he heard his voyce out of his Temple and his cry came before him even unto his ears that was the first effect of prayer of which before It then follows He bowed the Heavens also and came down and darkness was under his feet and he rode upon a Cherub and did fly yea he did fly upon the wings of the wind the Lord also thundered in the Heavens c. yea he sent out his arrows c. that 's the latter effect the return and answer the Lord did visibly and mercifully appear for his help and rescue as is there figuratively and largely set forth There were indeed times when God did return answers to his people audibly or sensibly by appearances or voyces as he did by vision to Abraham and others by voyce or visible token to Moses and the High-Priest in the Tabernacle of the Congregation and from above the Mercy-seat and by Dreams by Vrim by Prophets from time to time to his people Israel and sometimes by Angels to some of them But these returns some of them were peculiar to those times others were then extraordinary and now much more extraordinary and neither then were much less now are to be looked for There is another way of return which is more common and constant and that is by his workings of this David makes relation I waited patiently for the Lord and he inclined to me and heard my cry He brought me up also to an horrible pit out of the miry clay and set my feet upon a rock and establish'd my goings This his raising out of the pit and seating upon a firm standing is the active answer of God to Davids prayer Now this return of prayer is divers ways made and the several sorts of it must be well noted I shall distinguish them thus There is a threefold answer of prayer or return is made thereto three ways 1. By way of obsignation 2. By way of performance 3. By way of commutation These three ways God answereth the prayers of his servants when they are faithfully put up and grounded as before was shewed that is some one at least of thâ—se three ways The first way is obsignatory this is an answer by way of testimony or assurance of acceptance and audiâ—â—ce of the prayer that hath been offered up to God or by way of Earnest or pledg of future accomplishment God is pleased many times before he perform the request of his servants to give them immediately or upon their seeking to him a pledg that they are heard and shall have an issue of their desires This he doth usually when the performance is to be at some distance of time and the Petitioner must bear some delay for it then he vouchsafes often to give as it were a Bill of assurance under his hand in the interim for it But what is it that God doth give in pledg why something still that is both valuable and suitable Some fire as it were comes down from Heaven upon the Altar and consumes their sacrifice Psa 20.3 in testimony of acceptance This obsignatory answer may be by divers effects or ways 1. By an inward taste or testification from God of his good-will and love to the Suppliant Elihu saith He shall pray unto God and he will be favorable unto him Job 33.26 and he shall see his face with joy When Jacob had prayed and wrestled all night and had got the victory and blessing yielded him He called the name of the place Peniel that is the face of God Gen. 32.30 for I have seen said he God face to face The request that he had been conflicting about was to be delivered from the hand of Esau his Brother he had it granted and in assurance he should find it fulfilled the day following in the reconciled face and embracements of his Brother he hath immediately the sight of Gods face and the light of his countenance shewed him and this made him go on with boldness of heart though with a halting thigh from Peniel to meet his Brother The Prophet Daniel when he had fasted and made his supplications unto God Dan. 9.13 10.11 8.26 10 1 14 7.28 8.27 had several times an Angel appearing to him and telling him He was greatly beloved to wit of God the visions shewed him were for many days and the time appointed was long and some of them were sad and unpleasing unto him But in the interim and for a cordial he had this message sent him from God that he was a man in high favor with God 2. By a removal of that sorrow dejection fear or anxiety of spirit that before might possess and fill him that prayed Hannah having poured forth her prayer and tears and uttered her vow before the Lord in Shiloh and received that good presage from Eli the Priest of her Petition 1 Sam. 1 18 it 's said She went her way and did eat and her countenance was no more sad she thenceforth had a light heart her
heart this is a pestilence that too often walketh in darkness as to mens taking notice of it 2. Unhumbledness of heart There is to be in all especially in our solemn and extraordinary prayers an humbled Spirit in regard of needs judgments and sins So the Lords promise upon Solomons prayer runs 2 Chro. 7 14 If my people which are called by my Name shall humble themselves and pray c. and so it was before to Moses If then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity c. The want of this affectedness of heart was one cause that though the people of Iudah sought God dayly and fasted and afflicted their Souls by bodily interdiction yet the wrath of God would not be averted They bowed down the head as a bulrush Isa 58.3 5 and spred sackcloth and ashes under them but they still found pleasure in sin 3. Hypocrisie word or lip-devotion without the power of piety to wit the true love and fear of God and seeking after him in the heart Of the Hypocrite Iob saith Job 27.9 Will God hear his cry when trouble cometh upon him Solomons prayer which seems to be the square both according to which we should pray and God will accept and hear was 2 Chro. 6 30 and render unto every man according unto all his ways whose heart thou knowest The thing intimated hereby as I conceive is this Men that pray shall have a return from God not meerly according to their present form of prayer but according to the universal course of their lives If their prayer be for its composure good and their ways be good too they may expect from God a good answer but though that be good if they be peccant in these they can look for no good answer and the reason here may be for that God looketh at and for the heart and the integrity of it and there is not any such true character or picture of a mans heart as is the general course and frame of his ways it and these do exactly answer each other as do the signet and the impression 4. The proposing of indirect by and unworthy ends in prayer The Apostle saith Ye ask and receive not because you ask amiss that you may consume it upon your lusts Jam. 4.3 It is intolerable that holy and godly desires for the matter of them should travel to and traffique with Heaven to serve and bring in provisions for sensual or vile lusts The Lord taxeth it upon Israel that they cryed not unto him when they howled upon their beds Hos 7.14 they assembled themselves for corn and wine their end was not God it seems but their own belly It was an hainous crime for any man of Israel to make a perfume like to that which was holy Exo. 30.37 38 and compounded for the incense of the Sanctuary or to turn it to a civil and private use as for himself to smell to this was to be punished with cutting off from his people Accordingly it must needs be very displeasing unto God for a man to convert the sacred incense of prayer from its own proper and religious end to any carnal or sinful purpose or design 5. A contentious quarrelous or malicious heart in prayer Our blessed Saviour thus instructs us for prayer And when you stand praying Mark 11.25 forgive if you have ought against any that your Father also which is in Heaven may forgive you your trespasses but if you do not forgive neither will your Father which is in Heaven forgive your trespasses A Rule to be well taken notice of at all times especially in these warring and jarring times wherein there is not only party against party in more divisions then can be mustered up but even prayer against prayer and if withall there should be strife and rancor within and so heart against heart as alass how hard is it to be avoyded who can hope it is any better among many This default would be enough it self alone both to keep back their prayers from them and to bind on their sins upon them As two persons cannot walk together except they be agreed so neither can their prayers ascend up to Heaven together except they be agreed the one at least and if both be from a strife-enflamed Censer what ever the matter be both must needs be shut out The Apostle wills That men pray every where lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting 1 Tim. 2.8 or without wrath and disceptation and so both terms may exclude debate in devotion When Israel went to war in their Land against the enemy that oppressed them the Priests were to blow an alarm against the enemy with both the Trumpets of the Sanctuary Num. 10 9 and then they should be remembred before the Lord their God and be saved from their Enemies But what might be expected if they should sound Trumpet against Trumpet and Priest against Priest 6. Infidelity or weakness of Faith or trust in God The Apostle James requires us to ask in Faith nothing wavering for let not that man that wavereth think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. Jam 1.6 7 Mr Medes Diatr part 2. p. 297 This wavering saith one is when we reel from God to rest upon second means It is a hard matter to use friends wisdom or strength and not to relie upon them and it is as hard to go to God in prayer and sincerely and stedfastly to trust in him It is wont to be said we must use the means but trust in God but the usual practise is to invert that and to use prayer use God but trust in the means Our Saviour saith that God will avenge his own Elect which cry day and night to him though he bear long with them Lu. 18 7 8 he will avenge them speedily nevertheless when the Son of man cometh shall he find Faith on the Earth How is this Can it be long and yet speedy We must take it in divers respects or in relation to divers persons It is long in the account and sense of them that pray but it is speedy to the wicked that are the subjects of that avenging It is long because God waits for strength of faith as well as assiduity of cries in his Elect it is speedy because God is quicker in coming on in his work then they are in their advance of faith Though he bear long yet he comes sooner then their faith is ready for when he cometh he shall scarce find faith in the Earth 7. A continuance of sin in heart and life If I regard iniquity in my heart Psa 66.18 the Lord will not hear me saith David And the Lord tells Israel Lev. 26 27 31 If ye will not for all this harken unto me but walk contrary unto me I will bring your Sanctuaries unto desolation and I will not smell the savor of your sweet
and argue us of hypocrisie 1 Sam. 12.23 Isai 64.7 Gal. 6.9 Nisi ad sit in oratione perseverandi constantia nihil orando agimus Calv. Instit l. 3. c. 20. s 52. Job 27.10 5. One special end of Gods deferring our prayers is to train us on to seek him more diligently Hos 5.15 6. Lastly How hath God been over-intreated by incessancy in prayer as by Jacob distressed at his brother Esaus approach Gen. 32.26 by Moses for Israel Deut. 9.18 19. by Israel under the Ammonitish bondage Judg. 10.16 and by the Church of God in Peters behalf Act. 12.5 Learn we then and keep to this Lesson Let us in the Scripture phrase roul our way upon the Lord Psal 37.5 55.22 Prov. 16.3 Though he should seem to turn it back again from him by delaying to accomplish it yet still be rouling or devolving it over to him by ingeminated petitions Let our prayers be poured out unto God as the Church saith her tears shall be without any intermission till the Lord look down and behold from Heaven Lam. 3.49 c. 3. Beleeve what you see not to wit the presâ—nt acceptance and future return in some or other yea the bâ—st way of your prayers framed accordiâ—g to the Will of God As we must pour out our hearts before God so must we trust in him at all times Psal 62.8 and in particular trust in him for the prayers which we pour out before him From whence had David that lively confidence of the Lords audience of him and the prediscovery of the issue of his prayers so clear as if he saw them already performed before his eyes the which he often professeth even under or together with his most bitter complaints of the Lords hiding himself from him as Psal 6.8 9. 13.5 6. 22.24 43.5 54.7 Had he it from any peculiar or extraordinary revelation or by vertue of the promise of God in his Word layd hold on faith I suppose it might be by the latter way only But by whethersoever it was I see no reason why the vigor of a Christians faith may not without the former extraordinary means attain to the same assurance and triumph which he arrived at For whether it was upon special revelation or upon the written Word that David was so bottomed it was still but by force of a divine word or promise the difference 'twixt those two lies but in the manner of receiving The promise which all Beleevers have in the written Word for the success of their prayers is as firm and certain as that which David built on could possibly be The Lord telleth all his people Isai 45.18 19. in substance thus much He is the Lord that created the Heavens that formed and made the Earth and established it And as he created it not in vain but to be inhabited so he hath not commanded the seed of Iacob to seek him in vain As sure as he made the Earth to be inhabited so sure he hath ordered his people to pray that he may perform and they may possess their prayers What can be a surer testimony to the validity of any thing then that asseveration of our Saviour is for the validity of prayer Luke 18 7.8 Shall not God avenge his own Elect which cry day and night unto him I tell you that he will avenge them speedily I tell you If Christ tell us so in his Gospel it is as sure as if the Spirit told us so by his inspiration to us Can there be a firmer bond to ascertain us then is that tye which we find betwixt the spirit of prayer poured out Zech. 12.10 and the hearing and answer of prayer Chap. 13.9 And from this we may assuredly conclude God hath not in these days poured out the spirit of supplications and thereby put his servants on so universally solemnly and earnestly to pray yea and to enter into such vows and covenants but it is for a great and gracious end at least to themselves in which he will specially manifest himself to be their God and they to be his people Prayers and tears have been accounted the Churches weapons and doubtless what is said of the bow of Ionathan 2 Sam. 1.12 and the sword of Saul that they never returned empty the same shall be made good of those arms of the Church And as the assurance that is given to prayer in general is so stable so is that which is given in special to the prayers of the deserted The needy shall not alway be forgotten The expectation of the poor shall not perish for ever The Lord will not cast off for ever but Psal 9.18 Lam. 3.31 32 Psa 102.17 Zech. 10 6. though he cause grief yet he will have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies He will regard the prayer of the destitute and not despise their prayer I will be as though I had not cast them off for I am the Lord their God and will hear them To perswade us further to exercise faith in this behalf 1. Consider God hears and sometimes the petitioner doth not discern it For this take that of Elihu Job 35.14 Although thou sayst thou shalt not see him yet judgment is before him Mat. 21.22 therefore trust in him 2. The promise of audience takes in faith as a condition or requisite 3. The special use of faith is to settle the heart in beleeving and hoping things unseen Heb. 11.1 Rom. 4.18 19 yea and what is cross to present and visible things and in particular things of that nature in return or answer to prayer This is the confidence that we have in him 1 Joh. 5.14 15 that if we ask any thing according to his Will he heareth us c. This is the confidence we may understand it either that this is the matter of the confidence or this is the office or use of our confidence or faith to wit to beleeve and know the success of our prayer though we sensibly find it not 4. This exercise of faith will enable us to wait patiently and regularly Isai 28.16 He that beleeveth shall not make haste 5. Such a faith will be a token or pledg unto the petitioner of a happy issue of his prayer and desertion But I have trusted in thy mercy my heart shall rejoyce in thy Salvation Psal 13.5 6. Lastly All the interpositions improbabilities difficulties or oppositions which come betwixt us and our prayers by reason whereof we apprehend God hidden from us and our prayers hindered do not make the least distance obscurity pawse or impediment to the real presence or working of God to us or for our help * Ps 73.23 Zech. 8.6 4. Be content to stay Gods time for the issuing of your prayers wait upon God with constancy and patience So the Prophet Isai 8.17 I will wait upon the Lord that hideth his face from the house of Jacob and will look
hast thou forsaken me Ps 22.1 2â— why art thou so far from helping me and from the words of my roaring O my God I cry in the day time and thou hearest not and in the night season and am not silent And so also Job I cry unto thee and thou dost not hear me I stand up Job 30.20 and thou regardest me not SECT V. The Subject and Occasion of this Treatise THus at length I am come home to my intended Subject this last Consideration hath brought me to it viz. The succeslessness of Prayer and the contrary proceeding of divine Providence to it This is the very condition of many a godly Soul yea of some whole Christian Nations and Churches at this day This is one of the commonest weightiest and difficultest Cases of Conscience that is on foot in and about these times This is one thing that lies as a heavy burden upon the minds of very many of the servants of God And it comes upon them both by their own sense and observation and the exprobation of their opposites In regard of the former they are like Rebecca who going with child of prayer powerful Jacob she suffered a strugling within her 'twixt him and Esau a rough and profane person in so much that she said Gen. 25.22 If it be so why am I thus And she went to enquire of the Lord. In respect of the latter they are like Hannah whom her adversary Penninah provoked sore for to make her fret because the Lord had shut up her womb and this she did year by year 1 Sam. 1.6 7. when she went up or from her going up to the house of the Lord That is at what time she sought God in a special manner in his house at Shiloh that she might have children Peninnah upbraided her more then at other times and that with the fruitlessness both of her womb in bearing children and of her prayer in obtaining her petition So it is now with many of Jacobs seed or the generation of them that seek the face of God by reason of the disappointment of their prayers they both with Rebecca suffer an inward conflict from their own doubâ—â— and fears and with Hannah they bear from without the reproaches of their Antagonists Let this case be put as it really is with all its considerable Circumstances and Ingredients and it will be found a very remarkable and important Case 1. The observation of many hath been That a more then ordinary spirit of prayer hath been poured out upon Christians of late and that out of it a great multitude of prayers have been poured forth in relation to the publique Concernments 2. That there hath been a general Consent and Concurrence not only of Christians in these Nations but of all the Protestant or Reformed Churches under Heaven in prayer for the same Concernments 3. That the effect of their prayers that have gone before us and are now with God hath broke forth and begun to be reaped by us of this age 4. We of these Nations besides dayly and personal prayers have set to it in solemn seeking unto God with Fasting Humiliation and Confession of sins publique and private on stated days and occasionally and have continued in this course now divers years 5. We have added to such our prayers publique Vows Oaths and Covenants for the things prayed for and heaped them one upon another 6. The subject matter of our prayers have been 1. Such things as we are not only commanded to pray for but to give a principal place to in our prayers to wit Religion Reformation Propagation of the Gospel and Kingdom of Christ Deliverance from publique Enemies and Intestine Conspirators and the Upholding of our Fundamental Government against all Innovaders with the safety and conduct of our supreme Magistracy and Councels 2. Such benefits as the promises of God in his Word are understood to lay up and reserve for his Church in these or the near following times 7. There hath been the use of other lawful means with strong endeavors and hazards therein for the accomplishing of the things prayed for and very hopeful beginnings and first fruits thereof erewhile attained yea and a door set open to and a near view of and approach to yea even almost an embracement of the main of our desires 8. There hath been no doubt a sincere aym and an upright frame of heart in many throughout all these things 9. Lastly To all these Considerations we may add the Promises of God made in Scripture to them that call upon him with the usual efficacy and experienced prevalency of prayer with God Now if we compare these particulars about the putting up and prosecution of our prayers with the success on the other side that hath followed the present unaccomplishment of those prayers and the events that have ensued directly cross and thwart thereunto it will appear a case of serious moment very needful and worthy to be remarked and discussed in order to manies resolution and satisfaction I have here taken in hand to say something to it not that I dare promise or hope to sound the full depth or traverse the utmost extent of it but to put it into the Remembrance of others more able and to set the Enquiry before them and a little to begin and break the way into it for them And this I really do that I may confess what may help to make me more excusable in this Undertaking upon special instance There hath been put into my hand a Case or Query of this import by a Brother very eminent in his place in the name of himself and many others desiring answer thereto which desire hath since been often renewed The Query was this both for matter and words Seeing God doth hide himself from his peoples prayers grounded we humbly hope upon his Promises and seemeth by his Providences to answer the prayers which are contrary thereunto I desire to know whether there be any Example of it what may be the Reason of it and what Vse should be made of it When I had read it I thought it was no hard thing to say that which might suffice to clear it and therefore stuck not to receive it but after when I had considered better not only of the thing but of the quality of the persons from whom it came and how difficult it is to know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary and to utter fit acceptable and right words to one much more to many under affliction and that it is one thing to inform the Judgment another thing to heal or comfort a troubled spirit I begun to repent of my forwardness and wisht that I could tell how fairly to lay aside the Enterprise But the usefulness of the Question my respect to the Proposer and over-hasty Entertaining of it now have engaged me to carry on the Treaty of it as the Lord shall help me And oh that it would
please him to enable me to speak both of him the thing that is right and to men to his servants that which may be sound and satisfying The Question propounded affordeth matter for four Queries or it offereth four things to be distinctly considered and resolved 1. Whether there be any Example of this vis Gods hiding himself from his peoples prayers grounded upon his Promises and his seeming by his Providences to answer the prayers which are contrary thereunto 2. How or in what sence God may be said so to do 3. What may be the Reason of his so doing 4. What Vse should be made of it CHAP. II. THe first Query answered viz. Whether Gods hiding himself from his peoples prayers grounded upon his Promises and seeming by his Providences to answer the prayers which are contrary thereunto can be parallel'd with any Example SECT I. The Question affirmed and divided into Parts THis first Query is to be answered Affirmatively It is a thing that may be Exemplified there is no new thing in it Yea we are not without many Presidents of it going before us In producing the Examples required I will divide the matter to be patterned into its two Parts and shew the Examples 1. Of Gods hiding himself from his peoples prayers grounded upon his Promises 2. Of his seeming by his Providences to answer the prayers which are contrary thereunto SECT II. Examples of Gods Hiding himself from his Peoples Prayers FIrst Of the former viz. Gods hiding himself from his peoples prayers grounded upon his Promises there is great store of notable Examples of this I will set them down in this order 1. The Acknowledgments or Complaints of this in the mouths of the people of God 2. The Declarations of God himself to this purpose 3. Historical Observations of the thing I. First Of this the Saints or people of God have made their Acknowledgment or Complaint in Scripture And this is observable 1. Either of the prayers of particular persons 2. Or of the prayers of the Community or multitude of Gods people that is of the Church First For Personal Prayers Single persons have found themselves in this condition And this may be noted touching their prayers 1. For others 2. For themselves 3. For Gods own Cause 1. Let us hear their Testimonies in relation to their prayers for others Holy David telleth us He clothed himself with sackcloth Psa 35 13 and humbled his Soul with fasting for his Enemies and Persecutors Saul and his party and his prayer returned into his own bosom that is it proved ineffectual as for them He also solemnly fasted and besought God for his sick child but it availed not on the seventh day the child dyed Moses prayed earnestly for them of Israel who had set up and worshiped the golden Calf Yet now if thou wilt forgive their sin and if not blot me I pray thee out of thy Book Exod. 32.32 33 34 35. which thou hast written But what answer had he to this pathetick prayer And the Lord said unto Moses Whosoever hath sinned against me him will I blot out of my Book therefore now go lead the people unto the place of which I have spoken unto thee behold mine Angel shall go before thee Nevertheless in the day when I visit I will visit their sin upon them And the Lord plagued the people because they made the Calf which Aaron made The Prophet Isaiah professeth his uncessantness in prayer for Zions and Jerusalems glorious Restauration For Zions sake will I not hold my peace and for Jerusalems sake I will not rest Isai 62.1 6 7. 63.11 15. 64.7 until the Righteousness thereof go forth as brightness and the Salvation thereof as a Lamp that burneth And he enjoyneth the same instancy in prayer to all other praying persons Ye that make mention of the Lord keep not silence and give him no rest till he establish and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the Earth Yet in the two following Chapters he in his own and their persons expostulateth and bemoaneth the Lords withdrawing and withholding himself from them and his people notwithstanding their prayers Where is he that brought them up out of the Sea with the Shepherd of his flock where is he that put his holy Spirit within him where is thy zeal and thy strength the sounding of thy bowels and of thy mercies towards me are they restrained And this his hiding himself is set out to be so dismal and long that they were even grown weary of prayer And there is none that calleth upon thy Name that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee for thou hast hid thy face from us and hast consumed us because of our iniquities The Prophet Jeremiah prayeth most tenderly for Judah and Zion Jer. 14.19 21. 15.1 Hast thou utterly rejected Judah hath thy Soul lothed Zion Why hast thou smitten us and there is no healing for us We looked for peace but there is no good and for the time of healing and behold trouble Do not abhor us for thy Names sake do not disgrace the throne of thy glory remember break not thy Covenant with us c. And what is the Lords return unto this Then said the Lord unto me Though Moses and Samuel stood before me yet my mind could not be toward this people cast them out of my sight and let them go forth King Josiah upon his hearing read the words of the Book of the Law and understanding by it the great wrath of the Lord which was kindled against him and his people 2 K ng 23.25 26. he besought the Lord with extraordinary humiliation zeal and diligence His heart was tender he humbled himself before the Lord he rent his clothes and wept before God he sent to enquire of the Lord for himself and all Judah by the Prophetess Hâ—ld ah e assembled the people published the Book of the Law made and imposed on the people a Covenant before the Lord to yield obedience to it He rooted up Idolatry and Sorcery He restored the Temple and true Worship of God He was in all these a peerless King Like unto him was there no King before him that turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might according to all the Law of Moses neither after him arose there any like him But all this would not appease Gods anger nor avert his Judgments unto desolation from Judah Notwithstanding the Lord turned not from the fierceness of his great wrath wherewith his anger was kindled against Judah c. The Prophet Habakkuk gives us to understand how speedless he was in prayer beginning his Prophesie with this complaint unto God Hab. 1.2 O Lord how long shall I cry and thou wilt not hear even cry out unto thee of violence and thou wilt not save And going yet a second time unto God by prayer in expectation and hope of a better answer I will
fretting her unchearful look her meatless meals were now layd aside There is a promise to them that seek God That he will make them joyful in his house of prayer Isai 56.7 30.19 as he will bestow those blessings upon them which they crave so he will for earnest make them joyful before they go out of his house And in the same Prophet Thou shalt weep no more he will be very gracious unto thee at the voyce of thy cry David praying and being in a very heavy taking having his Soul cast down within him and deep calling unto deep at the noise of Gods water-spouts and all his waves and his billows going over him that is he being as it were overwhelmed in a Sea of sorrows evils flowing upon him like waves one at the heels of another had this reviving giving him Psa 42.4 7 9 Yet the Lord will command his loving-kindness in the day time and in the night his song shall be with me and my prayer unto the God of my life The Lord will command his loving kindness that is he will dispatch it forth to him instantly as a winged Messenger and Harbinger of a good issue of his prayers and afflicting griefs And whil'st he is praying the song of God shall come into and recreate him his own prayer and Gods song shall joyn company together and both at once associate him The Souls under the Altar that cry how long O Lord c. they are put to stay some time for their vindication Apoc. 6.11 Eccles 9.7 8 but in the mean space it 's said White robes were given unto every one of them Those white robes might betoken a chearful habit of spirit a good measure of alacrity put into them during their sufferings yet to be prolonged in assurance of their answer and release in due time to come 3. By a continuation of the Spirit of prayer or an exercise of it When the hands are still supported in their lifting up to God or raised and stretched out higher towards him when the motions vigor and vehemency of prayer are renewed or redoubled in the hearts of Gods servants it is a token from God that it shall not be in vain but to some purpose and effect that they call upon him Hos 12.3 4 When Jacobs strength in wrestling with the Angel was so great and did hold out until day break and he was so set that he would not let the Angel go until he had blessed him this was a strong argument of his power and prevalency with God and that he should prevail with men also with his Brother Esau and all his Troop The pouring upon the House of David Zec. 12.10 and upon the Inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of supplications is put in the Prophet as a fore-running presage and introduction to many great mercies to them The Apostle brings in this as a clear earnest to Believers of deliverance from sins and sufferings and of receiving the glory and redemption of the body expected and groaned after That the Spirit helpeth our infirmities and maketh intercession for us in prayer with groanings which cannot be uttered Rom. 8.26 As it is a special favor and a good sign to a people that God gives to his Prophets the opening of the mouth in declaring his Word Eze. 29.21 so it is also that he bestows upon them a mouth opened wide and a voyce loud and lifted up in prayer Open thy mouth wide saith God to his Israel and I will fill it Psa 81.10 4. By an erected confidence and it may be a clear foresight and evidence that the Petition is dispatched in Heaven and shall assuredly be accomplished in time on Earth This pledg God doth sometimes vouchsafe his faithful ones upon their seeking of him and before he work to the effecting of their prayers as it is in the Psalmist Lord thou hast heard the desire of the humble Psa 19.17 thou wilt prepare their heart or as the Margin thou wilt establish their heart that is When they have poured out their desires unto thee thou wilt give them a seal of success by setting impressions of confidence and evidence of it upon their hearts This we often find in David in one part of his Psalm he is praying weeping complaining expostulating and deprecating the dejections and desertions of his Soul for lack of audience and by and by before any thing be done about the affairs or particulars of his prayer he is lifted up and composed in full assurance of having his requests yea triumphs in them as already embraced Depart from me all ye workers of iniquity Psa 6.8 9 13.5 6 â— 20.6 42.11 142.7 for the Lord hath heard the voyce of my weeping the Lord hath heard my supplication But I have trusted in thy mercy my heart shall rejoyce in thy Salvation I will sing unto the Lord because he hath dealt bountifully with me Now know I that the Lord saveth his anointed he will hear him from his holy Heaven with the saving strength of his right hand Why art thou cast down O my Soul why art thou disquieted within me Hope thou in God for I shall yet praise him The righteous shal compass me about for thou shalt deal bountifully with me Cornelius the Centurian in one of his Fast-days and whil'st he was praying had a vision of assurance in which an Angel told him Cornelius Act. 10.30 Luk. 1.13 Philem. 22 thy prayer is heard and the like had Zacharias the Priest in the Temple at the time of prayer The Apostle Paul also being in prison at Rome conceived such a confidence of his being given up to the Christians at Coloss by way of enlargement upon their prayers that he sends out of his prison to Philemon at Coloss to prepare him a lodging with them there This may be sufficient for the illustration of the first way of the Lords answering prayer to wit by way of Obsignation or Assurance wherein we have noted four instances or acts I come to the second kind of answer which is by way of performance this is when the thing entreated for in prayer is accomplished This is the most sensible and most noted way of prayers return from Heaven to the Petitioner David describes it in that his benedictory Psalm Psa 20.1 4 21.2 The Lord hear thee in the day of trouble c. Grant thee according to thine own heart and fulfil all thy counsel and in the next Psalm to that Thou hast given him his hearts desire and hast not withholden the request of his lips It will not be unnecessary to observe the several methods of this answer of performance 1. Sometimes it is instantaneous or dispatched all at once it is finished in one compleat act as when Samuel cryed unto the Lord for Israel at what time the Philistins Army stood ready to give the on-set upon them it is said The Lord heard or in the
over that it might depart from him In stead of that removal begged the answer is My grace is sufficient for thee for my strength is made perfect in weakness Here the Apostle obtained the spiritual help he asked in substance the same but not in the very same way or special kind he had given him not the removal of the temptation but the supplement of divine grace to countermand it not the taking off of the Enemy or the dart that struck him but the armor to fence and wave it off the Souls life Thirdly Sometimes in deprecations and prayers for deliverance from trouble Phil. 1.29 in stead thereof it is given to the servants of God to suffer that is they are enabled to suffer with confidence patience joy stedfastness profit in wisdom and holiness i. e. with confidence Jeremiah or the Church of Judah in the Lamentations Lam. 3.55 c. saith I called upon thy Name O Lord out of the low dungeon thou hast heard my voyce But how Thou drewest neer in the day that I called upon thee thou saidst Fear not He or they would have been raised up out of their dungeon but the Lord heard them another way he dispelled their fears of drowning or pining in it he ministred unto them a supply of confidence he raised them out of the dungeon of dread and terrors In like manner our blessed Saviour in his Passion and Agony He offered up prayers and supplications Heb. 5.7 with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death and was heard in that he feared The subject of his prayers as appears in the Gospel was That he might be saved from that hour That that cup if it were possible might pass from him Exauditis precibus liberatus a metu Beza i. e. confirmatus fuit ut omnem pavorem mortis deposuerit Idem The Apostle saith He was heard in that he feared or as Beza readeth His prayers being heard he was delivered out of fear when the bitter cup of his agony desertion and death drew nigh his Soul was troubled he began to be sore amazed and to be very heavy His Soul was exceeding sorrowful unto death Under these horrors he conditionally if it might so be and with submission to his Fathers will desired to avoyd those sufferings He was heard in that he feared not by his Fathers removing then or preventing of the sufferings but by a vanquishment of those terrors by a greatness of strength and might bestowed on him to wade through and tread that dreadful winepress 2. With Patience Job was jealous of his sons that in their circular feasting they might sin Job 1.5.20 and curse God in their hearts for the expiation whereof he every day sent and sanctified them and in the morning offered burnt-offerings according to their number Notwithstanding this his care and devotion the ruine of his children would not be prevented yet although he could not scape it he had a plentiful measure of patience and acquiescence under the hand of God in it ministred unto him When he receives the tydings of it and all his other losses together He fell down upon the ground and worshipped he blessed the Name of the Lord and he refrained all charging of God foolishly 3. With Joy David would fain have beged of God his childs life 2 Sam. 12 and recovery from sickness he could not do that but dye it must but upon its death when his servants judged by his taking on at its sickness that upon the sudden hearing of his death he would have mischieved himself * How wil he then hurt himself marg he contrarily could bear it with an admirable temper not only with moderation of grief but with alacrity and the exercise of piety 4. With Stedfastness The Apostle willeth us Be careful for nothing but in every thing by prayer and supplication Phil. 4.6 7 with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God And the consequent upon this which he promiseth for certain is And the peace of God which passed all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus q. d. If ye do not obtain your desires in particular at all or not instantly yet the peace of God Praesidio erit Bez. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 shall be a garison in your hearts to fortifie and keep them and it shall keep both your hearts and minds your minds from vexing cares and your hearts from piercing sorrows or fears 5. With Profit both in wisdom and holiness The Lord assures his praying people this gracious issue of their cries Though he give them the bread of adversity Isai 19.20 c. and the water of affliction yet shall not their Teachers be removed into a corner any more but their eyes shall see their Teachers and their ears shall hear a word behind them saying This is the way walk ye in it when they turn to the right hand and when they turn to the left They shall defile also the covering of their graven Images of silver c. The sum is they shall enjoy the publique Ministry and Ordinances and the guidance of the holy Spirit and be rid of the monuments of Idolatry and be brought to Reformation Daniels prayer brought not himself out of Babylon presently neither prevented they his peoples calamities under the several subsequent Monarchies but this he gained of them He had many a heavenly and important vision and message by Angels The like is promised to Jeremiahs prayers Jer. 33.3 Call unto me and I will answer thee and shew thee great and mighty or hidden things which thou knewest not And the primitive Christians that underwent such firy and bloody persecutions though their prayers could not avert them yet they obtained the loosing of the seven seals Rev. 5.8 and the opening and reading of the written Book which was shewed John in the hand of him that sat on the Throne by the Lamb which containeth in it many weighty Visions and Prophecies concerning the Christian Church from thence unto the Worlds end Thus God heareth prayers in way of exchange of the matter prayed for divers ways and in so doing he mostly gives better things then those he waveth and so makes his Petitioners not only speeders by his answer but gainers by his exchange 3. The Commutation may be in regard of Means When we have a mercy assured us by promise we may and must use means for the atchieving of it and in the use of the means we are to pray with submission for a blessing upon it unto the attaining of the thing promised by it Now when we have thus prayed God may see cause to vary the means that is lay aside that which we select employ and bring before him in our prayers and take up other and by this means of his own choyce and exchange accomplisheth his promise and our expectation and prayer in regard of the mercy aymed
me early but they shall not find me And so it was with Davids adversaries They cryed but there was none to save them even unto the Lord but he answered them not And this obstruction of prayer may be 1. In respect of Obsignation when there is no evidence to the Soul of audience As 1. When there is no sign of favor Blessed be God saith David that hath not turned away my prayer Psa 66.21 nor his mercy from me It was a token to him that his prayer was not turned away from God because Gods mercy was not turned away from him Of the Hypocrite it 's said Job 27.9 Will God hear his cry when trouble cometh upon him will he delight himself in the Almighty It is an argument God hears not him because he finds no delight in God 2. When there is no animating no drop of comfort to the spirit In the day of my trouble the Psalmist complains I sought the Lord Psal 77.2 my Soul refused to be comforted I remembred God and was troubled I complained and my spirit was overwhelmed 3. When there is a declining or drooping in the spirit of prayer Job 27.10 Will the Hypocrite always call upon God saith Job It was so in the Prophets time even with Gods people Isai 64.7 And there is none that calleth upon thy Name that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee for thou hast hid thy face from us and hast consumed us because of our iniquities And it was so in part with David sometimes I am weary of my crying my throat is dryed Psa 69.3 mine eyes fail while I wait for my God 4. When there is no discovery of Gods intent or resolution concerning our prayers This was the Churches case as she expresseth it We see not our signs there is no more any Prophet Psa 74.9 neither is there any among us that knoweth how long 2. In respect of performance so the people of Judah were frustrate Behold the voyce of the cry of the daughter of my people because of them that dwell in a far Country Is not the Lord in Zion is not her King in her The Harvest is past the Summer is ended and we are not saved Is there no balm in Gilead is there no Physician there why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered 3. In respect of exchange or any consideration in lieu of the thing So they say in the Prophet It is in vain to serve God Mal. 3.14 and what profit is it that we have kept his Ordinances and that we have walked mournfully before the Lord of Hoasts No advantage no return comes by prayer and fasting any way God may be said to hide himself from prayer all these ways But I must further add a distinction or two that I may not leave this matter too indifferent and promiscuous First We may observe that Gods hiding from prayer is 1. Sometimes real and so in deed 2. Sometimes only in appearance or in the apprehension of men 1. It is sometimes real as in all those places of Scripture where the Lord threatens or owns it so to be and often gives the reason from mens provocation why it is so As for instance in that of the Prophet Behold the Lords hand is not shortened that it cannot save Isa 59.1 2 neither is his ear heavy that it cannot save but your iniquities have separated between you and your God and your sins have hid his face from you that he will not hear Here the hiding and distance from prayer is real on Gods part 2. It is at other times but in appearance only and in humane apprehension God hears sometimes yea and answers when he seemeth not so to do or when men do think and believe that he doth not and in this case the defect is in mans sense and perception Now God is accounted not to hear his servants prayers when indeed he doth 1. Either in the judgment of others Thus David relateth often the conclusion which his Enemies or the spectators of his condition made of him that he was rejected and disowned of God as in the rebellion of Absalom whiles David was in his flight and prayer there were divers that stood looking on and censuring him as an abject from God There be many which say of my Soul there is no help for him in God Psal 3.2 42 3. c. 71.11 And in his Exile through Sauls persecution when he was panting and craving after Gods presence in his house his adversaries upbraided him saying Where is now thy God and this filled him with tears continually and pierced him like a sword And in another Psalm penned as is thought during Absaloms insurrection his Enemies speak again him and consult saying God hath forsaken him persecute and take him for there is none to deliver him but this is not so strange that others in their malignant judgments so apprehend it 2. Or in the sense or conceit of them that pray Even the people of God themselves when they pray and God hears them they may deem themselves unheard unanswered they may take themselves to be denyed of God when he graciously receives their prayer Sometimes God harkens to and answereth them but they hear not him they are deaf to their answer We are ordinarily better acquainted with our own prayers then with Gods performances and are more sensible in asking then in receiving or discerning our success As sometimes Gods promises or predictions are fulfilled yea and we are actors in the fulfilling of them but we see it not thus was it with the Jews in relation to Christs death Acts 3.17 18.13.27 Joh. 12.14 yea it was so with the Disciples themselves in some circumstances concerning Christ so are our prayers grounded on the promises How often do we find David in the same Psalm one while complaining Lord how long Psa 6.3 10.1 13.1 22.1 43.2 how long wilt thou hide thy face from me How long wilt thou hide me for ever Why standest thou afar off why hidest thou thy face in times of trouble why art thou so far from helping me and from the words of my roaring O my God I cry in the day time and thou hearest not c. Why dost thou cast me off why go I mourning because of the oppression of the Enemy and using the like expostulations and by and by ere he breaketh off his speech he correcteth himself he seeth and is satisfied that the Lord hath heard him Psa 6.8 10.17 13.6 22.24 43.5 and declareth The Lord hath heard the voyce of my weeping the Lord hath heard my supplication the Lord hath delt bountifully with me Lord thou hast heard the desire of the humble he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted neither hath he hid his face from him but when he cryed unto him he heard Why art thou cast down O my Soul c. I shall yet
into captivity though she have not the prospect of them or of the accomplishment of her prayers for them though it be to her sense as the Prophet in the Lamentations on her behalf expresseth it Lam. 2.7 8 The Lord hath given up into the hand of the Enemy the walls of her palaces The Lord hath purposed to destroy the wall of the Daughter of Zion He made the rampart and the wall to lament they languished together Yet her walls are continually before him they decay not in his memory he constantly minds the upholding or rebuilding of them When her walls are in her view as low as the ground yea sunk into and buryed in it even then they reach up to Heaven in regard of Gods watchful eye and care for their instauration and a little after the Lord puts this matter of difference betwixt him and her viz. her accounting her self deserted by him unto proof and evidence Isai 50 1. Thus saith the Lord where is the bill of your mothers divorcement whom I have put away or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you q. d. Thou O Zion are full of mistrust jealousies and exclamations of my forsaking thee but where is thy proof for this hast thou any bill of divorce or sale under my hand to shew canst thou produce any legal testimony that I have either through change of mind or affection on my part repudiated thee or for my poverty and engagements to others sold thee There hath been no mutation or defect on my side either of matrimonial fidelity or of sufficiency of estate and if there hath been a distance or withdrawing for some time or in respect of some enjoyments if any temporal or partial separation the tenor of the act if it be brought out wil shew that it 's your deed not mine it 's you that have given the cause and made the breach Behold for your iniquities have you sold your selves and for your transgressions is your mother put away Again What if the faithful servants of God in seeking of him have not their prayers instantly returned This deferring must not go for a final refusal or frustration The Lords suspense of his peoples prayers complained of in Scripture by them they themselves in a calm and deliberate temper have not so understood but have interpreted it otherwise as in that complaint of the Church in the Lamentations cited among the examples above given When I cry and shout he shutteth out my prayer Thou hast covered thy self with a cloud Lam. 3 8 44 31 32 that our prayer should not pass through She in the same Chapter cleareth her meaning from apprehending or intending an utter rejection For the Lord will not cast off for ever but though he cause grief yet he will have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies The Church here as she is sensible of a present putting off of her prayer so she is no less secure against a perpetual casting off and she makes sure of a commiserative return to come The Penman of Psal 102. which is the sad mans Psalm purposely compiled for a mourning moaning wailing condition for the servant or Church of God that is in deepest afflictions and in their most sorrowful prayers he representeth the Church in a solitary and pining state complaining of Gods absence By reason of the voyce of my groaning my bones cleave to my skin I am like a Pelican of the wilderness I am like an Owl of the desart I watch and am as a Sparrow alone upon the house top and yet she doth not for this tiresom stay give her prayers as forlorn and lost but fixeth upon this Thou shalt arise Vers 5 6 7 13 17 and have mercy upon Zion for the time to favor her yea the set time is come or cometh and again He will regard the prayer of the destitute and not despise their prayer This Psalm is supposed to have been composed by the Prophet Daniel Junius Ford in hunc Psal or some such person neer the end of the Judean Churches Captivity seventy years at Babylon during all which time they had sowed in tears they had setly and solemnly fasted and mourned in certain months in the year besides the personal humiliations of some of them as of Daniel mentioned in Scripture and in this their desolate condition and praying posture they were held in delay and expectation for so many years Zion was still a heap of stones and lay in the dust and they continued praying over her stones and pitying her dust * Quia voluerunt bene servi tui lapidibus ejus pulveris ejus miserti sunt Ar. Mont. and in those their prayers they for present remained solitary and destitute of divine help and recovery yet they remain resolved Thou shalt arise and have mercy upon Zion the time to favor is coming he will regard the prayer of the destitute and not despise their prayer 3. When and so far as God doth hide himself from his faithful peoples prayers it is not only righteous in him and consistent with his promises either their prayers not holding correspondence with his promises and so he is free or his proceedings exactly corresponding thereunto though it be not discerned and so he is faithful but it is in mercy to them either in withholding from them their desires when bad for them or in reserving them either till they be reduced to their rule if they be irregular that they may have them in a promissory way or till they be ripened to that exercise and growth of grace wherein they may be most acceptable and profitable to them To this purpose weigh seriously that of the Apostle And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God Rom. 8.18 to them who are the called according to his purpose He layeth this down as a known and generally received principle They that are the people of God indeed that peculiarly love him and are beloved by him all things work together for good to them He had spoken immediately before of Believers prayers and the Spirits helping their infirmities and making intercession for them according to God and here he enlargeth his speech and riseth from the particular to the universal not only doth the Spirit help but all things work together for the good of Believers in special as the coherence seems to imply their prayers that come from the Spirit how ever at present they succeed whether the effect of them be stayed or instantly emergent evident or inevident or however transformed yet they work for good to them and which is much to be noted he saith they work together for good they are not single causes to produce an effect of or by themselves solitarily but they work together that is together with other things and amongst or above other things that must work with them is the divine disposal the Saints prayers and Gods hand of
odors Their sweet odors were an emblem of prayer and the time of their Incense-offering was their time of prayer * Psa 141 2 Luk. 1.10 so that it is as much as if he had said I will not accept your prayers This the Prophet Daniel renders as the reason of the accomplishing of the seventy years captivity and of the Lords hiding so long in that particular from his people and their prayers All this evil is come upon us Dan. 9.13 yet made we not our prayers before the Lord our God that we might turn from our iniquities The people before and all along during the captivity did pray as I have before noted but they did not so pray as withall to turn from their iniquities and therefore hath the Lord watched upon the evil saith he in the next words or as some render Therefore hath the Lord been diligent Rolloc in loc and persevering in that evil which he hath brought upon us that is therefore he hath gone on in judgment against us and would not be entreated We may note it in all experience a course of prayer and a course of sin cannot stand together I mean they cannot both stand in force together but either prayer will beat down sin or sin will keep down and enervate prayer neither do they ordinarily stand together for any time in regard of practice but either prayer will break off the course of sin or sin will break off the custom of prayer What the Apostle saith of the Spirit and the flesh that they mutually lust against one another Gal. 5.17 the same may be said of prayer and sin they combate and conflict each against other and that until the one be brought down We have thus seen what sins in special are causes of Gods hiding from prayers and we have had them distinguished in three ranks namely sins against piety sins against the second Table and sins in or about prayer and under each of these have been mustered up divers particulars The fourth thing propounded to consideration was certain circumstances in sin which help forward this effect and move God the rather to it These are 1. Incorrigibleness in sin or a going on in sin notwithstanding and in contradiction unto special means applyed for reformation as when the Word of the Lord is sent out and published unto a person or people for a direct conviction and rebuke of the sin or sins committed and lived in and for the calling of men to repentance of and recovery from them or when the Judgments of God have come and lien upon men personally domestically or nationally in any kind as a witness against and correction for the sin or any other means hath been used and yet nevertheless men persist and obstinately persevere in their evil ways This was Israels and Judahs aggravation of their sin and it added weight to and furthered the Lords hiding from their prayers But they refused to harken Zech. 7.11 12 13. and pulled away the shoulder and stopped their ears that they should not hear yea they made their hearts as an adamant stone lest they should hear the Law and the words which the Lord of Hoasts hath sent in his Spirit by the former Prophets Therefore came a great wrath from the Lord of Hoasts Therefore it came to pass that as he cryed and they would not hear so they cryed and I would not hear saith the Lord of Hoasts When the Lord declared to Israel Hos 5.15 by the Prophet Hosea that he would go and return to his place that is that he would withdraw his presence and audience to a great distance from them this was one thing which brought it on They have done so and so Verse 2. though I have been a rebuker of them all And the same is alledged against that people in the Prophet Isaiah as concurring to this effect I hid me Isai 57.17 and was wroth and he went on frowardly in the way of his heart or as the late Annotations because he went on frowardly Divines Annot. 2 Edit c. And so their froward and obstinate running on in their sin was not the consequent but the antecedent and reason why God was wroth and being angry hid himself from them 2. Presumption or an adventuring to do an act or run a course against the express and particular prohibition or warning of God by his Messengers against the doing thereof As when Israel in the wilderness would needs go up to fight with the Amorites Moses relating it to them afterward saith And the Lord said unto me Say unto them Go not up neither fight Deut. 1 42 c. for I am not among you lest ye be smitten before your enemies So I spake unto you and ye would not hear but rebelled against the Commandment of the Lord and went presumptuously up into the hill c. and ye returned and wept before the Lord but the Lord would not harken to your voyce nor give ear unto you 3. Scandalous sinning David when the Lord had struck the child that Vriahs wife bare unto him with sickness besought God for the child and fasted and lay all night upon the Earth but nevertheless the child dyed and the special reason why the Lord was so inexorable to him in this particular Nathan the Prophet had before given him Howbeit because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme the child also that is born unto thee shall surely dye * David was not heard because it stood not with the rule of divine justice that so scandalous a sin which made the enemies of God to blaspheme should not have an exemplary punishment Mr Mede Diatrib part 2 pag. 298. Those sins of the people of God which do open the mouths of the professed Adversaries of Religion to reproach the Name of God are more then ordinarily obstructive of prayer It is time for God upon the remittance of such by them to manifest his special dis-favour in such an effect that so he may vindicate that Name of his which his people call upon from the aspersion of their sin As God upon this ground refused to hear David so did he for the like cause deny the petition of another as eminent for nearness to and favor with him as he to wit Moses He besought the Lord very pathetically for leave to go into and see the Land of Canaan but the Lord would not harken unto him in it but he must dye beyond Jordan and what was the reason the Lord tells it Aaron and him Because ye beleeved me not Numb 20.12 27.14 to sanctifie me in the eyes of the children of Israel By his sin at the waters of strife a scandal was given unto the people reflecting upon God himself and therefore when mention is afterward made of this sin and the sentence of God upon it as it is often noted in the sacred
into a suitable frame for it he not only causeth his ear to hear but prepareth their heart as in that of the Psalmist the which some understand as well of preparing their heart to receive the thing prayed for as to pray for it †Mr Goodwin Return of Prayer c. 7. sec 3. We are put to pray saith Peter Martyr not that we may alter God which were in vain for us to to essay seeing he is immutable but rather that we our selves may be altered for by prayers we are made capable of the blessings of God * P. Martyr loc com clas 3 c. 12. s 3. Tanto quippe illud quod valde magnum est sumemus capacius quanto fidelius credimus speramus firmius desideramus ardentius Augustin ep 121 ad probam apud Down ham Tract of Prayer cap. 4 p. 15 What a number of indispositions and and how great were found in Daniel to receive the answer of his prayers when the Angel came unto him with it He relateth Dan. 10. that upon the first vision or voyce of the Angel there remained no strength in him his comeliness was turned in him into corruption and he was in a deep sleep upon his face and his face towards the ground vers 8 9. Then after that he stood indeed but trembling vers 11. Neither was that all for after this it 's said he became dumb vers 15. And these his distempers were not removed in one instant but by successive degrees First an hand touched him which set him upon his knees and upon the palms of his hands vers 10. Next of all he is animated by the Angel against his trembling vers 12 13 14. After that his lips are touched and his mouth opened vers 16. And last of all he is strengthened vers 18. And after all these corroborations when he was thus brought into a capacity the Angel delivers unto him his message as the return of his prayers There is in him a notable emblem of the slowness and ineptitude which is in us to entertain what by our prayers we would obtain and of our progressive or gradual coming on to a power of reception One while we are too feeble to brook the glory of God which is to break forth in the mercy another while we are too drowzy and sensless to hear or apprehend his answer to us or we are so fearful and wavering that we cannot take fast hold on the benefit if reached out to us or we are so dumb that we know not how to express due thanks unto God for the desired blessing were it bestowed on us and we are long ere we can get over all these incapacities So that what the Apostle saith unto the Corinthians by way of reason for his not feeding them with meat that is with more deep and spiritual doctrine the same may be rendered to us as the reason of our not sooner embracing the effect of our prayer 1 Cor. 3.2 Hitherto you were not able to bear it neither yet are you able It is well worth our observing unto this purpose what a number of interposals and of what weight and difficulty they are which come between the pouring upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and of supplication Zech. 12. and their reaping the fruit thereof in the Lords harkening to their prayers Chap. 13. in the close whereof it is said They shall call on my Name and I will hear them I will say it is my people and they shall say the Lord is my God Those two promises do directly eye and answer one another but mark the several and great things that are interlined betwixt that and this as the necessary steps and preparatives to bring on the former to arrive at the latter that is that the spirit of prayer and supplications may attain its issue and success in a full and gracious audience and performance The preparatives are these 1. There must be a great a bitter a solemn and an universal mourning of those in whom the spirit of prayer is poured forth Chap. 12. v. 10. c. a mourning like that of a tender Parent for his first-born or only son and like that of a desolate Nation for a most pious and hopeful Prince such a one as was Josiah 2. There is to be unto them a revelation and application of the free full and everlasting Expiatory of the Blood of Christ cap. 13. v. 1. The Lord having poured out the Spirit of supplication upon them and they by it pouring out their Souls as well in bitter mourning for their woundings and crucifyings of Christ as in earnest petitions for their reconciliation the purifying fountain of Christs blood must be poured out upon their consciences unto remission of sins 3. There must be an abolition of Idols and false worship and an extirpation of uncalled and lying Prophets and of corrupt Teachers and Doctrines out of the Land Chap. 13. v. 2. c. And let us note by the way that the abolition of these must be not only by the hand of God I will cut off c. but by men even by the prosecution of the parents and nearest friends of the counterfeit Prophet and that such must be expelled not only out of the house of God by Church-censures but out of the Land or civil Liberty and Society by corporal penalties and that lying Prophets not only in regard of matter but in respect of mission to wit that make themselves Prophets when they have no lawful call unto it must be thus delt with read vers 2 3 4 5 6. 4. There must be a very sharp and searching persecution stirred up against the people of God and his true Prophets or Pastors which shall prove to the major part of them as a sword to disperse and destroy them and to the residue as a refiners furnace to try purifie and prepare them Chap. 13. v. 7 8 9. These four things will the Lord have wrought in his people after that he hath poured out the spirit of supplications upon them and before they receive the effect of their prayers made thereby These are the necessary Harbingers of or predispositions to that issue There must be a deep humiliation for sins a gracious expiation of sins an effectual extermination of all false ways of Religion and a through tryal and purgation of them that adhere to the true and when these things are compassed then cometh in the return of prayer They shall call on my Name and I will hear them c. And agreeable hereunto is there a passage in the Prophet Zephaniah chap. 3. the Lord in that place puts his people to a stay Therefore wait upon me saith the Lord until the day that I rise up to the prey vers 8. But to what end or effect must they stay or wait Even to their exceeding great comfort and rejoycing in the Lords manifestation of himself in the midst
and setledness of their lives in all ungodliness and unrighteousness As there are Antinomians who take away the Authority of the Law of God so there are men that are anti or Hyperordinancists who take away or antiquate the force of Gospel-Institutions But the generality are such in practice whilest they pretend to Christianity and yet make no conscience of the disuse of the Ordinances of Christ they either content themselves to be wholly without the Lords Supper and all exercise of Church Discipline or are resolved not to have them but in what manner they please 4. In point of profession and adorning of it before others Our deportment towards the Gospel is utterly unworthy of it and unbeseeming it The reproach and scorn which it lieth under among us and abroad through the carriage of them that make profession of it is very odious Divers contemn the profession of it actively many accounting it too strict and precise for them to own others make use of it as of a garment to put on or off as they see occasion or as a Summer garment which they only put on in fair and warm weather and lay aside in the cold and stormy winter of persecution and a third sort esteeming it too low childish and formal for them they must have a pitch above Scripture-Revelations and Rules But the grand reproach which we lay upon it is passive whilest we assume to our selves this profession but minister occasion to others to be scandalized at and speak evil of it through us Some under a profession of the Gospel hold fundamental Errors against it and yet endevor to patronize and defend them by it nay they account them the only Evangelical men who invent or receive and maintain unscriptural Doctrines others under that profession live licentiously and work all manner of wickedness and break down all bounds of duty either respecting God or man and by means of both those sorts the way of Truth is most vilely blasphemed Multitudes if I may not say the greatest number of us have no more of Christ then meerly what may make them capable of being a scandal to his Gospel to wit the water of Baptism upon their faces and the Name of Christ in their memories and mouths In all other respects common Heathens are as much if not more Christian then they But this is not all what is publiquely known and spoken of methinks it should not offend any if I mention and indeed I cannot uprightly pass it by There are those that have made a higher and more singular profession of the Gospel then the rest by whom it now suffers most as in some other respects so in point of infamy not only the Atheistically profane and ignorant but many other both weak and strong in the faith among us nor only they but the Nations about us are scandalized at us and our profession for such mens sakes not only our Protestant Brethren Friends and Favorers are ashamed grieved stumbled and weakened but the Papists and it may be others at more distance from us have their mouths opened in derision and obloquy at us by reason of them yea and these last make out from their doings a serious and insinuating argument to justifie their abominations and proselyte others But what is the matter The swarms of Sects and Heresies the hellish Blasphemies the endless and unreasonable divisions that have been spawned under a shroud of profession not of the ordinary and plain garb but gilded with the shew and surface of extraordinary devotion zeal and Scripture-knowledg or higher light To these add the horrid multiformed and restless Seditions and Anarchies that have been devised by their heads and acted by their hands whose faces have looked intently towards Religion For these things we are famed in other Lands as a brood of Monsters in Religion and a pack of Rebels and State-firebrands in point of political order and which is worse the Gospel Reformation Protestanism are made an abhorring or to savor ill with people abroad and at home I do not affirm all the scandals that may be taken or layd upon us or our profession or any party neither do I assent to the extending of any of them to all the Nation as the Authors thereof Some persons are meer patients some things may be meer slanders or slanderously aggravated There are whose faces blush and their hearts bleed but their hands are clear of these imputations But this I say there is too much fire from the which ariseth all the smoke and clouds of reproach There is truth and guilt more then enough to occasion if not to deserve considering how the world is disposed to construe and speak of the actions of such as we these blurrs I am perswaded there is more of such truth and guilt then hath ever other-where been found among any Christians 5. Lastly For the maintenance of the Gospel Who stands up for it who is on the Lords side who sets himself really for the defence of the Gospel Some depart from the Faith by giving heed to seducing spirits The love of others waxeth cold because iniquity abounds Others wither away and are offended because of tribulations arising for the Word And into these three sorts the most with us are at this time reducible The Authority of the written Oracles of God are gainsay'd the fundamental Truths thereof summed up into Articles of publique Confession are contradicted What remedy is there from men what effectual vindication is afforded The Apostle Paul thought it a strange thing that he being to answer for the Gospel in Nero's Court and there being Christians in 2 Tim. 4 16 or thereabout no man stood with him but all men forsook him It would have been stranger if it had been so in Constantine's Court. We have a Christian State if Paul be not arraigned in our Court he and all his Fellow-Apostles yea and his Master too are torn in pieces in their Doctrine and Institutions before their faces What publique Authoritative Redress is yeelded them I pray God this neglect be not layd to their charge that have Power and for that end that they may repent and quit themselves better It may well be feared that one special sin for which the Lord giveth the Sword a commission so that Protestant People and States war one against another is their not contending for the Faith their not warring against the Synagogue of Satan the Beast the false Prophet and the unclean spirit their harboring yea the promoting of Baalamites Nicolaitans and Jezebels It was observed that the Civil Wars of these Nations followed immediately upon the Court-countenancing of Popery and other Heresies and the allowance given to Innovations in Religion and Profanations of the Lords-day Happily they that then made this observation may have occasion to make the like now upon the same and grosser Tolerations wherein their own hands may be found with the deepest As the Truth and Ordinances of the Gospel are delt with
we have it These are our scarlet crimson sins which we have to be removed as the causes of the putting back or suspense of our prayers and which are therefore to be throughly repented of and purged away that our prayers may take effect And let me perswade to and prevail in it in the words of Jotham Hearken unto me Judg. 9.7 that God may hearken unto you 2. The second thing to be applied by way of remedy is Let the people of God diligently follow on to the attaining of those ends for the effecting whereof in them the Lord for present hideth himself from them in this kind those ends have been laid down before the hastning on of them is the way to speed the issue of our prayers To instance in and press to some of them in a few words 1. Be constant in prayer hold out in it unto the end yea do not only hold on but mend and quicken your pace therein Add more fuel to increase the flame of your devotions pray more ardently Let your progress in prayer be like the natural motion of a body to its center or proper place the longer still the more swift and vigorous Doth God hide himselfe that you may seek his face then seek the Lord and his strength 〈◊〉 â—05 4 seek his face evermore and so seek that you may find him Certainly prayer is the Key of Heaven if then through unexpertness in the use of it you cannot get the door open presently cast not therefore the key out of your hand but turn and try it again and again until it be open Undoubtedly prayer is the way to find the face of God though it be hid leave not then slack not in the way because it is long lose not the end for lack of holding out It was the sin of Saul upon which immediately followed his ruine that when in his sore distress by the Philistins war he enquired of the Lord and got not an answer from him presently he left off enquiring of God and sought to a woman that had a familiar Spirit 1 Chro. 10 13 14 for this the Text saith the Lord slew him and turned the Kingdom unto David yea in this regard it saith he enquireth not of the Lord His once enquiring was void and stood for nothing and was no more then if he never had done it because he continued not enquiring until he hâ—d answer but through a distrustful and impatient fear ran from God to the Witch 2. Labour for an humbled heart a mourning Spirit both for sins and for prayers succeslesness The want of this hath been our great defect under our late sufferings and seekings to God It was noted of those Jews who remained after the destruction or the Temple City and Land by Nebuchadnezzar that they were not humbled even unto that day Jer. 44.10 they enquired of God by the Prophet Jeremiah Cap. 42.3 to shew them the way wherein they might walk and the thing that they might do but they were still unhumbled they had seen and felt a great deal of the wrath of God upon them for their sins but yet they were not humbled to that day And this is our very state we have sought unto God for his conduct in our Affairs his hand hath been out against and upon us many wayes for our sins but for all that we remain unhumbled But it will not so be most surely now we have had so much to do with God and he with us humbled we must be never did any person or people come off or part with him stoutly Levit. 10.3 he will be sanctified in them that come nigh him God will have us down and lay us low either in Spirit or in worldly state either inwardly or outwardly either to repentance or to ruine and if that will not be without this we shall be humbled both wayes if ever and ere ever God do raise us up Remember what the Lord saith to his people in the Prophet when he had hid his face from them Isai 54.6 The Lord hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit and a wife of youth when thou wast refused If we be as forsaken and refused of God it behoves us to be of a grieved Spirit and so we must be ere the Lord call us or look again upon us He reviveth the spirit of the humble and the heart of the contrite ones Isai 57.15.49.13 Mat. 5.4 He will have mercy upon his afflicted He is nigh to them that are of a broken heart and saveth such at be of a contrite spirit They that mourn shall be comforted They that sow in tears shall reap in joy 3. Be sure to bide out the present tryal and exercise of the grace of God in you that is of your faith patience love and obedience Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in Christ under the tryal Mat. 11.6.24 13. He that shall endure unto the end the same shall be saved It was a desperate course in Saul and the forerunning passage of his ruine that whereas he had before-time rooted out those that had familiar spirits and wizards out of the Land 1 Sam. 28.3 7. being in his extremity he sought to one of them It would be a dangerous practise for any now to fly or turn to that sinful way for help in their strait which in a freer and calmer condition they justly abandoned and opposed 4. Look we after not only the end of our prayers but our fitting and preparation for that end Chap. 4. Sect. 6. The parts of this preparation have been opened already out of Zech. 12. 13. and Zeph. 3. Three of them you may remember were sanctity brotherly-unity and simplicity or truth in our dealings with God and man For sanctity The pure in heart are they that shall see God Mat. 5.8 When the Lord will work such a Salvation for his people as that all the ends of the Earth shall see it he will have his people to depart Isai 52.10 11 and go out thence from Babylon and touch no unclean thing and be themselves clean For brothâ—rly union and pâ—ace When the Earth shall be full of the knowledg of the Lord as the waters cover the Sea God will make a compliance and harmony betwixt the Wolf and the Lamb the Leopard and the Kid Isai 11 6 c. the Calf and the young Lion Vers 13. the Cow and the Bear the Lion and the Ox the sucking Child and the Asp and Cockatrice their antipethies shall cease that is as it is quickly after explained the envy of Ephraim shall depart Ephraim shall not envy Iudah and Iudah shall not vex Ephraim Of Iob Job 42.10 it is said The Lord turned the captivity of Iob when he prayed for his friends It was not while he disputed with but when he prayed for them The first thing as I take it wherein the Lord appeared
a good Expositor may be referred unto every parcel He desireth to come to them if it be the Will of God by such means as God will at some time when God will and prosperously if God will Little did Paul think how the Will of God had determined he should come to Rome viz. that it should be by persecution that he should come thither a prisoner to appear before Nero and that in his journey thither he should have such a tedious perillous shipwracking voyage by Sea as he had this was not in all likelyhood the prosperous journey which he thought of Yet the Lord made it prosperous as to the end he proposed in it and he had not his prayer crossed even in those adverse passages in regard he prayed with reference to the Will of God In the latter place where he mentioneth his praying the subject of it is that he might be delivered from them that do not beleeve in Judea and that he might come unto them with joy by the Will of God It proved that he was not delivered from but given up into the hands of the unbeleevers in Judea to wit to be apprehended beaten accused conspired against and prosecuted before the Governors by them and so those things which he would by his prayer have dis-joyned that is persecution by the Jews and leave to go to Rome the Lord by his wise Providence conjoyned and made the one to effect the other for their apprehension and persecution of him brought him to Rome he therefore well inserted that clause by the Will of God and so his prayer stood good yea and took effect though not in an absolute yet in a qualified sense for he was delivered from the Jews in respect of their utmost intentions for they would fain have prevented his going to Rome and have had his blood spilt in Judea and went very near it at sundry times and yet he was brought to Rome and that not without joy for he had joy in his bonds and Martyrdom * Act. 28.15 Gal. 6.14 Col. 1.24 2 Tim. 4.7 It is said by the Psalmist Psal 10. wherein Gods hiding from his people is purposely treated of as the subject of the whole Psalm The poor committeth himself unto thee vers 14. or as the margent the poor leaveth himself to thee that is he refers himself and his cause over unto God to be heard and maintained as he seeth good he doth not limit or prescribe God a method or time but leaves the way season and order unto Gods circumscription Let us then in praying for our own wills submit to Gods and be content either to have or want either to stay or forthwith receive as he shall think to dispose Not to call upon God in our affairs is Atheism to think to mould him to our frame and humor is to make an Idol of him 1. Consider our own imperfection in asking and Gods absolute perfection in disposal of and to us We are unable to choose for our selves our imperfection therein appears both in point of knowledg and will In knowledg either with the sons of Zebedee we rashly run on Mat. 20.22 and ask we know not what or we are at a stand Rom 8.26 and as the Apostle saith we know not what we should pray for In will when we go to pray we are apt to ask amiss that is for our lusts and the spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy saith St James Jam. 4.3 5 But God is infinitely able to make choyce for us The Apostle Peter saith 2 Pet. 2.9 The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation And the Apostle Paul Eph. 3.20 He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think 2. Consider our unworthiness to be heard or answered by God in any petition There is no reason why we should at all be aggrieved at God for the deferring or denying of any of our suits we must learn with Job to lay and leave our complaint upon our selves Job 10.1 When we pray to God we have more cause with Abraham to reflect upon our own unworthiness and deprecate his anger for our speaking to him then to be angry at him if he do not at all or not speedily hear us 3. To quiet us let us reflect on what we receive and enjoy from him as well as what we miss Let us look upon his concessions as well as upon his deferrings or refusals and set the one against the other If God abridg or delay his people in some things he hears them in other yea in many moe and greater matters It hath been reckoned by the choycest of Gods servants for a high favor unto them that in times of great and publique calamities they may escape and have their lives for a prey see Jer. 15.11 39.17 18. 45.5 And they speed well if by their prayers they obtain so much Mal. 3.16 17. Luke 21.36 Yea and when they may not be vouchsafed that but that they fall under sufferings yet a mercy worthy the recounting and tending to the satisfying of their spirits it hath been to them that they have been left undestroyed Lam. 3.21 22 23. Wherefore look we about us and within us Do we not espy the breakings forth and reservations of many special mercies to us in the midst of the Lords hidings and withholdings in some respects from us Even in those events which we observe falling out directly cross to the matter of our prayers we may descry the goodness of God alleviating or moderating such disasters Desinentes contristari propter ea quae non habemus de rehus praesentibus gratias agere debemus Basil We may call to mind many particulars wherein it might have been worse with us yea we may find cause to admire at some remarkable intermixtures of favor When Elijah complained to God of the miserable havock that Ahab and Iezebel had made of Religion and the true worshippers in Israel it seemeth he took and related the case to be somewhat worse then it was when he said And I am left alone and they seek my life and the Lord answered him that yet he had reserved to himself seven thousand men that had not bowed unto Baal We do often with Elijah exagerate our misery and overlook the mitigations and benefits we enjoy under crosses 4. God maketh all occurrences to us all his Providences to work together for good unto his That promise Rom. 8.28 is immediately subjoyned to the doctrine of the Saints prayers He contriveth sometimes the weal of his people by stops and denyals of their requests Consider seriously how much better it is for thee to want or wait for thy râ—quests at the throne of grace with the Lords respect favor and purposes of good towards thee and with an hold upon his promises with the help of his Spirit and to such beneficial ends as have been above described then with others to have
our petitions in wrath and to our hurt 5. Lastly None of the servants of God I may doubtless say since the world began have had all their prayers accomplished or obtained them at their first asking but in many things they have been either denyed in the particular asked or deferred We have divers instances in Scripture of the chief Saints of God denyed in some requests which are questionless therefore recorded that their examples might qualifie us in like cases Peruse at leasure for this those passages of Moses Samuel David Ieremiah Ezekiel and Paul Exod. 32.32 to the end Deut. 3.26 1 Sam. 15.11 35. with 16.1 2 Sam. 12.16 18. Ier. 14.19 with 15.1 Ezek. 9.8 9 10. Rom. 10.1 with 11.7 I have thus done with the first Head of Uses to wit the Rules of Direction for our carriage in the Case before us both preventive and positive The other Head follows SECT III. The way to Help or Remedy in this Case of the Lords hiding from his Peoples Prayers THat which only now remains is to shew what is to be done what the course is which we are to take for the Remedy or Cure of this condition of Prayer-obstruction For this I will propound but three things And they if duly followed will suffice 1. Seek and get the Causes of the Lords so hiding himself from us to be removed I mean the procuring or promeriting causes on our part which are our many prayer-letting God-provoking sins That such there are and what they are hath been before endeavoured to be discovered The way to have them removed is well known in regard of the Doctrine of it to wit Repentance towards God and faith in Jesus Christ for reconciliation to God This is a larger subject then I can now enter upon the opening of We have had it long and yet have it through the mighty mercy of God taught and pressed upon us daily by the Ministry of the Word Let me only in a word exhort and perswade to a sincere and diligent bestirring in the practise of it Look not at talk not so much of this party or that designe or the other preposterous course of any among us as coming betwixt us and the end of our prayers No no the obstructers of our prayers are ours and the Nations sins these humane occurrences do only obstruct by vertue of these Our sins they are that are in the chair of all the Counsels and in the head of all the Forces that interpose betwixt us and the issue of our prayers And now Brethren Is it not time thus to seek the Lord Hos 10.12 till he come and rain righteousness upon us Have we now any thing left us but our prayers to betake our selves unto and can we have any hope that our prayers will any thing avail us without this We are like Ephraim in that place of the Prophet that loved to tread out the corn verse 11 We would be reaping and threshing out the Harest of our prayers but there is other work first to be done God will have us to plow and break our clods and to sow to our selves in righteousness and then we may look to reap in mercy As the Lord said to Joshuah when he and the Elders of Israel were upon their faces before God in prayer and humiliation after the defeat before Ai Israel hath sinned Josh 7.11 12 they have taken of the accursed thing therefore the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies but turned their backs before their enemies because they were accursed neither will I be with you any more except ye destroy the accursed from amongst you Even thus he now appears bespeaking us Now he hath begun to hide his saving countenance and to cover his hearing ear from us and to discover his angry countenance against us there is no expecting he should be with us in mercy any more until in a heart-searching sin-exterpating repentance and a sin-expiating soul-reconciling application of the blood of Christ the cause of his separating from us and controversie with us be taken away That is a well known I would it were as well a followed passage of the Prophet Isai 1.16.17 Wash ye make ye clean put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes cease to do evil c. Come now and let us reason together saith the Lord. He had immediately before said When you spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you yea when ye make many prayers I will not hear Yet upon the terms of repentance he invites them in this friindly manner Come now and let us reason together or parly Repent O England Repent ye people of God of the Lands and of your own sins that prevent or foreslow your prayers Repent of the Idolatries of the Covenanâ—-breaking and perjury of the prostitution of Religion to sinister ends of the neglect and sloth in the worship of God of earthly confidence blood-guiltiness injustice violence unmercifulness and pride Repent of and remove those blots and blemishes of our prayers the hiding daubing over and justification of some gross sins the hardness of heart hypocrisie carnal respects hatred contention and irreformedness Repent especially of those capital crimes the which we the universal sins of this Nation the loathing rejection and disobeying of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the vile imbracement and adoration of the interest of this present world And moreover add unto the score of your repentance all those steps that have been trod in following the way of Cain the errour of Balaam Jude 11. or the gainsaying of Core together with all those filthinesses of the Spirit to wit the many errours and departing from the faith and the many breaches of Order and Union in the Church of God with which through wrechless ignorance self-conceitedness wantonness newfangledness inconstancy emulation lukewarmness security licenciousness covetousness and contempt of others as with a spreading and fretting leprosie so many professours are tainted And let those aggravations of these recited sins be taken in to further and increase our repentance which cleave to them as they are now committed by us namely the scandal the Apostacy the Presumption the incorrigibility and the boundless growth of or in them These are Englands and in some sort all our sins which bâ—cloud the Throne of Grace deafen the ear of God overcast his face out-cry our prayers and open a way or gap to his hot anger against us These are the sins which the Ministers of Gods word have been long declaring against and they have now even outfaced and overgrown all their admonitions and reproofs These are the sins which have long stood up in competition with our prayers and they have now prevailed above them These are the sins which have made way for the desires and prayers of our enemies to take place so that now they open their mouth wide against us and say Aha Aha our eye hath seen it so would