69

JEREMY ZAN

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in the matter, or earnest, in our affections, 4. our abode, yet we miss 1.. t manner ask for evil ends, or witou reigoes and hensions, or we rest on the wors and the prayer, and never take care to pass on or else we sacrifice in the company of Korali, big ners of a schism or a rebellion in religion; or unhallowed censers, our hearts send up to God an in smoke, a cloud from the fires of lust, and the fes lust or rage or wine or revenge kindle the heart that is laid upon the altar; or we bring swine's flesh or a dog's neck; whereas God never accepts or delights in a prayer unless it be for a holy thing, to a lavil end, presented unto Him upon the wings of real and love, of religious sorrow or religious joy, by sand and pure hands, and a sincere heart. It must be here of a gracious man; and he is only gracious before God acceptable and effective in his prayer, whose life, and whoae prayer is holy for the ingredients to the constitution of proving avere is a holiness pemiliar to the the prayer, t united to t

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a calenture in the head, and a fire in the face, and a sword in the hand, and a fury all over, and therefore can never suffer a man to be in a disposition to pray. For prayer is an action and a state of intercourse and desire exactly contrary to this character of anger.

Prayer is an action of likeness to the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of gentleness and dove-like simplicity; an imitation of the holy Jesus, whose spirit is meek up to the greatness of the biggest example, and a conformity to God, whose anger is always just, and marches slowly, and is without transport, and is often hindered, and never hasty but full of mercy.

Prayer is the peace of our spirits, the stillness of our thoughts, the evenness of our recollections, the seat of meditation, the rest of our cares, and the calm of our tempest.

Prayer is the issue of a quiet mind, of untroubled thoughts; it is the daughter of charity and the sister of meekness; and he that prays to God with an angry, that is, a troubled and discomposed spirit, is like him that retires to a battle to meditate, sets up his closet in the outquarters of an army, and chooses a frontier garrison to be wise in.

Anger is a perfect alienation of the mind from prayer, and is contrary to that attention which presents our prayers in a right line to God. For so have I seen a lark rising from his bed of grass, and soaring upwards, singing as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven and climb above the clouds; but the poor bird was beaten back with the loud sighings of an eastern wind, and his motion made irregular and inconstant, descending more at every breath of the tempest than it could recover by the libration and frequent weighing of its wings; till the little creature was forced to sit down and pant, and stay till the storm was over; and then it made a prosperous flight, and did rise and sing, as if it had learned music and motion from an angel as he passed sometimes through the air in his ministries here below. So is the prayer of a good man, when his affairs have required business, and his discipline

was to pass upon a sinning person, or had a design of charity, his duty met with infirmities of a man, and anger was its instrument, and the instrument became stronger than the prime agent, and raised a tempest and overruled the man; and then his prayers were broken, and his thoughts were troubled, and his words went up towards a cloud, and his thoughts pulled them back, and made them without intention; and the good man sighs for his infirmity, but must be content to lose the prayer, and he must recover it when his anger is removed, and his spirit is becalmed, made even as the brow of Jesus, and smooth like the heart of God; and then it ascends to heaven upon the wings of the holy Dove, and dwells with God, till it returns like the useful bee, loaden with a blessing and the dew of heaven.

RELIGION "PROFITABLE FOR THE LIFE THAT

NOW IS."

I CONSIDER that it is an infinite mercy of the Almighty Father of mercies that he hath appointed to us such a religion that leads us to a huge and endless felicity through pleasant ways. For the felicity that is designed to us is so above our present capacities and conceptions, that whilst we are so ignorant as not to understand it, we are also so foolish as not to desire it with passion great enough to perform the little conditions of its purchase. God therefore, knowing how great an interest it is, and how apt we should be to neglect it, hath found out such conditions of acquiring it, as are easy and satisfactory to our present appetites.

God hath bound our salvation upon us by the endearment of temporal prosperities, and because we love the world so well, God hath so ordered it that even this world may secure the other. And of this God in old times made open profession; for when he had secretly designed to bring his people to a glorious immortality in another world, He told them nothing of that, it being a thing bigger than the capacity of their thoughts or their

theology; but told them that which would tempt them most and endear obedience, "if you will obey, ye shall eat the good things of the land," ye shall possess a rich country, have numerous families, blessed children, rich granaries, overrunning wine-presses. For God knew the cognation of them was so dear between their affections and the good things of this world, that if they did not obey in hope of that they did need, and fancy, and love, and see, and feel, it was not to be expected they should quit their affections for a secret in another world, whither before they come, they must die and lose all desire and manner of enjoyment.

But this design of God, which was barefaced in the days of the Law, is now in the Gospel interwoven secretly (but yet plain enough to be discovered by an eye of faith and reason) into every virtue; and temporal advantage is a great ingredient in the constitution of every Christian

grace.

For so the richest tissues dazzle the beholder's eye, when the sun reflects upon the metal, the silver and gold weaved into a fantastic imagery or a wealthy plainness; but the rich wire and shining filaments are wrought upon cheaper silk, the spoil of worms and flies. So is the embroidery of our virtue: the glories of the Spirit dwell upon the face and vestment, upon the fringes and borders, and there we see the beryl and the onyx, the jasper and the sardonyx, order and perfection, love, peace, and joy, mortification of the passions, and rapture of the will, adherences to God, and imitation of Christ, reception and entertainment of the Holy Ghost, longings after heaven, humility and chastity, temperance and sobriety; these make the frame of the garment, the clothes of the soul, that it may not be found naked in the day of the Lord's visitation; but through these rich materials a thread of silk is drawn, some compliance with worms and weaker creatures, something that shall please our bowels, and make the lower man to rejoice; they are wrought upon secular content and material satisfactions; and now we cannot be happy unless we be pious, and the religion of a

Christian is the best security, and the most certain instrument of making a man rich, and pleasing, and healthful, and wise, and beloved, in the whole world.

GOD'S RESTRAINING GRACE.

GOD, that He might secure our duty and our present and consequent felicity, hath tied us with golden chains, and bound us not only with the bracelets of love and the deliciousness of hope, but with the ruder cords of fear and reverence, even with all the innumerable parts of restraining grace. For it is a huge aggravation of human calamity to consider that after a man hath been instructed in the love and advantages of his religion, and knows it to be the way of honour and felicity, and that to prevaricate His holy sanctions is certain death and disgrace to eternal ages; yet that some men shall despise their religion, others shall be weary of its laws, and call its commandments a burden; and too many, with a perfect choice, shall delight in death and the ways that lead thither; and they choose money rather, and to rule over their brother by all means, and to be revenged extremely, and to prevail by wrong, and to please themselves in all that they desire, and love it fondly, and be restless in all things but where they perish.

Now, if God should not interpose by the arts of a miraculous and merciful grace, and put a bridle in the mouth of our lusts, and chastise the sea of our follies by some heaps of sand or the walls of a rock, we should perish in the deluge of sin universally, as the old world did in that storm of the divine anger, the flood of waters. But God suffers but few gross sins in the world in respect of what would be if all that had the desire had power and opportunity; and some men and very many women are by modesty and natural shamefacedness chastised in their too forward appetites; or the laws of men, or public reputation, or the indecency and unhandsome circumstances of sin, check the desire and make it that it cannot arrive at act.