O Eternal and forever blessed and glorious Lord God: You are God
be spiritual sacrifices, acceptable in your sight through Christ Jesus, and let those that tarry at home divide the spoil.
Let your presence be in all the assemblies of good Christians this day: Grace be with all of them that love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity; let great grace be upon them all. In the chariot of the everlasting gospel let the great Redeemer ride forth triumphantly, conquering and to conquer, and let every thought be brought into obedience to him: Let many be brought to believe the report of the gospel, and to many let the arm of the Lord be revealed: Let sinners be converted unto you, and your saints edified and built up in faith, holiness and comfort, unto salvation: Complete the number of your elect, and hasten your kingdom.
Now the Lord of peace himself give us peace always by all means.
The God of hope fill us with joy and peace in believing, for Christ Jesus' sake our blessed Savior and Redeemer, who hath taught us to pray...
7. A FAMILY PRAYER FOR THE LORD'S DAY EVENING O Eternal and forever blessed and glorious Lord God: You are God over all, and rich in mercy to all that call upon you, Most wise and powerful, holy, just, and good; the King ofkings and Lord oflords; our Lord and our God.
You are happy without us, and have no need of our services, neither can our goodness extend unto you; but we are miserable without you, we have need of your favors, and are undone, forever undone, if your goodness extend not unto us; and therefore, Lord, we intreat your favor with our whole hearts; O let your favor be towards us in Jesus Christ, for our happiness is bound up in it, and it is to us better than life. We confess we have forfeited your favor; we have rendered ourselves utterly unworthy of it; yet we are humbly bold to pray for it in the name of Jesus Christ, who loved us, and gave himself for us.
We bewail it before you, that by the corruption of our natures, we are become odious to your holiness, and utterly unfit to inherit the kingdom of God; and that by our many actual transgressions we are become obnoxious to your justice, and liable to your wrath and curse. Being by nature children of disobedience, we are children of wrath and have reason both to blush and tremble in all our approaches to the holy and righteous God. Even the iniquity of our holy things would be our ruin, if God should deal with us according to the desert of them. But with you, O God, there is mercy and plenteous redemption: You have graciously provided for all those that repent and believe the gospel, that the guilt of their sin shall be removed through the merit of Christ's death, and the power of their sins broken by his Spirit and grace; and he is both ways able to save to the uttermost all those that come unto God by him, seeing he ever lives making intercession for us.
Lord, we come to you as a Father by Jesus Christ the mediator, and earnestly desire by repentance and faith to turn from the world and the flesh to God in Jesus Christ, as our ruler and portion. We are sorry that we have offended you, we are ashamed to think of our treacherous and ungrateful carriage towards you. We desire that we may have no more to do with sin, and pray as earnestly that the power of sin may be broken in us, as that the guilt of sin may be removed from us: and we rely only upon the righteousness of Jesus
Christ, and upon the merit of his death, for the procuring of your favor. O look upon us in him, and for his sake receive us graciously, heal our backslidings, and love us freely; and let not our iniquity be our ruin.
We beg, that being justified by faith, we may have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation for sin, that he may be just, and the justifier of them which believe in Jesus. Through him who was made sin for us, though he knew no sin, let us who know no righteousness of our own, be accepted as righteous.
And the God of peace sanctify us wholly; begin and carry on that good work in our souls; renew us in the spirit of our minds and make us in everything such as you would have us to be. Set up your throne in our hearts, write your law there, plant your fear there, and fill us with all the graces of your Spirit, that we may be fruitful in the fruits of righteousness, to the glory and praise of God.
Mortify our pride, and clothe us with humility; mortify our passion, and put upon us the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God ofgreat price. Save us from the power ofa vain mind, and let your grace be mighty in us to make us serious and soberminded. Let the flesh be crucified in us with all its affections and lusts, and give us grace to keep under our body, and to bring it into subjection to the laws of religion and right reason, and always to possess our vessel in sanctification and honor.
Let the love of the world be rooted out ofus, and that covetousness which is idolatry; and let the love of God in Christ be rooted in us.
Shed abroad that love in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, and give us to love you the Lord our God with all our heart, and soul, and mind, and might; and to do all we do in religion froma principle of love to you.
Mortify in us all envy, hatred, malice, and uncharitableness; pluck up these roots ofbitterness out of our minds and give us grace to love one another with a pure heart fervently, as becomes the followers of the Lord Jesus, who has given us this as his new commandment.
O that brotherly love may continue among us, love without dissimulation.
We pray you rectify all our mistakes; ifin anything we be in an error discover it to us, and let the Spirit oftruth lead us into all truth, the truth as it is in Jesus, the truth which is according to godliness; and give us that good understanding which they have that do your commandments; and let our love and all good affections abound in us yet more and more, in knowledge and in all judgment.
Convince us, we pray you, of the vanity of this world, and its utter insufficiency to make us happy, that we may never set our hearts upon it, nor raise our expectations from it; and convince us of the vileness of sin, and its certain tendencyto make us miserable, that we may hate it and dread it, and everything that looks like it, or leads to it.
Convince us, we pray you, of the worth of our own souls, and the weight of eternity, and the awfulness of that everlasting state which we are standing upon the brink of, and make us diligent and serious in our preparation for it, laboring less for the meat that perishes, and more for that which endures to eternal life; as those who have set their affections on things above, and not on things that are on the earth, which are trifling and transitory.
O that time and the things of time may be as nothing to us in comparison with eternity, and the things of eternity; that eternity may be much upon our heart, and ever in our eye; that we may be governed by that faith which is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen; looking continually at the things that are not seen that are eternal.
Give us grace, we pray you, to look up to the other world with such a holy concern, as that we may look down upon this world with a holy contempt and indifferency, as those that must be here but a very little while, and must be somewhere forever; thatwe may rejoice as though we rejoiced not, and weep as though we wept not, and buy as though we possessed not, and may use this world as not abusing it, because the fashion of this world passes away, and we are passing away with it.
O let your grace be mighty in us, and sufficient for us to prepare us for that great change which will come certainly and shortly, and may come very suddenly, which will remove us from a world ofsense to a world of spirits; from our state of trial and probation to that of recompence and retribution; and to make us meet for the inheritance of the saints in light, that when we fail we may be received into everlasting habitations.
Prepare us, we beseech you, for whatever we may meet with betwixt and the grave: We know not what is before us, and therefore know not what particular provision to make, but you dost; and therefore we beg ofyou to fit us by your grace for all the services and all the sufferings which you shalt at any time call us out to; and arm us against every temptation which we may at any time be assaulted with, that we may at all times and in all conditions glorify God, keep a good conscience, and be found in the way of our duty, and may keep up our hope and joy in Christ, and a believing prospect ofeternal life, and then welcome the holy will of God.
Give us grace, we pray you, to live a life ofcommunion with you both in ordinances and providences, to set you always before us, and to have our eyes ever up unto you; and to live a life of dependance upon you, upon your power, providence, and promise, trusting in you at all times, and pouring out our hearts before you; and to live a life of devotedness to you, and to your honor and glory, as our highest end: And that we may make our religion not only our business, but our pleasure, we beseech you enable us to live a life ofcomplacency in you, to rejoice in you always; that making God our heart's delight, so we may have our heart's desire; and this is our heart's desire, to know, and love, and live to God, to please him, and to be pleased in him.
We beseech you, preserve us in our integrity to our dying day, and grant that we may never forsake you, or turn from following after you, but that with purpose of heart we may cleave unto the Lord; and may not count life itself dear to us, so we may but finish our course with joy and true honor.
Let your good providence order all the circumstances of our dying, so as may best befriend our comfortable removal to a better world; and let your grace be sufficient for us then to enable us to finish well; and let us then have an abundant entrance ministered to us into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
And while we are here, make us wiser and better every day than other; more weaned from the world, and more willing to leave it; more holy, heavenly, and spiritual; that the longer we live in this world, the fitter we may be for another world, and our last days may be our best days, our last works our best works, and our last comforts our sweetest comforts.
We humbly pray you accomplish all that which you have promised concerning your church in the later days: Let the earth be filled with your glory. Let the fulness of the Gentiles be brought in, and let all Israel be saved. Let the mountain of the Lord's house be established upon the top of the mountains, and exalted above the hills, and let all nations flow unto it.
Propagate the gospel in the plantations and let the enlargement of trade and commerce contribute to the enlargement of your church.
Let the kingdom of Christ be set up in all places upon the ruins of the Devil's kingdom.
Hasten the downfall of the man of sin, and let primitive Christianity, even pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father, be revived, and be made to flourish in all places; and let the power of godliness prevail and get ground among all that have the form of it. Let the wars of the nations end in the peace of the church, the shakings of the nations in the establishment of the church, and the convulsions and revolutions ofstates and kingdoms in the settlement and advancement of the kingdom of God among men, that kingdom which cannot be moved.
Let Great Britain and Ireland flourish in all their public interests:
Let your everlasting gospel be always the glory in the midst of us, and let your providence be a wall of fire round about us: Destroy us not, but let a blessing be among us, even a meat offering and a drink offering to the Lord our God.
Be very gracious to our sovereign lady the queen, protect her person, preserve her health, prolong her days, guide her counsels, let her reign be prosperous, and crown all her undertakings for the public good.
Bless the privy counsellors, the nobility, the judges, and magistrates in our several counties and corporations; and make them all in their places faithful and serviceable to the interests of the nation, and every way public blessing.
Bless all the ministers of your holy word and sacraments; make them burning and shining lights, and faithful to Christ, and to the souls of men. Unite all your ministers and people together in the truth, and in true love one to another; pour out a healing spirit upon them, a spirit of love and charity, mutual forbearance and condescension, that with one shoulder and with one consent all may study to promote the common interests of our great Master, and the common salvation of precious souls.
We pray you prosper the trade of the nation, guard our coasts, disappoint the devices of our enemies against us, preserve the public peace, and keep all the people of these lands in quietness among themselves, and due subjection to the authority God hath set over us; and let the Lord delight to dwell among us, and to do us good.
Bless the fruits of the earth, continue our plenty, abundantly bless our provision, and satisfy even our poor with bread.
We bless you for all the mercies of this your own holy day; we have reason to say that a day in your courts is better than a thousand.
How amiable are your tabernacles, O Lord ofhosts! Bless the word we have heard this day to us, and to all that heard it: Hear our prayers, accept our praises, and forgive what your pure eye hath seen amiss in us and our performances.
Take us under your protection this night, and enable us to close the day with you, that we may lie down, and our sleep may be sweet. Be with us the week following in all our ways; forgive us that we brought so much of the week with us into the sabbath, and enable us to bring a great deal of the sabbath with us into the week, that we may be the fitter for the next sabbath, ifwe shall live to it.
Make us meet for the everlasting Sabbath, which we hope to keep within the vail, when time and days shall be no more: And let this day bring us a sabbath day's journey nearer heaven and make us a sabbath day's work fitter for it.
As we began this Lord's Day with the joyful memorials of Christ's resurrection, so we desire to conclude it with the joyful expectations of Christ's second coming, and of our own resurrection then to a blessed immortality, triumphing in hope of the glory of God.
Bless the Lord, love the Lord, O our souls, and let all that is within us love and bless his holy name; for he is good, for his mercy endures forever. In praising God, we desire to spend as much as may be of our time, that we may begin our heaven now; for in this good work, we hope to be spending a happy eternity.
Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, and our God in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, be honor and glory, dominion and praise henceforth and forever. Amen.
A PRAYER PROPER TO BE PUT UP BY PARENTS FOR THEIR CHILDREN O Lord our God, the God of the spirits of all flesh; all souls are yours, the souls of the parents and the souls of the children are yours, and you have grace sufficient for You are our father's God, and as such we will exalt you; you are our children's God, and that also we will plead with you; for the promise is to us and our children; and you are a God in covenant with believers, and their seed.
Lord, it is your good providence that hath built us up into a family:
We thank you for the children you have graciously given your servants; the Lord that hath blessed us with them make them blessings indeed to us, that we may never be tempted to wish we had been written childless.
We lament the iniquity which our children are conceived and born in and that corrupt nature which they derive through our loins.
But we bless you that there is a fountain opened for their cleansing from that original pollution, and that they were betimes by baptism dedicated to you, and admitted into the bonds and under the blessings of your covenant; that they are born in your house, and taken in as members of your family upon earth.
It is a comfort to us to think that they are baptized, and we desire humbly to plead with you. They are yours, save them; enable them as they become capable to make it their own act and deed, to join themselves unto the Lord, that they may be owned as yours in that day when you make up your jewels.
Give them a good capacity of mind, and a good disposition, make them towardly and tractable, and willing to receive instruction; incline them betimes to religion and virtue: Lord, give them wisdom and understanding, and drive out the foolishness that is bound up in their hearts.
Save them from the vanity which childhood and youth are subject to and fit them every way to live comfortably and usefully in this world. We ask not for great things in the world for them: Give them, if it pleases you, a strong and healthy constitution of body, preserve them from all ill accidents, and feed them with food convenient for them, according to their rank.
But the chiefthing we ask of God for themis, that youwill pour your Spirit upon our seed, even your blessing, that blessing, that blessing of blessings upon our off-spring, that they may be a seed to serve you, which shall be accounted unto the Lord for a generation: Give them that good pare, which shall never be taken away from them.
Give us wisdom and grace to bring them up in your fear, in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, with meekness and tenderness, and having them in subjection with all gravity. Teach us how to teach them the things of God as they are able to bear them, and how to reprove and admonish, and when there is need to correct them in a right manner; and how to set them good examples of everything that is virtuous and praise-worthy, that we may recommend religion to them, and so train them up in the way wherein they should go, that if they live to be old, they may not depart from it.
Keep them from the snare ofevil company, and all the temptations to which they are exposed, and make them betimes sensible how much it is their interest as well as their duty to be religious: And,
Lord, grant that none that come of us may come short of eternal life, or be found on the left hand of Christ in the great day.
We earnestly pray that Christ may be formed in their souls betimes, and that the seeds ofgrace may be sown in their hearts while they are young; and we may have the satisfaction ofseeing them walking in the truth and setting their faces heavenwards. Give them now to hear counsel and receive instruction, that they may be wise in their latter end: and if they be wise, our hearts shall rejoice, even ours.
Prosper the means of their education; let our children be taught of the Lord, that great may be their peace; and give them so to know you the only true God, and Jesus Christwhom you have sent, as may be life eternal to them.
O that they may get wisdom and get understanding and never forget it: As far as they are taught the Truth as it is in Jesus, give them to continue in the things which they have learned.
It is our heart's desire and prayer that our children may be praising God on earth when we are gone to praise him in heaven, and that we and they may be together for ever serving him day and night in his temple.
If it should please God to remove any of them from us while they are young, let us have grace submissively to resign them to you, and let us have hope in their death.
If you remove us from them while they are young, be yourself a Father to them, to teach them and provide for them, for with you the fatherless finds mercy.
You know our care concerning them; we cast it upon you; ourselves and ours we commit to you. Let not the light of our family religion be put out with us, nor that treasure be buried in our graves, but let those that shall come after us do you more and better service in their day than we have done in ours, and be unto you for a name and a praise.
In these prayers we aim at your glory: Father, let your name be sanctified in our family, there let your kingdom come, and let your will be done by us and ours as it is done by the angels in heaven; for Christ Jesus sake our blessed Savior and Redeemer, whose seed shall endure forever, and his throne as the days of heaven. Now to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, that great and sacred name into which we and our children were baptized, be honorand glory, dominion and praise henceforth and forever. Amen.
A PRAYER FOR THE USE OF A PARTICULAR PERSON, BEFORE THE RECEIVING of THE SACRAMENT OF THE LORD'S SUPPER Most holy, and blessed, and gracious Lord God, with all humility and reverence I here present myselfbefore you, to seek your face, and intreat your favor, and as an evidence of your good will towards me, to beg that I may experience your good work in me.
I acknowledge myself unworthy, utterly unworthy, of the honor; unfit, utterly unfit for the service to which I am now called. It is an inestimable privilege that Iam admitted so often to hear from you in your word, and to speak to you in prayer, and yet as if this had been a small matter, I am now invited into communion with you at your holy table, there to celebrate the memorial of my Savior's death, and to partake by faith of the precious benefits which flow from it. I who deserve not the crumbs, am called to eat of the children's bread.
O Lord, I thank you for the institution of this blessed ordinance, this precious legacy and token of love, which the Lord Jesus left to his church, that it is preserved to this age; that it is administered in this land, that I am admitted to it, and have now before me an opportunity to partake of it; Lord grant that I may not receive your grace herein in vain.
O youwho have called me to the marriage supper of the Lamb, give me the wedding garment; work in mea disposition ofsoul, and all those pious and devout affections which are suited to the solemnities of this ordinance, and requisite to qualify me for an acceptable and advantageous participation ofit. Behold the fire and the wood, all things are now ready; but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? Lord, provide yourself a Lamb, by working in me all that which you require of me upon this occasion. The preparation of the heart, and the answer of the tongue are both from you; Lord, prepare my unprepared heart for communion with you.
Lord, I confess I have sinned against you, I have done foolishly, very foolishly, for foolishness is bound up in my heart; I have sinned and have come short of the glory of God; I have come short of glorifying you, and deserve to come short of being glorified with you.
The imagination of my heart is evil continually, and the bias of my corrupt nature is very strong towards the world and the flesh, and the gratifications ofsense, but towards God and Christ and heaven
I move slowly, and with a great many stops and pauses. Nay, there is in my carnal mind, a wretched aversion to divine and spiritual things.
I have mis-spent my time, trifled away my opportunities, have followed after lying vanities, and forsaken my own mercies.
God be merciful to me a sinner! for how little have I done since I came into the world of the great work that I was sent into the world about.
You have taken me into covenant with you, for I am a baptized Christian, set apart for you, and sealed to be yours; you have laid me, andI also have laid myselfunder all possible obligations to love you, and serve you, and live to you. But I have started aside from you like a deceitful bow, I have not made good my covenant with you, nor hath the temper of my mind, and the tenor of my conversation been agreeable to that holy religion which ] make profession of, to my expectations from you, and engagements to you. I am bent to backslide from the living God; and if] were under the law I were undone; but I am under grace, a covenant of grace which leaves room for repentance, and promises pardon upon repentance, which invites even backsliding children to return, and promises that their backslidings shall be healed. Lord, I take hold of this covenant, seal it to me at your table. There let me find my heart truly humbled for sin, and sorrowing for it after a godly sort:
O that I may there look on him whom I have pierced and mourn, and be in bitterness for him; that there I may sow in tears, and receive a broken Christ into a broken heart: And there let the blood of Christ, which speaks better things than that of Abel, be sprinkled upon my conscience, to purify and pacify that: there let me be assured that you are reconciled to me, that mine iniquities are pardoned, and that I shall not come into condemnation. There say unto me, "Be of good cheer, your sins are forgiven you."
And that I may not come unworthily to this blessed ordinance, I beseech you lead me into a more intimate and experimental acquaintance with Jesus Christ, and him crucified; with Jesus Christ and him glorified; that knowing him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, and being by his grace planted in the likeness ofboth, I may both discern the Lord's body, and shew forth the Lord's death.
Lord, I desire by a true and lively faith to close with Jesus Christ, and consent to him as my Lord, and my God; I here give up myself to him as my prophet, priest, and king, to be ruled and taught and saved by him; this is my beloved, and this is my friend. None but Christ, none but Christ. Lord, increase this faith in me, perfect what is lacking in it; and enable me in receiving the bread and wine at your table bya lively faith to receive Christ Jesus the Lord. O let the great gospel doctrine of Christ's dying to save sinners, which is represented in that ordinance, be meat and drink to my soul, meat indeed and drink indeed. Let it be both nourishing and refreshing to me, let it be both my strength and my song, and be the spring both of my holiness and of my comfort. And let such deep impressions be made upon my soul, by the actual commemoration of it, as may abide always upon me, and have a powerful influence upon me in my whole conversation, that the life I now live in the flesh I may live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
Lord, I beseech you fix my thoughts; let my heart be engaged to approach unto you, that I may attend upon you without distraction.
Draw out my desires towards you; give me to hunger and thirst after righteousness that I may be filled; and to draw near to you with a true heart, and in full assurance of faith; and since I am not straitened in you, O let me not be straightened in my own bosom.
Draw me, Lord, and I will run after you. O send out your light and your truth, let them lead and guide me; pour your spirit upon me, put your Spirit within me, to work in me both to will and to do that which is good; and leave me not to myself. Awake O north wind, and come you south, and blow upon my garden, come O blessed Spirit ofgrace, and enlighten my mind with the knowledge of Christ, bow my will to the will of Christ, fill my heart with the love of Christ, and confirm my resolutions to live and die with him.
Work in me (I prayyou) a principle ofholy love and charity towards all men, that I may forgive my enemies, (which by your grace I heartily do) and may keep upa spiritual communion in faith, hope and holy love, with all that in every place call on the name of Jesus
Christ our Lord. Lord, bless them all, and particularly that congregation with which I am to join in this solemn ordinance.
Good Lord, pardon everyone that engages his heart to seek God, the Lord God of his fathers, though not cleansed according to the purification of the sanctuary. Hear my prayers and heal the people.
Lord, meet me with a blessing, a Father's blessing at your table; grace your own institutions with your presence; and fulfil in me all the good pleasure of your goodness, and the work of faith with power, for the sake of Jesus Christ my blessed Savior and Redeemer, to him with the Father, and the eternal Spirit, be everlasting praises.