weight of the work, Who is sufficient for these things? which if you do,
softened either by word or rod, therefore the Lord will thus do to us; and seeing he will do thus, we may prepare to meet the Lord coming in a way of more severe judgment against us. Sad it is already; many families are in a deplorable condition, and yet nothing bettered by the stroke; and what a sad face will this land have, if it be continued? Spare, O Lord, your inheritance, your covenanted people, and make us rather fall on such methods as may procure the removal of the stroke. These, and many other things, O my soul, may indeed make you grieved for the hardness of this generation.
Fifthly y Christ was much in prayer; and that, 1. Before he preached, as Luke 9: 18. Follow him in this, O my soul. You have much need to pray before you preach. Be busy with God in prayer, when you are thinking on dealing with the souls of men. Let your sermons be sermons of many prayers. Well doth prayer become every Christian, but much more a preacher of the gospel. Three things, said Luther, make a divine, testings, meditations, and prayer. Be stirred up, O my soul, to this necessary work; and for this end consider,
1. That you cannot otherwise say of your preaching, Thus says the Lord. How will you get a word from God, if you do not seek it; and how can you seek it but by earnest prayer? If otherwise, you may get something that is the product of your empty head to mumble over before the people, and spend a little time with them in the church. But O it is a miserable preaching where the preacher can say, Thus say I to you but no more; and cannot say, Thus saith the Lord.
2. Consider your own insufficiency and weakness, together with the weight of the work, Who is sufficient for these things? which if you do, you will not dare study without prayer, nor yet pray without study, when God allows you time for both. It is a weighty work to bring sinners in to Christ, to pluck the brands out of the fire. Have you not great need then to be serious with God before you preach?
3. Consider that word, Jer. 23:22. "But if they had stood in my counsel, and had caused my people to hear my words, then they should have