prayer. It is an aggravation of our enmity to God-, (vh'ftn we can sin cheer-
378 charnock's woeks. [Ps. XXXVII. 4.
ten thousands. If the pleasure of the seed-time be so great, what will the pleasure of the harvest be.
3. The miserable condition of those that can delight in anything but prayer. It is an aggravation of our enmity to God-, (vh'ftn we can sin cheer-
fully and pray dully, when duty is more loathsome than iniquity.
Use 2. Of examination. We pray, but how are our hearts ? If it be for what concerns our momentary being, is not our running like the running of Ahimaaz ? But when for spiritual things, do not our hearts sink within us,
like Nabal's ? Let us therefore follow our hearts close, suffer them not to give us the slip in our examination of them, resolve not to take the first answer, but search to the bottom.
1. Whether we delight at all in prayer.
1. How do we prize the opportunities of duty ? There is an opportunity of an earthly, and an opportunity of an heavenly, gain. Consider which our hearts more readily close with. Can we with much pleasure follow a vain world, and heartlessly welcome an opportunity of duty, delight more with Judas in bags, than in Christ's company ? This is sad. But are praying opportunities our festival times ? Do we go to the house of God with the voice of joy and praise ?
2 Whether we study excuses to waive a present duty, when conscience and opportunity urge and invite us to it. Are our souls more skilful in delays than in performances ? Are there no excuses when sin calls us, and studied
put-offs when God invites us, like the sluggard, folding our ai-ms yet a little while longer ? or do our hearts rise and beat quick against frivolous excuses that step in to hinder us from prayer '?
3. How are our hearts affected in prayer ? Are we more ready to pray ourselves asleep than into a vigorous frame ? Do we enter into it with some
life, and find our hearts quickly tire and jade us? Are we more awake when we are up than we were all the time upon our knees ? Are our hearts in prayer like withered, sapless things, and very quick afterwards if any worldly business invite us ? Ai-e we like logs and blocks in prayer, and like a roe upon the mountains in earthly concerns ? Surely what our pulse beats quickest to, is the object most delighted in.
4. What time is it we choose for prayer ? Is it not our drowsiest, laziest
time, when our nods are as many or more than our petitions, as though the
dullest time and the deadest frame were most suitable to a living God ? Do we come with our hearts full of the world to pray for heaven ? or do we pick out the most lively seasons ? Luther chose those hours for prayer and meditation wherein he found himself most lively for study.
5. Do we not often wish a duty over, as those in the prophet that were glad when the Sabbath was over, that they might run to their buying and
selling ? or are we of Peter's temper, and express Peter's language, ' It is good to be here' with Christ on the mount ?
6. Do we prepare ourselves by delightful and enlivening considerations ? Do we think of the precept of God, which should spur us, and of the promise
of God, which should allure us ? Do we rub our souls to heat them ? Do we blow them, to kindle them into a flame ? Do we send up ejaculations for
a quickening spirit ? If thoughts of God be a burden, requests to him will not be a pleasure. If we have a coldness in our thoughts of God and duty, we can have no warmth in our desire, no delight in our petitions.
7. Do we content ourselves with dull motions, or do we give check to them ? Can we, though our hearts be never so lazy, stroke ourselves at the
end, and call ourselves good and faithful servants ? Do we take our souls
to task afterwards, and examine why they are so lazy, why so heavy ? Do