To The Much-Honoured Knight Sir Nathaniel Rich
CHAPTER VI: Observations made upon the disposition of the heart after prayer CHAPTER VI: Observations made upon the disposition of the heart after prayer CHAPTER VIII: Seven Observations More CHAPTER IX: Considerations to quiet the heart
CHAPTER X: Application: A reproof of those that pray
TO THE MUCH-HONOURED KNIGHT
SIR NATHANIEL RICH
SIR, GOD, who from all eternity hath had an infinite mass of grace and glory lying by him to bestow upon his church, and did accordingly provide a treasury and magazine sufficient wherein to store up all, the bosom of his Son; in whom are hid riches so unsearchable, Eph.
3:8, as cannot be told over, much less spent to all eternity.
He hath as richly (πλουσίως, Tit. 3:6) shed his Holy Spirit on us; that we, who could never have known of anything bequeathed us, nor what to pray for as we ought, might both fully from him know all that God hath given us, and through him lay claim thereto, who maketh intercession for us, and so doth furnish us with a privy key to all that treasury, which otherwise is fast shut up to all the world.
Through which spirit of prayer and supplications thus poured forth, believers come to be at once anointed to the fellowship and execution of those three glorious offices of Christ their head. Not only of priests, by offering up their prayers as spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ, but of kings, to rule with God, Hos.
11:12; being hereby made of privy council to the King of kings, so as their counsels and desires expressed in their petitions are said to be fulfilled, Ps. 20:4, 5, and their decrees in their prayers made, ratified, and established, Job 22:27, 28. Nay, further by virtue of this privilege, advanced to such height of favour, as, by their strength in prayer alone, to have power with God himself, Hos. 12:3, 4; and not only with him, but also over him, and in their wrestlings to prevail.
Yea, to command: himself hath said it, 'Thus saith the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker, Ask of me of things to come concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands command ye me,' Isa.
45:11; which so transcendent privilege of power is, by the express words of this great charter, universally extended unto all transactions of this lower part of his dominions, whether ecclesiastical, which do concern his sons,—that is, his church,—or
whatever other, the more ordinary works of his hands, that belong to common providence, Matt. 6:10.
And forasmuch as these grand affairs of this his kingdom, as future and to come, are commended to their prayers as their most proper subject about which they are to treat,—'Ask of me of things to come,'—in this respect they do become as truly prophets also, though not in so full and complete, yet in some kind of true resemblance; not by foretelling, yet by forespeaking in their prayers, things that come to pass. God, who made and upholds this world, and all things in it, by the word of his power, doth likewise rule and govern it by the precedents and prescript rules of the word of his will, Ps. 25:10, exactly dispensing unto men both rewards and punishments, according to the tenor of some or other of his promises and threatenings, and former like proceedings therein recorded; though with such various liberty, in respect of the particulars, that his ways remain 'unsearchable and past finding out:' that look, as he appointed in the heavens those ordinances of the sun, moon, and stars, by their light, heat, and motion, 'to rule the day and night,' to divide and cause the several seasons of the year, and all the changes and alterations that do pass over the animal and natural world; in like manner hath he stretched out that so exceeding broad expanse of his word and law, Ps. 119:96—to which the Psalmist doth assimilate it, Ps. 19:1, 2, compared with Rom. 10:18—over this rational world of angels and men, and therein set his statutes and his judgments, that by the light of precepts, and their influences in rewards and punishments, they might order and direct these his creatures
reasonable, and all their actions; also dispose and set out all the issues of them. And seeing his saints they are 'a people in whose hearts is his law,' and their delight is to 'meditate therein both day and night;' they daily calculating and observing the various aspects, conjunctions, and mixed influences of those innumerable precepts, promises, and threatenings which themselves and others, nations or men, stand under; and by a judgment thence resulting, Jer. 8:7, so far as they have attained, endeavouring to frame their supplications and petitions according to God's will: hence their prayers oft full happily succeed, and beforehand do accord to those issues and events that afterwards fall out. That like as the earth comes to be just under the sun and moon in some of their conjunctions, so their desires and prayers sometimes in a direct line fall under, and subordinately concur with, God's secret purposes, and some revealed promise met in conjunction, to produce such and such effects. 'The Spirit' also herein 'helping their infirmities,' sometimes so guiding and directing them by a gracious preinstinct, though unbeknown to them, to pitch their requests upon such particulars as God hath fully purposed to bring to pass; becoming thereby, as it were, the spirit of prophecy unto them, respectively in some measure and degree.
Thus doth that great King employ his nearest servants as his underofficers and sheriffs, to serve his writs and executions upon his enemies, to execute, the judgment written in his threatenings, Ps.
149:9, and to accomplish his mercies written also, by suing out all the promises; to be as man-midwives, (as Hezekiah's allusion, when he sent a-visiting to the prophet Isaiah for his voice and suffrage,
seemeth to import, Isa. 37:2–4,) to help and assist his promises and decrees in their travail with mercies and deliverance, Zeph. 2:2, when these their children do come unto the birth, and there is no strength to bring them forth.
In all which they shall therefore have the honour to be accounted coworkers together with God in his greatest works of wonder. And at the latter day, when that great and last edition, both of all God's works and likewise ours, then complete and finished, shall be published to all the world, they shall find their names put to them, together with his own; and the same by him acknowledged to be as truly the works of their hearts and prayers as that they are the sole work of his hands and power. Such honour have all his saints.
And if all the works of God are so exceeding great, Ps. 92:5, and his thoughts therein so very deep that every iota of them doth deserve our deepest studies and intentions, and thereunto require a proper skill and wisdom, to read his hand, peculiar unto the saints, ver. 6; whereunto there must be adjoined the most diligent search and attentive observation, to find out his meaning in them, Ps. 77:6; and withal a special inclination and delight to be conversant therein, 'Thy works are very great, sought out of them that have pleasure in them,'
Ps. 111:2; and if, of all the rest, those choicer pieces, his works of mercy, may challenge our best regard, in which his heart and delights are most, on which his wisdom hath laid on the richest workmanship, in the most curious contrivements of his love, Mic.
7:18: then surely that selected volume of more special mercies, his
epistles, vouchsafed in answer to our prayers, is above all other most exactly to be studied, and most diligently to be perused by us; wherein God doth unbosom himself, and lay open his heart more sweetly, more familiarly unto us, which are directed, and in a manner dedicated more particularly unto ourselves alone: many of them written with his own hand, in a more immediate manner discovered and appearing in them; and all of them come sealed with the impress of everlasting love, and down-laden with the enclosure of the most precious tokens of his special favour. Whoso is wise will observe these things, and they shall understand the loving-kindness of the Lord, Ps. 107:43.
Neither have such favours only more of mercy in the things themselves bestowed, but are further endeared to us by being made our own mercies, by a more peculiar title to them; by which the kindness in them is rendered double. For therein we have that royal liberty to become our own choosers, and contrivers of our own condition, having all the promises thrown down to us, with blanks for us to write our names in which of them we please, which is the greatest liberty. And we have withal his Spirit secretly directing and fixing the needle of our desires to the same point, wherein his great intentions towards us do meet with our best good; which is indeed the truest liberty. And to be made ourselves, whom we love so well, and therefore delight to do good unto, the chiefest instruments under him of our own greatest happiness, is a privilege than which the creature is not made capable of a more transcendent royalty. And when the greatest love, thus rectified, which possibly we can bear
ourselves, hath opened its mouth widest, and stretched our desires in praying to the utmost compass, then will God's infinite vast love not only fit them, but do for us above all that we are able to ask, yea, to think; exceeding abundantly above all; as far above as his thoughts are above out thoughts, which is far more than the heavens are higher than the earth.
All which, when put together, if well considered, how would it provoke us to call in all that precious stock of our time, thoughts, and intentions which we cast away on trifles, to lay out the choicest portion of them in this thriving trade of intercourse with God; the returns whereof are better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. It is the praying Christian that alone employs the riches of the promises, which we usually let lie by us, like dead stock, unimproved: whilst he, like a wise and diligent merchant, looks abroad upon all the affairs of Jesus Christ that are afloat here in this world, and adventures in them all; is watchful to spy out all advantages, and with a holy πράγμοσυνγ intermeddleth in every business that may bring in glory unto God, good unto the church, grace and comfort to his own soul. And how infinitely rich must that man needs become that puts even God's riches out to use, with the increase of ten talents for one, yea, a hundred-fold!
The due estimate whereof would no less quicken us to as diligent an inquiry, what becomes of all those goodly adventures, the prayers we make; to listen what haven they arrive at,—how, and when, and with what fraught they do return.
In which great duty, and most necessary property of all true merchants, many of the best and greatest dealers, that are diligent enough in praying, are yet found failing and deficient; that omit no gainful opportunity of adventure, but are careless and unobservant of their returns.
Some, through ignorance, it may be, that this is at all a duty, or of any such importance, are careful only how to lade in prayers enough, not expecting to find any of this bread cast upon the waters, until that great and general return of themselves and all the world with joy bringing their sheaves with them. Others, though at present many of their prayers come home after a few days, and richly laden, yet through want of skill to read those bills of exchange which God often writes in an obscurer character, they lie unregarded by them. Many, when voyages prove long, though to their greater advantage when once they do return, yet in the meantime through discouragement, they give all for lost, as we do ships at sea we cannot hear of. The most are commonly complaining that their adventures still miscarry, and that little or nothing comes of all their prayers. And all are negligent of keeping their books of accounts, to cast up their comings in and goings out the one with the other. By which they lose the chiefest portion of that comfort which for the present God hath here allotted to us to live upon, the revenues of their prayers. And God also is not only robbed of that custom of his glory which should thence accrue, but wronged also by standing still as debtor in their accounts to many prayers, in the return of which he hath been creditor long ago.
I have endeavoured in this small treatise to convince believers of the grand importance of this duty, which is so full of gain; to discover like wise the causes of the neglect herein, and remove the temptations and discouragements which do occasion it; and have briefly resolved such cases as do more usually occur in the practice of it. But principally my desire was to give in some few experiments and observations which may help to teach the weaker sort, though not perfectly to read, yet here and there to spell, and especially out of the impressions in their own hearts, God's meaning towards them in his answers. I have cast in some scattered calculations of broken prayers cast up, which though they will not amount to make general and perfect tables out of, yet may serve as instances and examples for young beginners, to direct them in the exercise of this most useful skill and wisdom, how to compute and balance their accounts by comparing their prayers and their returns together.
This small and imperfect embryon I have presumed to send forth into the world; and directed it first of all to present its service unto you, and make an honourable and thankful mention of your name.
Your worth deserves a more costly, large, and lasting monument for this inscription. Your own abilities of learning, eloquence, and depth of wisdom in human affairs, would you be persuaded to lay them out as you are able, would erect such a remembrance and sumptuous memorial of you when you are gathered to your fathers, as would bear some proportion to your great worth. But that which emboldened me was the near affinity which meditations of this nature do hold with those other your more retired thoughts you