When you join with others in prayer, where you are not the speaker, let your heart be kept intent and watchful to the work, that you may pray so much the better, when you are the mouth of others to God.

Take frequent occasions, in the midst of your duties in the world, to lift up your heart to God: he is ready to hear a sudden sentence, and will answer the breathing of a holy soul towards himself, in the short intervals or spaces betwixt your daily affairs. Thus you may pray without ceasing, as the apostle directs, and your graces may be ever lively; whereas, if you only make your addresses to God in the morning and evening, and forget him all the day, your hearts will grow indifferent in worship, and you will only pay a salutation with your lips and your knees, and fulfil the task with dull formality.

Direction 6. Seek earnestly the assistance of the Holy Spirit. It is he that works every grace in us, and fits us for every duty; it is he that awakens sleeping graces into exercise; it is he that draws the soul near to God, and teaches us this correspondence with heaven. He is the spirit of grace and supplication; but because this is the subject of the following chapter, I shall pursue it no farther here.

CHAPTER IV.

OF THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER.

ALL the rules and directions that have hitherto been laid down, in order to teach us to pray, will be ineffectual if we have no divine aids. We are not sufficient of ourselves to think one thought⚫ and all that is good comes from God. If, therefore, we would attain the gift or grace of prayer, we must seek both from heaven; and since the mercies of God of this kind, that are bestowed on men, are usually attributed to the Holy Spirit, he may very properly be called the Spirit of prayer: and as such, his assistance is to be sought with diligence and importunity.

I confess the spirit of prayer, in our language, may sometimes signify a temper of mind well furnished and ready for the work of prayer. So when we say, there was a greater spirit of prayer found ir. churches in former days than now; we mean, there was a greater degree of the gift and grace of prayer found amongst men; their hearts and their tongues were better furnished and fitted for this duty. But to deny the spirit of prayer in all other senses, and declare there is no need of any influences from the Holy Spirit to assist us to pray, carries in it a high degree of self-sufficiency, and borders upon profaneness.

My business, therefore, in this chapter, shall be, to prove, by plain and easy arguments, that the Spirit of God doth assist his people in prayer;

then, to show what his assistances are, and how far they extend, that we may not expect more from him than scripture promises, nor attribute too little to his influences; and after a few cautions laid down, I shall proceed to give some directions how the aids of the Holy Spirit may be obtained.

SECTION 1.

PROOFS OF THE ASSISTANCE OF THE SPIRIT OF GOD IN PRAYER.

THE methods of proof which I shall use to evince the influences of the Spirit of God in prayer, are these three: (1.) Express texts of scripture. (2.) Collateral texts. (3.) The experience of Christians.

The first argument is drawn from such express texts of scripture as these:

1st Text, Zech. xii. 10. "I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, a Spirit of grace and of supplications." Here the Holy Spirit of God is called a Spirit of supplications, with respect to the special operations and ends for which he is here promised. The plentiful communications of his operations to men is often expressed by pouring him out upon them, as Isa. xliv. 3. Prov. i. 23. Tit. iii. 6. and many other places. Now that this prophecy refers to the times of the gospel is evident, because the effect of it is a looking to Christ as pierced or crucified. "They shall look on him whom they have pierced."

Objection. Some will say, this promise only refers to the Jews at the time of their conversion. Answer. Most of these exceeding great and precious promises that relate to gospel times, are made expressly to Jacob and Israel, and Jerusalem and Sion, in the language of the Old Testament: and how dreadfully should we deprive ourselves, and all the Gentile believers, of all these gracious promises at one stroke, by such a confined exposition! Whereas the apostle Paul sometimes takes occasion to quote a promise of the Old Testament made to the Jews, and applies it to the Gentiles; as 2 Cor. vi. 16, 17, 18. "I will dwell with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people;" which is written for the Jews, in Lev. xxvi. 12. Come out from among them-touch no unclean thing—and I will be a Father to you, &c. which are recited from Isa. lii. 11, and Jer. xxxi. 1, 9. where Israel alone is mentioned. And yet, in 2 Cor. vii. 1. the apostle says, "Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves." &c. And thus he makes the Corinthians, as it were, possessors of these very promises. He gives also much encouragement to do the same when he tells us, Rom. xv. 4. "Whatsoever things were written afore time, were written for our learning, that we, through patience, and comfort of the scriptures, might have hope." And ver. 8, 9, he assures us, that Jesus Christ confirms the promises made to the fathers, that the Gentiles may glorify God for his mercy. Again, in 2 Cor. i. 20. All the promises of God in him are

yea and in him amen, to the glory of God. Now it would have been to very little purpose to have told the Romans or the Corinthians of the stability of all the promises of God, if their faith might not have embraced them.

We are said to be blessed with faithful Abraham, if we are imitators of his faith. Gal. iii. 29. If we are Christ's, then are we Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise; heirs by faith of the same blessings that are promised to Abraham, and to his seed. Rom. iv. 13. Now this very promise, the promise of the Spirit, is received by us Gentiles, as heirs of Abraham. Gal. iii. 14. That the blessings of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. Being interested, therefore, in this covenant, we have a right to the same promises, so far as they contain grace in them, that they may be properly communicated to us and therefore the house of David, in this prophecy of Zechariah, doth not only signify the natural descendants of David the king, but very properly includes the family of Christ, the true David; believers that are his children, and inhabitants of Jerusalem, and members of the true church, whether they were originally Jews or Gentiles: for in Christ Jesus men are not known by these distinctions; there is neither Jew nor Greek. Gal. iii. 28.

2d Text. Luke xi. 13. After Christ had answered the request of his disciples, and taught them how to pray, by giving them a pattern of prayer, he recommends them to ask his Father for the Holy Spirit, in order to a fuller and farther