Downame - BV209_D69_G6_1640_v1

Senfe and feeling of our wants required in prayer. 70r%1.1.5 What things are required in prayer: Now fervency prefuppofeth a fenfe and feeling or acknowledgement of our want : And both of them in the Scriptures are fignified in the phrafe; of hungring and thirfling,Ifai. 55.1. Matth. 5.6. John 7.37. For as in hunger and thirft there concurre two things; a fenfe of our want, and an appetite to have that want fupplyed: fo in prayer we mull hun- ger and thirfl after thofe graces and bleifings which we do crave, that is, we mull have a true fenfe and acknowledgement of our want, and an earnefl de- fire to have it fupplyed. In which refpeet David compareth his foul to thirflie land; which gape for the rain, Pfal. 63. 2. and 143. 6. and to the hart braying for the rivers of waters , PfaL 42. i. Both thefe are neceffary to effeduall prayer: For what we ask we defire, and what we defire we want : Nei- ther can we fervently ask that we do not carnally defire, and we cannot earnefly defire that whereof we feel no want. The whole needeth not the Phyfician, as our Saviour faith Luke 5.31. And as the Philo- fophers teach, Nihilappetit quod habet, Nothing af-.. feeteth what it hath therefore this I faid is prefup- pofed. If any want wifdorne, faith S. James, let him tick it. For if he find not himfelf to want it in whole or in part, he is not to ask it, unleffe he will mock God, who will not be mocked, Ga1.6.8. Here therefore they offend, I. In refpeet of tern- porall things, who tufting in their own means, and relying upon their own ítore,do not find themfelves to Hand in need of Gods help, neither do depend upon the providence or bleffing of God in the ufe of the means. For fuch when they pray unto God for thefe