60 OF SPIRITUAL MINDEDNESS. follow it, and to be ready with their assistance on its exercise; for the most part, where they lead all, they are all alone. This is the natural order of these things. Grace habitually inclineth and disposeth the heart unto this duty. Providence and rule give the occasions for its exercise; sense of duty calls for prepartion; grace coming into actual exercise, gifts come in with their assistance; if they lead all, all is out oforder. It may be otherwise sometimes: a person indisposed and life- less, engaging into prayer in a way of obedience, upon conviction of duty, may, in and by the gift, have his affections excited, and graces engaged unto its proper work. It maybe so, I say ; but let men take heed how they trust to this order and method : for where it is so, there may be little or nothing of the exercise of true grace in all their fervor and commotion of affections; but when the genuine actings of faith, love, holy reve- rence, and gracious desires, stir up the gift unto its exercise, calling in its assistance to the expression of themselves, then are the heart and mind in their proper order. 5. It is so when other duties of religion are equally regarded and attended to with prayer itself. He, all whose religion lies in prayer and hearing, bath none at all. God bath an equal respect to all other duties, and so must we have also. So is it expressed as to the religion herein, because there is none withont it, Jam. i. 27. I shall not value his prayers at all, be he never so earnest and frequent in them, who gives not alms according to his ability : and this in an especial manner is required of us who are ministers ; that we be not like an hand set up in cross ways, directing others which way to go but staying behind itself. This digression about the rise and spring of spiri-
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