CHAPTER V. 187 and strive and labour to get near to the throne of God, with the utmost exercise of your natural abilities, depending on his secret influences, and hoping for his return: If the wind blow not, tug harder at the oar, and so make your way toward heaven. Dare not indulge a neglect of prayer, upon pretence that the Spirit is departed ; for you cannot expect he should revisit 3%ou without stirring up your soul to seek hire. Was he given you more sensibly as an answer to prayer at first ? Then plead earnestly with God again to restore him : if he furnish you not with matter of prayer by his special and pre- sent influences, take with you words from his own holy book, and say to him, take away all iniquity, and return and receive me graciously ; Hos. xiv. 1 -4. Plead with him his own promises made to returning backsliders ; Jer. iii. 22. Ezek. xxxvi. 2.5, 31, 37. and put him in mind of the repenting prodigal in the embraces of his father. When you have found him, hold him fast, and never let him go ; Sol: Song iii. 4. Dare not again indulge those follies that provoked his anger and absence. En- tertainhis first appearances with great thankfulness and holy joy Let him abide with you and maintain all his sovereignty within you, and seethat you abide in him in all subjection. Walk hum- bly and sinno more, lest 'a worse thin, befal you; lest he depart again from you, and fill your Spirit with fear and bondage, and make you to possess the bitter fruit ofyour folly ; lest he give you up to months and years di' darkness, and that measure of the gift of prayer you had attained should be so strangely imprisoned and bound up, that you may be hardly able to pray at all. CHAPTER V. -A Persuasive to learn to Pray. IT is to little purpose, that the nature of prayer is explain- ed, that so many rules are framed, and directions given to teach persons this divine skill of prayer, if they are not persuaded of the necessity and Usefulness of it. Iwould therefore finish these institutions, by leaving some persuasive arguments on the mind of the readers, that this attainment is worth their seeking. I am not going to address myself to those'persons who through a neg- lect of serious religion have risen to the insolence of scoffing at all prayers besides public divine services and authorized forms : Nor am I now seekingto.persuade those whomay have some taste of serious piety, but by a superstitious and obstinate veneration of liturgies, have for ever abandoned all thoughts of learning to pray. I think there is enough in the second chapter of this treatise to convince-impartial men,, that the gift of prayer is no enthusiastical pretence, no insignificant cant of a particular party ; but au useful and necessary qualification for all men ; ,a piece of
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