PREFACE TO," A GUIDE TO PRAYER." THE duty of prayer is so great and necessary a part of religion, that every degree of assistance toward the discharge of it will be always accept- ableto pious minds. The inward and spiritual performance of this worship is taught us in many excellentdiscourses, but a regular scheme of prayeras a christian exerciseor a piece of holy skill, has been much neglected. The form, method, and expression, together with other attendants of it, such as voice and 'gesture, havebeen so little treatedof, that few christians haveany clear or distinct knowledge of them: and yet all these have too powerful an influence upon the soul in its most spiritual exercises ; and they properly fall under various directions of nature and scripture. Now while institutions of logic and rhetoric abound, that teaches us to reason aright, and to speak well among men, why should the rules of speaking to God be so much untaught ? It is a glory to our profession that there is a great number of ministers in our day and nation, who are happy in the gift of prayer, and exercise it continually in an honourable and useful manner. Yet they have been con- tented to direct others to this attainment merely by the influence of a good example. Thus we are taught to pray, as some profess to teach French and Latin, i. e. by rote. Whereas those that learn by rule, as well as by imita- tion, acquire a greater readiness of just and proper expression in speaking those languages upon every occasion, I am persuaded that one reason of this neglect has been the angry zeal for parties among us, which has discouraged men of sober and moderate principles from attempting much on this subject, while the zealots have been betrayed into two extremes. Some contend earnestly for precomposed set forms of prayer, and will worship God no other way. These have little need of any other instructions but to be taught to read well, since the words, matter, and method of their prayers are already appointed. Other violent men, in extreme opposition to them, have indulged the irregular wanderings of thought and expression, lest by a confinement to rules they should seem to restrain the Spirit, and return to carnal ordinances. But if the leaders of one party lead spent as much in learning to pray, as they have done in reading liturgies, and vindicating their imposition ; and if the warm writers of the other side, together with their just cautions against quenching the spirit, had more cultivated this divine skill themselves, and taught christians regularly, how to pray ; I believe the practice of free prayer had been more universally approved, and the fire of this controversy had never raged to the destruction of so much charity. My design in this treatise has been to write a prayer-book without forms. And 1 have sought to maintain the middle way between the distant mistakes of contending christians. In describing the nature of the duty of prayer, though I have not enlarged much on each particular, nor multiplied subdivisions ; yet I have endeavouredwith the utmost care and exactness to divide the duty into all its F3
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