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grows carnally secure and sleepy, and prayer comes heavily off. But when the affections are soberly acted, and care is taken, that, even in lawful things, they have not full liberty, with the reins laid on their necks, to follow the world, and carnal projects, and delight, to the utmost, when the unavoidable affairs of this life are done with a spiritual mind, a heart kept free and disengaged; then is the soul more nimble for spiritual things, for divine meditation and prayer. It can watch and continue in these things, and spend itself in that excellent way with more alacrity.

Again, as this sobriety, and the watchful temper attending it, enables for prayer, so prayer preserves these. It winds up the soul from the earth, raises it above these things which intemperance feeds on, acquaints it with the transcending sweetness of divine comforts, the love and loveliness. of Jesus Christ; and these most powerfully weanthe soul from these low creeping pleasures which the world gapes after, and swallows with such greediness. He that is admitted to nearest intimacy with the king, and is called daily to his presence, not only in the view and company of others, but likewise in secret, will he be so mad as to sit down and drink with the kitchenboys, or the common guards, so far below what he may enjoy? Surely not.

Prayer being our near communion with the great God, certainly it sublimates the soul, and makes it look down upon the base ways of the world with disdain, and despise the truly besotting pleasures of it. Yea, the Lord doth sometimes fill those souls, that converse much with him, with such beatific delights, such inebriating sweetness, as I may call it, that it is, in a happy manner, drunk with those: and the more it enjoys of this, the more is the soul above base intemperance in the use of the delights of the world. As common drunkenness makes a man less. than a man, this makes him more; that sinks him below himself, and makes him a beast; this raises him above himself, and makes him an angel.

Would you, as sure you ought, have much faculty for prayer, and be frequent in it, and find much the pure sweetness of it? Then, 1st, Deny yourselves more the muddy pleasures and sweetness of the world. If you would pray much, and with much advantage, then be sober, and watch unto prayer. Suffer not your hearts to long so after ease and wealth, and esteem in the world. These will make your hearts, if they mix with them, become like them, and take their quality; will make them gross and earthly, and unable to mount up; will clog the wings of prayer; and you shall find the loss, when your soul is heavy and drowsy, and falls off from delighting in God, and your communion with him. Will such things as those you follow, be able to countervail your damage? Can they speak you peace, and uphold you in a day of darkness and distress? or may it not be such now, as will make them all a burden and vexation to you? But, on the other hand, the more you abate and let go of these, and come empty and hungry to God in prayer, the more room shall you have for his consolations; and therefore the more plentifully will he pour in of them, and enrich your soul with them the more, the less you take in of the other.

2. Would you have yourselves raised to, and continued and advanced in, a spiritual heavenly temper, free from the surfeits of earth, and awake, and active, for heaven? Be incessant in prayer.

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But, thou wilt say, I find nothing but heavy indisposedness in it; nothing but roving and vanity of heart: and so, though I have used it some time, it is still unprofitable and uncomfortable to me. Although it be so, yet hold on, give it not over. need I say this to thee, though it were referred to thyself, wouldst thou forsake it and leave off? then, what wouldst thou do next? for if there be no comfort in it, far less any for thee in any other way. If temptation should so far prevail with thee as to try intermission, either thou wouldst be forced to return to it presently, or certainly wouldst fall into a more

grievous condition; and, after horrors and lashings, must, at length, come back to it again, or perish for ever: Therefore, however it go, continue praying. Strive to believe that love thou canst not see. For where sight is abridged, there it is proper for faith to work. If thou canst do no more, lie before thy Lord, and look to him. "Lord, here I am, thou mayest quicken and revive me, if thou wilt and I trust thou wilt; but if I must do it, I will die at thy feet; my life is in thy hand, and thou art goodness and mercy; while I have breath I will cry; or if I cannot cry, yet I will wait on, and look to thee."

One thing forget not, that the ready way to rise out of this sad, yet safe state, is to be much in viewing the Mediator, and interposing him betwixt the Father's view and thy soul. Some who do orthodoxly believe this to be right, yet (as often befals us in other things of this kind) they do not so consider and use it, in their necessity, as becomes them, and therefore fall short of comfort. He hath declared it, No man comes to the Father but by me. How vile soever thou art, put thyself under his robe, and into his hand, and he will lead thee in to the Father, and present thee acceptable and blameless: The Father shall receive thee, and declare himself well pleased with thee in his well-beloved Son, who hath covered thee with his righteousness, and brought thee so clothed, and set thee before him.

III. The third thing we are to consider is, the reason binding on these duties of sobriety, watchfulness and prayer, The end of all things is at hand.

It is necessary often to remember this; for even believers too readily forget it; and it is very suitable to the Apostle's foregoing discourse of judgment, and to his present exhortation to sobriety and watchfulness unto prayer, even the general end of all is at hand; though, since the Apostle wrote this, many ages are past. For, 1. The Apostles usually speak of the whole time after the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh, as the last time; for that two double chiliads of years past before it, the one before, the

other under the law; and in this third, it is conceived, shall be the end of all things. And the Apostles seem, by divers expressions, to have apprehended it in their days not far off. So St. Paul, We which are alive, and remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds. As not impossible, that it might come in their time, which put him upon some explication of that correction of their mistakes, in his next epistle to them, wherein, notwithstanding he seems not to assert any great tract of time to intervene, but in that time great things were first to come. 2. However, this might always have been said in respect of succeeding eternity. The whole duration of the world is not considerable, and to the eternal Lord that made it, and hath appointed its period, a thousand years are but as one day. We think a thousand years a great matter, in respect of our short life, and more through our short-sightedness, that look not through this to eternal life: but what is the utmost length of time, were it millions of years, to a thought of eternity! We find much room in this earth, but to the vast heavens, it is but as a point. Thus, that which is but small to us, a field or little inclosure, a fly, had it skill, would divide it into provinces in proportion to itself. 3. To each man the end of all things, is, even after our measure, at hand; for when he dies, the world ends for him. Now, this consideration fits the subject, and presses it strongly; seeing all things shall be quickly at an end, even the frame of heaven and earth, why should we, knowing this, and having higher hopes, lay out so much of our desires and endeavours upon these things that are posting to ruin? It is no hard notion to be sober and watchful to prayer, to be trading that way, and seeking higher things, and to be very moderate in these, which are of so short a date. And as, in themselves, and their utmost term, they are of short duration; so more evidently to each of us particularly, who are so soon cut off, and flee away. Why should our hearts cleave to those things from which

1. Thess. iv. 17.

we shall so quickly part, and from which, if we will not freely part and let them go, we shall be pulled away, and pulled with the more pain, the closer we cleave, and faster we are glued to them?

This the Apostle St. Paul casts in seasonably, though many think it not seasonable at such times, when he is discoursing of a great point of our life, marriage, to work Christian minds to a holy freedom both ways, whether they use it or no; not to view it, nor any thing here, with the world's spectacles, which make it look so big and so fixed, but to see it in the stream of time as passing by, and no such great matter. The fashion of this world passeth away, rapάyes, as a pageant or shew in a street, going through and quickly out of sight. What became of all the marriage solemnities of kings and princes of former ages, which they were so taken up with in their time? When we read of them described in history, they are as a night dream, or a day-fancy, which passes through the mind and vanishes!

Oh! foolish man, that hunteth such poor things, and will not be called off till death benight him, and finds his great work not done, yea, not begun; no, nor seriously thought of. Your buildings, your trading, your lands, your matches, and friendships, and projects, when they take with you, and your hearts are after them, say, but for how long all these? Their end is_at_hand; therefore be sober, and watch unto prayer. Learn to divide better; set apart more hours for it, and fewer for them: your whole heart for it, and none of it for them. Seeing they will fail you so quickly, prevent them. Become free; lean not on them till they break, and you fall into the pit.

It is reported of one, that, hearing the 5th of Genesis read, so long lived, and yet the burden still, they died, Enoch lived 905, and he died, Seth 912, and he died, Methuselah 969, and he died, he took so deep the thought of death and eternity, that it changed his whole frame, and set him from a voluptuous to a n 1 Cor. vii. 31.

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