A MANUAL OF PRAYERS FOR THE USE OF THE SCHOLARS OF WINCHESTER COLLEGE. AND ALL OTHER DEVOUT CHRISTIANS. TO WHICH ARE ADDed, THREE HYMNS For morning, evening, and midnight. A MANUAL OF PRAYERS FOR THE USE OF THE SCHOLARS OF WINCHESTER COLLEGE. AN EXHORTATION TO YOUNG PHILOTHEUS. IF If you have any regard, good Philotheus, to your own eternal happiness, it ought to be your chiefest care to serve and glorify God. It is for this end God both made and redeemed you; and two excellent rules He hath given you in Holy Scripture, by the conscientious observation of which you will be able, through his grace, to dedicate your tender years to his glory. The one teaches you what you are to do, "Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth'." The other teaches you what you are to avoid, "Flee youthful lusts;" that is, all those sins which are usually incident to young persons 2. You cannot imagine the unspeakable advantages 1 Eccl. xii. 1. 2 2 Tim. ii. 22. a pious youth gains by the practice of these two rules; and how many ghostly dangers that soul escapes, which is seasoned betimes with the fear of God, before he is sullied with ill company, before he hath contracted vicious habits, which will cost him infinite pains to unlearn, before his affections are too far engaged in the world, to be easily recalled, and before the devil hath got too strong a hold in him, to be suddenly dispossessed. O Philotheus, do but ask any one old penitent, what fruit, what satisfaction he hath purchased to himself, by all those pleasures of sin which flattered him in his youth, and of which he is now ashamed. Will he not sadly tell you, he has found them all to be but vanity and vexation of spirit? How will he befool himself, for the many good opportunities he hath lost, and wish a thousand times that he were to live over his misspent days again? And how bitterly will he, with David, bewail the sins of his youth'. Learn then, good Philotheus, by the dear-bought experience of others, to accustom yourself to bear Christ's yoke from your youth, and his yoke will sit easy on your neck; for your duty will grow natural to you by beginning betimes. Do but consider, how welcome a young convert is to God; it was to young Samuel that God revealed himself, and that at such a time too, when the word of God was precious and very rare, to shew how much God honoured a young prophet 2, and you know that St. John, the youngest of all the disciples, is the only person of all the twelve, who was permitted to lean 1 Ps. xxv. 6. 2 1 Sam. iii. 1. on our Saviour's bosom, at the last supper, as dearest to him in affection, and who is emphatically called the disciple whom Jesus loved1: and this is suitable to that gracious promise which God hath made to encourage all young persons to serve him; "I love them that love me, and they that seek me early shall find me "." 2 O Philotheus, let this heavenly promise excite in you a great zeal to seek God, and seek him early; for if you do seek, you are sure to find him; you are sure, when you have found him, he will love you; and you shall reap all the happy effects of God's infi nite love, and of an early piety. An early piety! than which, nothing will make you a greater comfort to all your friends, or a greater blessing to the very college where you are bred; nothing will make you more universally esteemed, and beloved by all men, or more successful in your studies and besides that peace of conscience, and the pleasure of well-doing you will at present feel; think, if you can, how unconceivable a joy it will be to you when, in your elder years, you can reflect on your well-spent time, and the innocence of your youth; how great a consolation it will be to you on your death-bed, how easy it will render your accompts at the great day of judgment, and how much a whole life spent in God's service, will increase your glory in heaven. God of his great mercy, Philotheus, make these and the like considerations effectual to create holy resolutions in you, and give you grace to make good use of these following directions, which are designed 1 John xiii. 23. ? Prov. viii. 17. |