11. When the minister telleth you what you have done, and received, and what you must do for the time to come, consent, and resign yourself to Christ, and resolve to live in thankful, obedient love.

12. When you are going away, remember; thus we are ready to go out of the world, and church on earth, where our mercies are much in signs and means, and are hastening to the place where we shall P see and enjoy the things now signified, and know, face to face, as we are known, and have higher joys than faith can raise.

S. What must I do when I come home?

P. 1. Continue to love and praise him that hath feasted you with such salvation; and keep up a life of thanks and joy. 2. Continue in the use of all other means, to keep up the life and resolution which you here obtained. 3. See that you live as you have covenanted.

S. How oft should I communicate?

P. As oft as the church doth in which you live. In old time, it was done at least every Lord's day.

S

S. I pray you, next, teach me how to meditate profitably in private on all occasions.

P. 1. Choose such inatters to meditate on as you have greatest use for on your heart: which is above all. 1. The truth of the Gospel, and of the meditation of life to come, to confirm your faith and hope. 2. The infinite goodness and love of God in Christ, and the joyful state of the blessed in heaven, to inflame your love, and heavenly desires and joys. 3. The sufficiency of Christ, in all cases, to exercise your communion with him by faith. 4. The operations of the Spirit, that you may know how to receive and improve them. 5. The nature of all duties, that you may know how to do them. 6. The evil and nature of every sin, and the ways of all temptations, that you may know how to avoid or overcome them. 7. The nature of all mercies, that you may thankfully improve them. 8. The use of afflictions, and the nearness of death, and what will be then necessary, that you may be prepared with faith and patience, and all may be your gain.

II. For the time and length of meditation, let it be, whether

• John v. 14.

a Rom. v. 1-3.

s Acts xx. 7, 11.

P1 Cor. xiii. 12.

* Phil. ii. 12.

* Gen. xxiv. 63; Josh. i. 8; Psalm i. 2; lxiii. 6; civ. 34; cxix. 15, 97, 99; xxiii. 48, 78, 149; cxliv. 5, and lxxvii. 12; 1 Tim. iv. 15.

at your work, or when you do nothing else, at your best opportunity and leisure. And let it be as long as your time will allow you, without neglecting any other duty, and as your head can well bear it. For solid, sober men can carry on long and regular meditations; but ignorant, weak men must take up with short and broken thoughts, like short prayers; and melancholy people are unfit for any musings or meditation at all. For to do that which they cannot do, will but make them worse.

III. As for the work itself; observe how profitable ministers preach; and even so in meditation do you" preach to your own heart. 1. Consider of the meaning of the matter, and understand it. 2. Consider of the truth of it, and believe it. 3. Consider how it is most useful to you. And there convince your conscience by evident reasons: disgrace your sins by odious aggravations invite your soul to God, and Christ, and goodness, by spreading the amiableness of all before it. Chide yourself sharply for the sins you find stir up yourself earnestly by all the powerful motives that are before you. Comfort your soul, by spreading before it the present and the everlasting joys: support it by thinking on the grounds of faith and direct it into the right way of duty, and drive it to resolve and promise obedience for the time to come.

And in all this, let clearness and liveliness concur for as it is those that make a good preacher; so it is those that make a profitable meditation. Preach not coldly and drowsily to your hearts, but even as you would have a minister preach.

I tell you, the benefits of such meditation is very great: few men grow very wise, or very good, that use it not. We are full - of ourselves, and near ourselves, and know our hearts better than others do; and many will hear and learn of themselves that will hardly hear and learn of others. And secret duties have usually most sincerity.

S. I would next entreat you to teach me how to pray in

secret.

P. I told you in part before. I now only add, 1. Understand well what it is that you must desire in your heart, and in what order; and then you will have a habit of prayer in you when you have got a habit of those desires. For desire is the life of prayer. To this end, study well the true meaning of the

u Psalm xvi. 2,3; xlii. 1, 4, 5, 11; xliii. 5; lxii. 1, 5; lxiii. 8; lxxxvi. 4 ; ciii. 1, 2, 22, civ. 1, 35; cxvi. 7, &c., and cxlvi, 1; Gen. xlix. 6.

* Lord's Prayer; for that is the platform, and the very sea that should imprint the same matter and order of desires on your soul. I have elsewhere opened that prayer at large.

II. When you have got this impression of holy desires on your heart you are then a Christian indeed; let the expressing or wording of them be according to occasions: you are not always to speak them just in the order as they are in your heart and in the Lord's Prayer: for particular occasions may call you oft to mention some particular sins, wants, or mercies, without then mentioning the rest; or to mention them more largely than the rest; as there is cause.

III. Think not that you have prayed, when your tongue hath gone without your heart: therefore, get the deepest sense of your sins, wants, and mercies, and labour more with your hearts than with your tongues: and, out of the abundance and treasure of a feeling, fervent heart, the tongue will be able so to speak as that God will accept it.

IV. Go to God only in the name of Christ, in trust upon his merits and intercession: put all your prayers as into his hands, to offer them to God: and expect every mercy from God as by his hands. For since sin defiled us, man can have no happy communion with God in himself, but by a mediator. V. Live as you pray, and think not that confessing sin to God will excuse you for continuing in it. And labour for what you pray for and think not that praying is all that you have to do, to get God's grace, any more than to get your food and raiment: but you must labour, and beg, for God's blessing thereon. About forms and family prayer I spoke before.

:

S. I pray you briefly direct me for good conference.

P. 1. Bed furnished for it, by a good understanding and a zealous soul: for as a man is, so will he speak: the inward disposition is all in all.

2. When you are with those that can teach you, be much forwarder to hear than to speak. Pride maketh men of a teaching, talkative disposition.

* Matt. vi. 6, 9; Rom. viii. 26.

་

y In my Christian Directory.'

So did the Apostles oft. Acts i. 24; iv. 31; vi. 6, 8, 15; ix. 40, an xxviii. 8.

Psalm exlii. 2; xlii. 4, lxii. 8; Lam. ii. 19; Matt. xv. 8.

b 1 John ii. 12; John xiv. 13, 14; xv. 16, and xvi. 23, 24, 26; 1 Tim. ii. 5; Heb. vii. 25; Rom. viii. 34; 2 Tim. iv. 16.

Luke xxii. 40, 46, and xxi. 36.

d Matt. xii. 34-36, xiii. 52; Psalm cxix. 46, and cxlv. 5, 6.

3. Yet if such be silent as can teach you, set them on work by some seasonable question. For the best are too dull and backward to good. And many are silent for want of occasion, opportunity, or invitation.

4. When you speak to the ignorant and sinful, do it not in a contemptuous, proud, magisterial way; but with clear convincing reason, and with great love and gentleness. Let instruction and sweet exhortation be instead of reproof, for the most part. And when you must reprove them, do it usually in secret, and not before others; for disgrace will provoke them, and hinder from repentance.

4. Drive home all your holy conference to some practical issue, for your own affection and resolution when you learn of others, and to affect the hearers at the very heart, and bring them to resolve on that which is their duty, when it is your lot to be as a teacher to others.

5. Avoid two pernicious destroyers of good discourse: 1. Choosing little things, though good, to talk of. As some small controversy, word, or text, less pertinent to men's present necessities. 2. An ignorant, unskilful manner of talking of weighty matters. Abundance of good people breed scorn and contempt in the wittier sort of hearers, by their imprudent manner of speech.

6. Because the ignorant and unlearned cannot well avoid this, when they talk with those that are more witty and learned than themselves, I advise them to say little to such, unless to name some plain text of Scripture which may convince them: and, instead of the rest, 1. To get them to read some fit books: 2. And to get them to discourse with some ministers or others that can overwit them, and silence all their cavils.

S. I have but one thing more to desire now that you will teach me how to keep days of humiliation and thanksgiving in private and in public.

P. I would not overwhelm you with precepts: a little may serve for both these, besides what is said on other subjects. 1. In public, the pastors must choose the time of humiliations and fasts, with the order, and words, and circumstances of performance. But in private, your discretion must be chooser. And it must be, 1. After some great sin. 2. Or in some great danger or judgment, private or public.

3. Or when some great

mercy is desired, or work to be done. And so thanksgiving are for great mercies and deliverances.

h

2. The manner of humiliation is, by due & fasting, and confession, and prayer, to humble the soul penitently for sin, and beg the mercy which we want: and the manner of thanksgiving, to rejoice soberly and spiritually, with moderate feasting, when that is convenient, and give God thanks for his mercy, and beg the grace to improve it, and renew our devotion and resolutions of obedience.

3. The outward parts (fasting and feasting) must not be made a form or ceremony of, nor judged to be pleasing to God merely in and for themselves: but must be chosen only as means which help us to their proper ends, humiliation and thanksgiving; and may be varied as men's cases and bodies differ. The weak may be humbled without fasting, or with less: and the poor and the sickly may give thanks without feasting, or with little. And all must take heed of offering God a sacrifice of the sin of sensuality and excess.

4. True repentance in humiliation, and increased love to God in thanksgiving, and true reformation of life by both, is the great end to be aimed at; and all that attaineth not, or truly intendeth not that end, is vain. But so much for this present conference.

THE EIGHTH DAY'S CONFERENCE.

Directions for a safe and comfortable Death.

Speakers.-Paul, a teacher; and Saul, a learner.

SAUL. Sir, I have been, since I saw you, with divers of my neighbours at their death; and I see that weakness and pain of body, and the terrors of death, and the stir of friends and physicians, are so great impediments to men's preparation then, that I earnestly entreat you to help me to make ready while I am in health. For I am loth to leave so great work to so weak a state, and to so sad, and short, and uncertain a time.

PAUL. It is God's great mercy to make you so wise. There is nothing in which the folly of ungodly men doth more appear than in delaying their serious preparations for death. Is there Est. iv. 16; Joel i. 14-16; Ezr. viii. 21, &c.

Est. ix. 17, 18; Psalm lxxxi 3.

i Matt. ix. 13, and xii. 7. * Rom. xiv. 17; 1 Cor. viii. 8; Isa. Iviii. 2, &c.; Psalm 1. 14, 15, 23, and xvi.; 1 Cor. v. 8.