blood, and with our applying faith upon his real flesh and blood, by such a feeding as belongs to faith. The marriagecovenant betwixt God incarnate, and his espoused ones, is there publicly sealed, celebrated and solemnized. There we are entertained by God as friends, and not as servants only, and that at the most precious costly feast. If ever a believer may on earth expect his kindest entertainment, and near access, and a humble intimacy with his Lord, it is in the participation of his sacrifice-feast, which is called The Communion,' because it is appointed as well for our special communion with Christ as with one another. It is here that we have the fullest intimation, expression and communication of the wondrous love of God; and therefore it is here that we have the loudest call, and best assistance, to make a large return of love: and where there is most of this love between God and man, there is most communion, and most of heaven, that can be had on earth.

But it much concerneth the members of Christ, that they deprive not themselves of this communion with God in this holy sacrament through their miscarriage; which is too frequently done by one of these extremes. Either by rushing upon holy things with a presumptuous, careless, common frame of heart, as if they knew not that they go to feast with Christ, and discerned not his body: or else by an excess of fear, drawing back and questioning the goodwill of God, and thinking diminutively of his love and mercy: By this means Satan depriveth many of the comfortable part of their communion with God, both in this sacrament, and in other ways of grace: and maketh them avoid him as an enemy, and be loath to come into his special presence; and even to be afraid to think of him, to pray to him, or to have any holy converse with him: when the just belief and observation of his love would establish them, and revive their souls with joy, and give them experience of the sweet delights which are opened to them in the Gospel, and which believers find in the love of God, and the foretaste of the everlasting pleasures.

4. In holy, faithful, fervent prayer, a Christian hath very much of his converse with God. For prayer is our approach to God, and calling to mind his presence and his attributes, and exercising all his graces in a holy motion towards him, and an exciting all the powers of our souls to seek him,

attend him and reverently to worship him: It is our treating with him about the most important businesses in all the world: a begging of the greatest mercies, and a deprecating his most grievous judgments; and all this with the nearest familiarity that man in flesh can have with God. In prayer, the Spirit of God is working up our hearts unto him, with desires expressed in sighs and groans: it is a work of God as well as of man: he bloweth the fire, though it be our hearts that burn and boil. In prayer we lay hold on Jesus Christ, and plead his merits and intercession with the Father: he taketh us as it were by the hand, and leadeth us unto God, and hideth our sins, and procureth our acceptance, and presenteth us amiable to his Father, having justified and sanctified us, and cleansed us from those pollutions, which rendered us loathsome and abominable. To speak to God in serious prayer, is a work so high, and of so great moment, that it calleth off our minds from all things else, and giveth no creature room or leave to look into the soul, or once to be observed: The mind is so taken up with God, and employed with him, that creatures are forgotten, and we take no notice of them (unless when through the diversions of the flesh, our prayers are interrupted and corrupted, and so far degenerate, and are no prayer; so far I say as we thus turn away from God). So that the soul that is most and best at prayer, is most and best at walking with God, and hath most communion with him in the Spirit: And to withdraw from prayer, is to withdraw from God: And to be unwilling to pray, is to be unwilling to draw near to God. Meditation or contemplation is a duty in which God is much enjoyed: But prayer hath meditation in it, and much more. All that is upon the mind in meditation, is upon the mind in prayer, and that with great advantage, as being presented before God, and pleaded with him, and so animated by the apprehensions of his observing presence, and actuated by the desires and pleadings of the soul. When we are commanded to pray, it includeth a command to repent, and believe, and fear the Lord, and desire his grace. For faith and repentance, and fear and desire, are altogether in action in a serious prayer; and, as it were, naturally each one takes his place, and there is a holy order in the acting of these graces in a Christian's prayers, and a harmony which he doth seldom himself observe. He that in meditation knoweth not how to be regular

are.

and methodical, when he is studiously contriving and endeavouring it, yet in prayer before he is aware, hath repentance, and faith, and fear, and desire, and every grace fall in its proper place and order, and contribute its part to the performance of the work. The new nature of a Christian is more immediately and vigorously operative in prayer, than in many other duties and therefore every infant in the family of God can pray (with groaning desires, and ordered graces, if not with well-ordered words): When Paul began to live to Christ, he began (aright) to pray : "Behold he prayeth," saith God to Ananias. (Acts ix. 11.) And "because they are sons, God sends the Spirit of his Son into the hearts of his elect, even the Spirit of Adoption, by which they cry Abba, Father," (Gal. iv. 6,) as children naturally cry to their parents for relief. And nature is more regular in its works than art or human contrivance is. Necessity reacheth many a beggar to pray better for relief to men, than many learned men (that feel not their necessities) can pray to God. The Spirit of God is a better methodist than we And though I know that we are bound to use our utmost care and skill for the orderly actuating of each holy affection in our prayers, and not pretend the sufficiency of the Spirit for the patronage of our negligence or sloth (for the Spirit makes use of our understandings for the actuating of our wills and affections); yet withal it cannot be denied, but that it was upon a special reason that the Spirit that is promised to believers is called a "spirit of grace and supplication."(Zech.xii. 10.) And that it is given us to "help our infirmities," even the infirmities of our understanding, when "we know not what to pray for as we ought." (Rom. viii. 26.) And that the Spirit itself is said to "make intercession for us, with groanings which cannot be uttered." It is not the Spirit without, that is here meant: such intercession is no where ascribed to that. How then is the prayer of the Spirit within us distingushed from our prayer? Not as different effects of different causes: as different prayers by these different parties. But as the same prayer proceeding from different causes, having a special force (for quality and degree) as from one cause (the Spirit), which it hath not from the other cause (from ourselves), except as received from the Spirit. The Spirit is a new nature or fixed inclination in the saints for their very self-love and will to good, is sanc

tified in them, which works so readily (though voluntarily) as that it is in a sort by the way of nature, though not excluding reason and will; and not as the motion of the brutish appetite. And that God is their felicity, and the only help and comfort of their souls, and so the principal good to be desired by them, is become to them a truth so certain, and beyond all doubt, that their understandings are convinced that velle bonum,' and ' velle Deum,' to love good, and to love God, are words that have almost the same signification; and therefore here is no room for deliberation and choice, where there is omnimoda ratio boni,' nothing but unquestionable good. A Christian (so far as he is such) cannot choose but desire the favour and fruition of God in immortality, even as he cannot choose (because he is a man) but desire his own felicity in general: And as he cannot (as a man) but be unwilling of destruction, and cannot but fear apparent misery, and that which bringeth it; so as a Christian he cannot choose but be unwilling of damnation, and of the wrath of God, and of sin as sin, and fear the apparent danger of his soul, so that his new nature will presently cast his fear, and repentance, and desires into their proper course and order, and set them on work on their several objects (about the main unquestionable things, however they may err, or need more deliberation about things doubtful): The new creature is not as a lifeless engine (as a clock, or watch, or ship), where every part must be set in order by the art and hand of man, and so kept and used: But it is more like the frame of our own nature, even like man who is a living engine, when every part is set in its place and order by the Creator, and hath in itself a living and harmonical principle, which disposeth it to action, and to regular action, and is so to be kept in order and daily exercise by ourselves, as yet to be principally ordered and actuated, by the Spirit which is the principal cause.

By all which you may understand how the Holy Ghost is in us a Spirit of supplication, and helpeth our infirmities, and teacheth us to pray, and intercedeth in us; and also that prayer is to the new man so natural a motion of the soul towards God, that much of our walking with God is exercised in this holy duty: and that it is to the new life as breathing to our natural life; and therefore no wonder that we are commanded to "pray continually," (1 Thess. v.

17,) as we must breathe continually, or as nature which needeth a daily supply of food for nourishment, hath a daily appetite to the food which it needeth, so hath the spiritual nature to its necessary food, and nothing but sickness doth take it off.

And thus I have shewed how our walking with God, containeth a holy use of his appointed means.

11. To walk with God includeth our dependance on him for our receivings, and taking our mercies as from his hand. To live as upon his love and bounty; as children with their father, that can look for nothing but from him. As the eye of a servant, yea, of a craving dog, is upon his master's face and hand, so must our eye be on the Lord, for the gracious supply of all our wants. If men give us any thing, we take them but as the messengers of God, by whom he sendeth it us: We will not be unthankful to men; but we thank them but for bringing us our Father's gifts. Indeed man is so much more than a mere messenger, as that his own charity also is exercised in the gift. A mere messenger is to do no more but obediently to deliver what is sent us, and he need not exercise any charity of his own; and we owe him thanks only for his fidelity and labour, but only to his master for the gift: But God will so far honour man, as that he shall be called also to use his charity, and distribute his master's gifts with some self-denial; and we owe him thanks, as under God, he partaketh in the charity of the gift; and as one child oweth thanks to another, who both in obedience to the father, and love to his brother, doth give some part of that which his father had given him before. But still it is from our Father's bounty, as the principal cause that all proceeds. Thus Jacob speaketh of God, "God, before whom my fathers, Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which fed me all my life long unto this day, the angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads," &c. (Gen. xlviii. 15, 16.) When he had mentioned his father Abraham and Isaac's walking with God, he describeth his own by his dependance upon God, and receiving from him, acknowledging him the God that had fed him, and delivered him all his life. Carnal men that live by sense, do depend upon inferior sensible causes; and though they are taught to pray to God, and thank him with their tongues, it is indeed their own contrivances and industry, or their