6.
Another rule of prayer is, that in asking we must always truly feel
our wants, and seriously considering that we need all the things which we ask,
accompany the prayer with a sincere, nay, ardent desire of obtaining them. Many
repeat prayers in a perfunctory manner from a set form, as if they were
performing a task to God, and though they confess that this is a necessary
remedy for the evils of their condition, because it were fatal to be left
without the divine aid which they implore, it still appears that they perform
the duty from custom, because their minds are meanwhile cold, and they ponder
not what they ask. A general and confused feeling of their necessity leads them
to pray, but it does not make them solicitous as in a matter of present
consequence, that they may obtain the supply of their need. Moreover, can we
suppose anything more hateful or even more execrable to God than this fiction of
asking the pardon of sins, while he who asks at the very time either thinks that
he is not a sinner, or, at least, is not thinking that he is a sinner; in other
words, a fiction by which God is plainly held in derision? But mankind, as I
have lately said, are full of depravity, so that in the way of perfunctory
service they often ask many things of God which they think come to them without
his beneficence, or from some other quarter, or are already certainly in their
possession. There is another fault which seems less heinous, but is not to be
tolerated. Some murmur out prayers without meditation, their only principle
being that God is to be propitiated by prayer. Believers ought to be specially
on their guard never to appear in the presence of God with the intention of
presenting a request unless they are under some serious impression, and are, at
the same time, desirous to obtain it. Nay, although in these things which we ask
only for the glory of God, we seem not at first sight to consult for our
necessity, yet we ought not to ask with less fervour and vehemency of desire.
For instance, when we pray that his name be hallowed — that hallowing must, so
to speak, be earnestly hungered and thirsted after.
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