by changing
the person, that he may teach us, that weakness, infirmities, and wants,
are common to the best and chiefest among Christians; that the most
eminent have continual need to cry, and the lowest and obscurest believers
have as good ground to believe the hearing and acceptance of their cries;
that the highest are not above the weakest and lowest ordinance, and that
the lowest are not below the comfort of help and acceptation in him. Nay,
the growth and increase of grace, is so far from exempting men from, or
setting them above, this duty of constant supplication, that by the
contrary, this is the just measure of their growth and altitude in grace.
As the degrees of the height of the water Nilus in its overflowing, are a
sure sign of the fertility or barrenness of that year, so the overflowings
of the spirit of prayer in one gives a present account how the heart
is,--whether barren and unfruitful in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, or
fruitful and lively, and vigorous in it. It is certain that contraries do
discover one another, and the more the one be increased, that is not only
the more incompatible and inconsistent with the other, but gives the most
perfect discerning of it. When grace is but as twilight in the soul, and
as the dawning of the day only, gross darkness and uncleanness is seen;
but the more it grow to the perfect day, the more sin is seen, and the
more its hated wants are discovered that did not appear; and therefore it
exerciseth itself the more in opposition to sin, and supplication to God.
To speak the truth, our growth here is but an advancement in the knowledge
and sense of our indigency,--it is but a further entry into the idolatrous
temple of the heart, which makes a man see daily new abominations worse
than the former. And therefore you may easily know that such repeated
sights and discoveries will but press out more earnest and frequent cries
from the heart. And such a growth in humility, and faith in God's fulness,
will be but as oil to feed the flame of supplication. For what is prayer,
indeed, but the ardency of the affection after God, flaming up to him in
cries and requests?

To speak of this exercise of an holy heart, would require more of the
spirit of it than we have. But truly this is to be lamented, that though
there be nothing more common among Christians in the outward practice of
it, yet that there is nothing more extraordinary and rare, even among many
that use it, than to be