y, as God will interpret, you have no
mind to it: we ask as we seemed indifferent whether our petition be
granted or not. Should the Lord be affected with your petitions, when you
yourselves are not affected much? Should his bowels of zeal sound within
him, when yours are silent? It is fervent prayer availeth much, James v.
16. A heart sent out with the petition, and gone up to heaven, cannot but
bring back an answer. If prayer carry not the seal of the heart and soul
in it, God cannot own it, or send it back with his seal of acceptation.

_Fourthly_, Many prayers are not calling on God's name; and no wonder that
when people pray, yet the Spirit says, "None calleth on thy name;" for
prayer is made, as to an unknown God, and God is not taken up according to
his "name," which are his glorious attributes, whereby he manifesteth
himself in his word. To call on God's name, is so to pray to God as to
take him up as he hath revealed himself. And what is the Lord's name? Hear
himself speak to Moses, Exod. xxxiii. 19, and xxxiv. 6, 7, "The Lord, the
Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness
and truth. Keeping mercy for thousands: forgiving iniquity, and
transgression, and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty." Now,
to call on this name is for the soul, in prayer, to have a suitable stamp
on it: every attribute of God taking deep impression in the heart, and so
God's name to be written on the very petitions; and shortly, we may say,
the spirit should have the impression of God's greatness and majesty, of
his goodness and mercy, of his terribleness and justice. This is the order
in which God proclaimeth his name. In the entry, the supplicant should
behold the glorious sovereignty and infinite distance between God and the
creature, that he may have the stamp of reverence and abasement upon his
spirit, and may speak out of the dust, as it becometh the dust of the
balance and footstool to do to him who sitteth on the circle of the heaven
as his throne. And this I must say, there is little religion and godliness
among us, because every man is ignorant of God. Even God's children do
more study themselves, and their condition, than God's greatness and
absoluteness. Who searches God's infiniteness in his word and works till
he behold a wonder, and be drowned in a mystery? O but the saints of old
did take up God at a greater distance from the creatures; they waded far
into this boundless ocean of G