lling on his name
among us? Who maketh it his study to take up God in his glorious names?
Therefore you call not on a known God, and cannot name him. Now, all of
you take this rule to judge your prayers by. Think you not that you make
many prayers? You both think it and say it, as you use to say, I pray both
day and night. Nay, but count after this rule, and there will be found few
prayers in Scotland, albeit you reckon up both private and public. Once
scrape out of the count the prayers of the profane and scandalous, whose
practice defileth their prayers; and again, blot out the prayers of men's
tongues and mouths when hearts are absent, and again, set aside the
formal, dwyning,(318) coldrife, indifferent supplications of saints, and
the prayers that carry no seal of God's name and attributes on them,
prayers made to an unknown God, and will you find many behind? No,
certainly,--any of you may take up the complaint in behalf of the land,
"There is none that calleth on thy name," or few to count upon. You may
say so of yourselves, if you judge thus,--I have almost never prayed, God
hath never heard my voice; and you may say so of the land. This would be a
well-spent day, if this were but our exercise, to find out the sins of our
duties in former humiliations; if the Spirit did so convince you as to
blot out of the roll of fasts all the former. If you come this length, as
to be convinced solidly that you have never yet prayed and mourned for
sin,--I have lived thus long, and been babbling all this while, I have
never once spoken to God, but worshipped I know not what, fancied a God
like myself, that would be as soon pleased with me as I was with
myself,--if the Lord wrought thus on your hearts, to put you off your own
righteousness, you should have more advantage in this, than in all your
sabbaths and fasts hitherto.

Although the Lord's hand be upon them, and they "fade as a leaf," and are
driven into another land, yet none calleth on his name. This maketh the
complaint more lamentable, and no doubt is looked upon as a dreadful sign
and token of God's displeasure, and of sorer strokes. Daniel, an eye
witness, confirmeth this foretold truth, chap. ix. 13, "All this is come
upon us, yet have we not made our prayers to the Lord our God." Well may
the Lord make a supposition and doubt of it, Lev. xxvi. 40, 41. After so
many plagues are come on, seven added to seven, and again seven times
more, and yet they will not be humble