The saints daily exercise A treatise concerning the whole duty of prayer. Delivered in…The saints daily exercise A treatise concerning the whole dutie of prayer. Delivered in…

Secondly, as we are deceived in the manner, ¹so we are deceived in the means oft-times, in seeking to God. When a man prays, he pitcheth upon such a particular means, and thinks verily that this is the, way, or none; it may be, the Lord will find out another way, that thou diddest never dream of; Paul prayed to have a prosperous journey to Rome, he little thought, that when he was bound at Jerusalem, and posted up and down from one prison to another, God was now sending him to Rome, yet he sent him, and sent him very safe with a great company attending upon him, he sent him it may be in a better manner then he himself would have gone, and yet it was by such a means, as he could never dream of; also you know, […] the A• rian, he had pitched upon a particular means, he thought the Prophet would have surely, come forth and have laid his hands upon him, but to go and wash in […], he thought his labour all lost, and the request which he made to the Prophet to no purpose; for it was a thing that he never thought of, it was a weak and poor means that he made no account of, yet that was the means that God •ded: so I say, we o•t deceive our selves, •itch upon such particular ways, and when these fail us, and when we have prayed, that these means might be used, ⟨p. 57⟩and God doth not use them, we think presently, we are deceived. Joseph thought verily Pharaohs steward should have been the means to bring the promise to pass, and after that, Pharaohs butler, he used as a means, he desired him to remember him, & yet all this was not the means, but another, which he never thought of, which was a dream of Pharaohs: the like was in the •se of Mordecai, deliverance came a strange way, a way that Mordecai never imagined. Abraham thought verily, that Ismael had been the son of the promise, but God tells him he was deceived, Isaac was the son, in whom he would make good the promise. So the Israelites thought that Moses should have delivered them; that it should have been presently true, that the yoke of bondage should have presently been taken off from them, but we see, God went another way to work, he sent Moses away, into a far Country, and the bondage was exceedingly increased upon them. So that they thought they were further off now then ever they were before; but, in truth, they were nearer: