The privy key of heaven, or, Twenty arguments for closet-prayer in a select discourse…The privie key of heaven, or, Twenty arguments for closet-prayer in a select discourse…

And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood (clotted or congealed blood) falling down to the ground (never was Garden watered before or since with blood as this was) And when he rose up from prayer, and was come to his disciples, he found them sleeping for sorrow. Ah what sad pieces of vanity are the best of men in an hour of trial and temptation. These very men that a little before did stoutly profess and promise, that they would never leave him nor forsake him, and that they would to prison for Christ, and die for Christ, yet when the day of trial came, they could nor so much as watch with him one hour; they had neither eyes to see, nor hands to wipe off Christs bloody sweat. So John 6. 15, 16, 17. Thus you see by all these famous ⟨p. 22⟩Instances that Christ was frequent in private prayer. Oh that we would daily propound to our selves this noble pattern for our imitation and make it our business, our work, our heaven, to write after this blessed Copy that Christ hath set us, viz. To be much with God alone. Certainly Christianity is nothing else but an imitation of the divine nature, a reducing of a mans self to the Image of God, in which he was created, in righteousness and true holiness. A Christians whole life should be nothing but a visible representation of Christ. The Heathens had this notion amongst them (as Lactantius reports) That the ways to honour their gods was to be like them. Sure I am, that the highest ways of honouring Christ, is to be like to Christ, 1 John 2. 6. He that saith he abideth in him, ought himself also to walk, even as he walked. Oh that this blessed Scripture might always lye warm upon our hearts. Christ is the Sun, and all the watches of our lives ⟨p. 23⟩should be set by the Dial of his motion. Christ is a pattern of patterns; his example should be to us in stead of a thousand examples. 'Tis not only our liberty, but our duty and glory to follow Christ in all his moral virtues absolutely: other patterns be imperfect and defective, but Christ is a perfect pattern; and of all his Children they are the happiest that come nearest to this perfect pattern.

And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood (clotted or congealed blood) falling down to the ground (never was Garden watred before or since with blood as this was) And when he rose up from prayer, and was come to his disciples, he found them sleeping for sorrow. Ah what sad pieces of vanity are the best of men in an hour of trial and temptation. These very men that a little before did stoutly professe and promise, that they would never leave him nor forsake him, and that they would to prison for Christ, and die for Christ, yet when the day of trial came, they could nor so much as watch with him one hour; they had neither eyes to see, nor hands to wipe off Christs bloody sweat. So