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…

'Tis sad when men are well enough to sit and chat, and trade in their shops; but are not well enough to pray in their closets. Certainly that mans heart is not right with God (at least at this time), who under all his bodily distempers can maintain and keep ⟨p. 286⟩up his public trade with men, but is not well enough to maintain his private trade with heaven. Our bodies are but dirt handsomely tempered, & artificially formed; we derive our pedigree from the dirt, and are akin to clay. One calls the body, the blot of nature; another calls it, the Soul's beast, a sack of dung, worms-meat; another calls it, a prison, a sepulchre; and Paul calls it, a body of vileness. Now for a man to make so much ado about the distempers of his body, to excuse the neglects of his Soul, is an evil made up of many evils. But really, Sir, I am so ill, and my body is so distempered and indisposed, that I am not able to mind or meddle with the least things of the world: Well, if this be so, then know that God hath on purpose knocked thee off from the things of this world, that thou mayest look the more effectually after the things of another world. The design of God in all the distempers that are upon thy body, is to wind thee ⟨p. 287⟩more off from thy worldly trade, and to work thee to follow thine heavenly trade more close. Many a man had never found the way to his Closet, if God by bodily distempers had not turned him out of his shop, his trade, his business, his all, &c.

'Tis sad when men are well enough to sit and chat, and trade in their shops; but are not well enough to pray in their closets. Certainly that mans heart is not right with God (at least at this time), who under all his bodily distempers can maintain and keep ⟨p. 286⟩up his publick trade with men, but is not well enough to maintain his private trade with heaven. Our bodies are but dirt handsomly tempered, & artificially formed; we derive our pedigree from the dirt, and are akin to clay. One calls the body, the blot of nature; another calls it, the Soul's beast, a sack of dung, worms-meat; another calls it, a prison, a sepulchre; and Paul calls it, a body of vileness. Now for a man to make so much adoe about the distempers of his body, to excuse the neglects of his Soul, is an evil made up of many evils. But really, Sir, I am so ill, and my body is so distempered and indisposed, that I am not able to mind or meddle with the least things of the world: Well, if this be so, then know that God hath on purpose knockt thee off from the things of this world, that thou may'st look the more effectually after the things of another world. The design of God in all the distempers that are upon thy body, is to wind thee