An antidote against distractions, or, An endeavour to serve the church, in the daily…An antidote against distractions, or, An indeavour to serve the church, in the daily…

SECT. IV.

¹IV. Believe the Presence of God. The eye of the Master, makes the Scholar busy. If his eye be off the Scholar, the Scholar's eye is off his book, Psal. 16.8. I have set the Lord always before me, because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved: Else your hearts will be moved, and removed too upon every motion. And therefore Faith, which doth realize invisible things, and presentiate an invisible God, is of great use in every holy duty, Heb. 11.6. He that cometh to God, must believe that God is. He must as fully believe that God is present, ⟨p. 179⟩as if he were visible^*, that thou art encompassed and involved in the presence of God. If thou go forward, he is there; if backward, thou mayest perceive him; on the left hand, there he doth work, though thou canst not behold him; he hides himself on the right hand, that thou canst not see him: Yet he knoweth the way that thou takest, Job 23 9, 10. This his common presence: but then in an Ordinance, there he is in the midst of his people; there he looks over Heaven and Earth as nothing, and to this man looks he, that's poor, and contrite, and trembles at his Word: and therefore, when you pray, you must not only speak, as speaking of God, but to God. It's slighting a Prince, when we deliver a Petition, and look another way; we bid our children look at us, when they speak to us, and so should we at God, who is not far from every one of us in his Ordinances. There he is with his Host about him; and though 'tis above us to ^*determine whether his Angels are employed to conduct his Word to us, or our Prayers to him; yet its certain, that they attend the great