Influences of the life of grace

There is here no creating of clouds or rain, by King or Husbandman, or Hosts of men; the Husbandmans faith and prayer in extreme drought may fetch rain: but we have, in these actings in which God must join his gracious influence, no real influence upon the Lord's influences; the Rose acts not upon the Sun by influences, but the Sun acts upon the Rose, though we may pray for influences of grace.

There is here no creating of clouds or rain, by King or Husbandman, or Hosts of men; the Husbandmans faith and prayer in extreme drought may fetch rain: but we have, in these actings in which God must joyn his gracious influence, no real influence upon the Lord's influences; the Rose acts not upon the Sun by influences, but the Sun acts upon the Rose, though we may pray for influences of grace.

Nor can tears and wrestling extort influences, when the Lord is upon a• act of declaring his sovereignty in trying us,¹ there is praying, and yet heaviness and dropping away of soul, bids on, and the Petitioner remains like a bottle on the smoke; the Glass set must run out so many hours; ere the Sea flow again, the Sea-man weeps and prays, but the storm continues and the wind hears him not, and he that creates the wind suspends his acting. God hath not said that the husband-man may pray away Winter, while the season be over; nor that the Traveller, when the Sun is set and darkness come, should pray away the night, while the hours be over; So here God hath fixed a time for a winter season of heaviness and trying deadness. The Lord's mind is to pray for the right melting of the metal, and not for the quenching and removing of the fire, he must do his work; its wisdom to know who orders our prayers, and to pray for something about his withdrawing, and not for the removal of the withdrawing it self; Paul three times prays 2 Cor. 12. for the removal of the Messenger of Satan: But prayer stirs not right then in all points; he should have prayed for sufficiency of grace: our gracious Lord laying aside the dross of our prayer, hears us not in granting what we suit, but what we ought to suit in prayer, and in granting what we suit not formally, but what the Spirit suits internally in us; The man in a Fever cries for a Drink, the Physician forbids to give him drink, and yet gives to quench the thirst some other thing then drink; so the sick mans suit is profitably heard. Yet my meaning is not, that the Lord cannot, or will not at all take off an arrestment of desertion, at the praying of his children, the Lord cannot repeal that,