A92145:96
A sermon preached before the Right Honourable House of Lords, in the Abbey Church…A sermon preached before the Right Honorable House of Lords, in the Abbey Church…
A sermon preached before the Right Honourable House of Lords, in the Abbey Church at Westminster, Wednesday the 25. day of June, 1645. Being the day appointed for a solemn and public humiliation. / By Samuel Rutherfurd Professor of Divinity at St. Andrews.A sermon preached before the Right Honorable House of Lords, in the Abbey Church at Westminster, Wednesday the 25. day of Iune, 1645. Being the day appointed for a solemne and publique humiliation. / By Samuel Rutherfurd Professor of Divinitie at St. Andrews.
London: printed by R.C. for Andrew Crook, 1645
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Prayer awaketh a seeming sleeping God, and puts him to it, we cannot take a better course in trouble then to run to Christ by prayer, Psal. 130. 1. Out of the deeps have I cried unto thee, Psal. 18. 6. In my distress I called upon the Lord: that is a sweet story, Psal. 34. 6. This poor man cried unto the Lord, and the Lord heard and saved him out of all his troubles. 1David used this weapon of prayer against his own son Absalom, Psal. 3. Faith ⟨p. 38⟩is not partial, prayer is not selfie, David prayed and prophesied his sons destruction. 7. Arise O Lord, save me; and he answers himself, Thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly: A praying Army must be a victorious Army. If this storm had not risen they should not have prayed: alas! we put Christ often in the rear; or we keep Christ to a reserve or a recruit; when we have tried Physicians for twelve years, and spent all, then we come to Christ, when we can do no better. There is much deceit in bed-prayers, for the principium motus, the first spring is extrinsical, it comes from the rod on us; it is true, natural consciences deadened and benumbed with rubbing do gather warm blood, and are stirred up to devotion and fasting, and praying in the spirit, and the spirit of prayer may be wakened by judgement,2 but judgement is not the cause of praying in the godly, but the occasion. He that raiseth up a sleeping man is not the cause of his motion and walking, the cause was in him, when he was fast asleep, his life and the Locomotive power is the cause of walking, and this is not put in the sleeping man by him who raiseth him: when the hypocrite and ungodly man fasteth and prayeth, the hand of an angry God is both occasion and cause of his praying; we would try what moveth us to fasting and praying.
Prayer awaketh a seeming sleeping God, and puts him to it, wee cannot take a better course in trouble then to runne to Christ by prayer,