A94156:414
The Christian-man's calling: or, A treatise of making religion ones business. Wherein the nature…
The Christian-man's calling: or, A treatise of making religion ones business. Wherein the nature and necessity of it is discovered. : As also the Christian directed how he may perform it in [brace] religious duties, natural actions, his particular vocation, his family directions, and his own recreations. / By George Swinnock ...
London: printed for T.P., 1662
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.
Faith in Christ is essential to prayer, as I showed in religious duties in general (and therefore omit it here:) now an unbeliever goeth to God without the blessed Saviour, and therefore may well come away without an answer. The Israelites in their prayers were still to mind the Temple, either to pray in it, or towards it; which Temple was a type of Christ, the alone Altar upon which our prayers must be offered, if ever they be accepted, 2 Chron. 7.38. Dan. 6.10. Kings will not gratify or pardon Traitors, whilst they continue in their Treasonable designs. A sinner even while he is wooing God for mercy, is warring against God; when his voice is the voice of Jacob, his hands are the hands of Esau, and therefore with what face can be expect favour; I will saith Paul, that men lift up holy hands, 1 Tim. 2.8. meaning in prayer. Where the hands are unholy and wicked the heart is worse, and God cannot abide a stinking breath. Some write of Diacletes, that it hath many excellent virtues in it, but if it be put into the mouth of a man without life, it loseth all. Prayer, (as I showed before) hath many rare and incomparable qualities, but being in the mouth of one that is dead in sins and trespasses, it loseth them all. When a vicious man propounded in the Roman Senate, a most excellent Law, they rejected the motion because it was made by a bad mouth. When ⟨p. 167⟩the face is comely, the person beautiful through Christ, then only the voice will be pleasant, Cant. 2. Eccles. 14.
Faith in Christ is essential to prayer, as I shewed in religious duties in general (and therefore omit it here:) now an unbeleiver goeth to God without the blessed Saviour, and therefore may well come away without an answer. The Israelites in their prayers were still to mind the Temple, either to pray in it, or towards it; which Temple was a type of Christ, the alone Altar upon which our prayers must be offered, if ever they be accepted, 2 Chron. 7.38. Dan. 6.10. Kings will not gratifie or pardon Traytors, whilst they continue in their Treasonable designes. A sinner even while he is wooing God for mercy, is warring against God; when his voice is the voice of Jacob, his hands are the hands of Esau, and therefore with what face can be expect favour; I will saith Paul, that men lift up holy hands,