A94156:422
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.
2. Thy prayers must be hearty: Thy tongue and heart must keep time and tune; Give ear to my prayer that goeth not out of feigned lips, Psal. 17.1. If in prayer thou art as Ephraim, a silly Dove without an heart, and givest God only the calves of thy lips, they will be as unacceptable as Jeroboam's Calves at Dan and Bethel, which provoked the Lord to anger. The Jews have this Sentence written in their Synagogues, where they meet to pray, A prayer without the heart, is like a body without a soul. What a deformed, loathsome spectacle, is a body without a soul? truly so is thy prayer without thy heart. God respecteth the heart in prayer above any thing; men mind the expressions most, but God mindeth the affections most: Let us draw night to God with a true heart; let us lift up our hearts with our hands unto God in the Heavens, Heb. 10.22. Lam. 3.41. God looketh not so much to the Elegance of thy prayers, how neat they are, nor to the Geometry of thy prayers, how long they are, but to the sincerity of thy prayers, how hearty they are. 1Socrates made more account of poor Aeschines, for giving himself to him, then of Alcibiades, and other rich Scholars, who gave him large presents: God esteemeth infinitely more of an heart-sprung (though broken) prayer, then of dissembling petitions, clothed with, and dressed up in the neatest and most gaudy expressions.
2. Thy prayers must be hearty: Thy tongue and heart must keep time and tune; Give ear to my prayer that goeth not out of feigned lips, Psal. 17.1. If in prayer thou art as Ephraim, a silly Dove without an heart, and givest God onely the calves of thy lips, they will be as unacceptable as Jeroboams Calves at Dan and Bethel, which provoked the Lord to anger. The Jews have this Sentence written in their Synagogues, where they meet to pray, A prayer without the heart, is like a body without a soul. What a deformed, loathsome spectacle, is a body without a soul? truly so is thy prayer without thy heart. God respecteth the heart in prayer above any thing; men minde the expressions most, but God mindeth the affections most: Let us draw night to God with a true heart; let us lift up our hearts with our hands unto God in the Heavens,