solve. Before you sleep another night, resolve. Before you stir from the place, resolve. Before satan hath time to take you off, resolve. You will never turn indeed till you do resolve; and that with a firm, unchangeable resolution. So much for the Directions.

And now I have done my part in this work, that you may Turn at the call of God and Live. What will become of it, I cannot tell. I have cast the seed at God's command; but it is not in my power to give the increase. I can go no farther with my message, I cannot bring it to your hearts, nor make it work: I cannot do your parts for you to entertain it, and consider of it; nor can I do God's part, by opening your heart, to cause you to entertain it; nor can I shew you heaven or hell to your eyesight, nor give you new and tender hearts. If I knew what more to do for your conversion, I hope I should do it.

But O thou that art the gracious Father of Spirits, thou hast sworn thou delightest not in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn and live, deny not thy blessing to these persuasions and directions, and suffer not thine enemies to triumph in thy sight; and the great deceiver of souls to prevail over thy Son, thy Spirit, and thy Word. O pity poor unconverted sinners, that have no hearts to pity or help themselves: command the blind to see, and the deaf to hear, and the dead to live, and let not sin and death be able to resist thee. Awaken the secure: resolve the unresolved: confirm the wavering: and let the eyes of sinners, that read these lines, be next employed in weeping over their sins; and bring them to themselves, and to thy Son, before their sins have brought them to perdition. If thou say but the word, these poor endeavours shall prosper, to the winning many a soul to their everlasting joy, and thine everlasting glory. Amen.

Five Prayers: one for Families: one for a Penitent Sinner: one for the Lord's day: one for Children and Servants: one in the method of the Lord's Prayer, being an Exposition of it: for the use of those only who need such helps,

Two reasons moved me to annex these prayers; 1. I observe that abundance of people, who have some good desires,

do forbear, through disability, to worship God in their families, who I hope would do it, if they had some helps. And though there be many such extant, yet few of these poor families have the books, and I can give them my own at a little cheaper rate, than I can buy others to give them.

2. Some that seem to have been brought to true repentance and newness of life, by God's blessing, on the reading of my books, have earnestly entreated me to write them a form of prayer for their families, because long disuse hath left them unable to pray before others.

For the service of God, and the good of men, I am contented to bear the censures of those who account all forms of book-prayers to be sin; for in an age when pride (the father), and ignorance (the mother), hath bred superstition (the daughter), and taught men to think that God as fondly valueth their several modes of speaking to him, as they do themselves, and thinketh as contemptuously of the contrary as they, the question whether form or no form, book or no book, hath been resolved unto such tragical and direful effects, that I were too tender, if a censure should discourage

me.

A Prayer for Families, Morning and Evening.

Almighty, all-seeing, and most gracious God, the world and all therein, is made, maintained and ordered by thee: thou art everywhere present, being more than the soul of all the world. Though thou art revealed in thy glory to those only that are in heaven, thy grace is still at work on earth to prepare men for that glory: thou madest us not as the beasts that perish, but with reasonable, immortal souls, to know, and seek, and serve thee here, and then to live with all the blessed in the everlasting sight of thy heavenly glory, and the pleasures of thy perfect love, and praise. But we are ashamed to think how foolishly and sinfully we have forgotten and neglected our God and our souls, and our hopes of a blessed immortality, and have overmuch minded the things of this visible, transitory world, and the prosperity and pleasure of this corruptible flesh, which we know must turn to rottenness and dust. Thou gavest us a law which was just and good, to guide us in the only way to life, and

when by sin we had undone ourselves, thou gavest us a Saviour, even thy Eternal Word made man, who by his holy life and bitter sufferings reconciled us to thee, and both purchased salvation for us, and revealed it to us, better than an angel from heaven could have done, if thou hadst sent him to us sinners on such a message: but alas, how light have we set by our Redeemer! and by all that love which thou hast manifested by him, and how little have we studied and understood, and less obeyed that covenant of grace which thou hast inade by him to lost mankind!

But O God, be merciful to us vile and miserable sinners; forgive the sins of our natural depravity and the follies of our youth, and all the ignorance, negligence, omissions and commissions of our lives: and give us true repentance for them, or else we know that thou wilt not forgive them. Our life is but as a shadow that passeth away, and it is but as a moment till we leave this world, and appear before thee to give up our account, and to speed for ever as here we have prepared. Should we die before thou hast turned our hearts from this sinful flesh and world to thee by true faith and repentance, we shall be lost for evermore. O woe to us that ever we were born, if thou forgive not our sins, and make us not holy before this short, uncertain life be at an end: had we all the riches and pleasures of this world, they would shortly leave us in the greater sorrows. We know that all

our life is but the time which thy mercy allotteth us to prepare for death; therefore we should not put off our repentance and preparation to a sick bed: but now Lord, as if it were our last and dying words, we earnestly beg thy pardoning and sanctifying grace, through the merits and intercession of our Redeemer: O thou that hast pitied and saved so many millions of miserable sinners, pity and save us also, that we may glorify thy grace for ever; surely thou delightest not in the death of sinners, but rather that they return and live: hadst thou been unwilling to shew mercy, thou wouldst not have ransomed us at so precious a price, and still entreat us to be reconciled unto thee, we have no cause to distrust thy truth or goodness, but we are afraid lest unbelief, and pride, and hypocrisy, and a worldly, fleshly mind, should be our ruin. O save us from satan, and this tempting world, but especially from ourselves: teach us to

deny all ungodliness and fleshly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this world. Let it be our chiefest daily work to please thee, and to lay up a treasure in heaven, and to make sure of a blessed life with Christ, and quietly to trust thee with soul and body. Make us faithful in our callings, and our duties to one another, and to all men, to our superiors, equals and inferiors: bless the king, and all in authority, that we may live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty: give wise, holy, and peaceable pastors to all the churches of Christ, and holy and peaceable minds to the people: convert the heathen and infidel nations of the world; and cause us, and all thy people to seek first the hallowing of thy name, the coming of thy kingdom, the doing of thy will on earth as it is done in heaven: give us our daily bread, even all things necessary to life and godliness, and let us be therewith content. Forgive us our daily sins, and let thy love and mercy constrain us to love thee above all; and for thy sake to love our neighbours as ourselves, and in all our dealings, to do justly and mercifully, as we would have others do by us. Keep us from hurtful temptations, from sin, and from thy judgments, and from the malice of our spiritual and corporal enemies; and let our thoughts, affections, passions, words, and actions, be governed by thy word and Spirit to thy glory: make all our religion and obedience pleasant to us; and let our souls be so delighted in the praises of thy kingdom, thy power, and thy glory, that it may secure and sweeten our labour by day, and our rest by night, and keep us in a longing and joyful hope of the heavenly glory: and let the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God our Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with us now and for ever. Amen.

A Confession and Prayer for a Penitent Sinner.

O most great, most wise and gracious God, though thou hatest all the workers of iniquity, and canst not be reconciled unto sin; yet through the mediation of thy blessed Son, with pity behold this miserable sinner who casteth himself down at the footstool of thy grace: had I lived to those high and holy ends, for which I was created and redeemed,

I might now have come to thee in the boldness and confidence of a child, in assurance of thy love and favour; but I have played the fool and the rebel against thee! I have wilfully forgotten the God that made me, and the Saviour that redeemed me, and the endless glory which thou didst set before me: I forgot the business which I was sent for into the world; and have lived as if I had been made for nothing, but to pass a few days in fleshly pleasure, and pamper a carcase for the worms: I wilfully forgot what it is to be a man, who had reason given him to rule his flesh, and to know his God, and to foresee his death, and the state of immortality and I made my reason a servant to my senses, and lived too like the beasts that perish, O the precious time which I have lost, which all the world cannot call back! O the calls of grace, which I have neglected! O the calling of God, which I have resisted! The wonderful love which I unthankfully rejected! And the manifold mercies which I have abused, and turned into wantonness and sin! How deep is the guilt which I have contracted! And how great are the comforts which I have lost! I might have lived all this while in the love of thee my gracious God; and in the delight of thy holy word and ways! In the daily sweet foresight of heaven, and in the joy of the Holy Ghost, if I would have been ruled by thy righteous laws: but I have hearkened to the flesh, and to this wicked and deceitful world, and have preferred a short and sinful life before thy love and endless glory.

Alas, what have I been doing since I came into the world! Folly and sin have taken up my time. I am ashamed to look back upon the years that I have spent; and to think of the temptations that I have yielded to. Alas, what trifles have enticed me from my God! How little have I had for the holy pleasures which I have lost! Like Esau, I have profanely sold my birthright for one morsel, to please my fancy, my appetite, and my lust; I have set light by all the joys of heaven; I have unkindly despised the goodness of my Maker; I have slighted the love and grace of my Redeemer; I have resisted thy Holy Spirit, silenced my own conscience, and grieved thy ministers, and my own faithful friends, and have brought myself into this woeful case,