The Fourth Rule

The Fourth Rule.

Let not your family prayers be your only prayers. Understand, that secret prayers, as well as private prayers, are to be performed by us all. For this, the word of our Lord is very positive, in Matthew 6:6: When you pray, enter into your closet, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father which is in secret. It is a great fondness and folly in any of us, if private prayer cause us to lay aside secret prayer. No, there is closet prayer as well as parlour prayer which we ought to labor in. I would say, as our Lord in another case, One you ought to do; and not leave the other undone. We have special transgressions to be confessed in our prayers; these are [illegible] to be confessed. To divulge a secret [illegible] is to add a further sin. Our secret sins do call for our secret prayers. We have special temptations to be bewailed in our prayers; and these [illegible] secretly to be bewailed. Our desires are sometimes to be too secret for our neighbors. Our secret griefs and our secret fears call for our secret prayers. And as one of the ancients elegantly expresses it, invisible prayers are to be often made to an invisible God. Secret prayer is one good sign of a gracious heart. Let the Lord often see you like Nathanael at secret prayer under the [illegible], and He will say, Behold an Israelite indeed! Would you get internal blessings? then pray in secret. Solomon got his wisdom, his virtue, by secret prayer. Peter by secret prayer in [illegible] was carried with trances and raptures into the other world. Would you get external blessings? Then pray in secret. Hannah with secret prayer asked one son, and had six. Jacob had all his house preserved by secret prayer. Yes, would you be general blessings? Pray then in secret. Moses by secret prayer diverted wrath and plagues from all the congregation. That infamous apostate Julian was killed by the secret prayer of a good man, at that hour very far distant from him. What shall I say? No supersedeas, no diversion should ever be given to your secret prayers.

Moreover, besides your prayers with all the family, you may do well sometimes to retire to prayers with this or that particular person in it. Some do so translate that passage in Genesis 25:21: Isaac entreated the Lord with his wife. It were but a discreet and a decent practice, for married persons to do likewise. Thus, holy parents, have often taken their children, one by one alone; and there prayed and wept, and poured out their souls, over the poor lambs in secret places before the Lord. Thus are we to do, thus to pray.