Sermon 6

In her prayer, as it is expressed by Matthew, we have: 1. The manner of it — she cried. 2. The compellation or party to whom she prays, O Lord, you son of David. 3. The petition: Have mercy on me. 4. The reason: For my daughter is vexed with a devil.

She cried: the poor woman prayed (as we say) with good will, with a bent affection. Why is crying used in praying? Had it not been more modest to speak to this soul-redeeming Savior, who hears sometimes before we pray, than to cry out and shout? For the disciples do afterward complain that she cries so after them: was Christ so difficult to be entreated? The reasons for crying are: 1. Want cannot blush; the pinching necessity of the saints is not tied to the law of modesty: hunger cannot be ashamed (Psalm 55:2). I mourn in my complaint, and make a noise, says David, and Hezekiah (Isaiah 38:14): Like a crane, or a swallow, so did I chatter; I did mourn as a dove (Job 30:28). I went mourning without the sun; I stood up and cried in the congregation. 2. Though God hears prayer only as prayer offered in Christ, not because it is very fervent; yet fervor is a heavenly ingredient in prayer; an arrow drawn with full strength has a speedier issue; therefore the prayers of the saints are expressed by crying in Scripture (Psalm 22:2). O my God, I cry by day, and you hear not (Psalm 55:17). At noon will I pray, and cry aloud (Psalm 18:6). In my distress I cried to the Lord (Psalm 88:13). To you have I cried, O Lord (Psalm 130:1). Out of the depths have I cried (Jonah 2:2). Out of the belly of hell, I cried (Psalm 28:1). To you will I cry, O Lord, my rock: indeed it goes to somewhat more than crying (Job 19:7). I cry out of wrong, but am not heard (Lamentations 3:8). Also when I cry and shout, he shuts out my prayers: he who may teach us all to pray, sweet Jesus (Hebrews 5:7). In the days of his flesh he offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears; he prayed with war shouts. 3. And these prayers are so powerful that God answers them (Psalm 34:6). This poor man cried, and the Lord heard and saved him from all his fears (Psalm 18:6). My cry came before him, even to his ears: the cry adds wings to the prayer, as a speedy messenger sent to court upon life and death (Psalm 22:5). Our fathers cried to you, and were delivered (Psalm 34:17). The righteous cry and the Lord hears. We all know the parable of the poor widow, and the unrighteous judge; if the oppressed be not delivered, Christ and his Father, and heaven, shall hear of it. Hence, 4. Importunity in praying: I will not let you go (says Jacob to his Lord) till you bless me. So James calls it (chapter 5, verse 16): [reconstructed: prayer possessed with a spirit] — but a good spirit — prayer steeled with fervor of spirit, so fervent that David is like the messenger who lays by three horses as breathless: his heart, his throat, his eyes (Psalm 69:3). I am weary of my crying, my throat is dried, my eyes fail, while I wait for my God. 5. There is violence offered to God in fervent prayer (Exodus 32:10). Moses is answered when he is wrestling with God by prayer for the people: Now therefore let me alone, that my anger may wax hot against them. Let me alone is a word of putting violent hands on any: there are bones and sinews in such prayers; by them the King is held in his galleries (Song of Songs 7:5).

Objection: But if prayers must be fervent, even to vocal crying and shouting, then I cannot pray, who am often so confounded that I cannot speak one word. Answer: So was the servant of God, in a spiritual kind of praying, in uttering Psalm 77, when he says (verse 4): You hold my eyes waking, I am so troubled that I cannot speak; indeed groaning goes for praying to God (Psalm 102:20). The Lord looked down from heaven, to hear the groaning of the prisoner (Romans 8:26). The Spirit intercedes for us [reconstructed: with sighs that cannot be spoken]. Faith does sigh prayers to heaven; Christ receives sighs in his censer for prayer: words are but the body, the garment, the outside of prayer; sighs are nearer the heart-work; a dumb beggar gets an alms at Christ's gates, even by making signs, when his tongue cannot plead for him, and the rather because he is dumb.

Objection 2: I have not so much as a voice to utter to God; and Christ says (Song of Songs 2:14): Cause me to hear your voice. Answer: Indeed, but some other thing has a voice besides the tongue (Psalm 6:8). The Lord has heard the voice of my weeping: tears have a tongue, and grammar, and language, that our Father knows. Babes have no prayers for the breast but weeping; the mother can read hunger in weeping.

Objection 3: But I am often so that I cannot weep; weeping is peculiar to a man as laughing is, and spiritual weeping is peculiar to the renewed man. Answer: Vehemence of affection does often move weeping, so that it is but spilt weeping that we can attain hence; Hezekiah can but chatter as a crane, and a swallow, and moan as a dove (Isaiah 38:14). Sorrow does not always keep the road; weeping is but the scabbard of sorrow, and there's often more sorrow where there is little or no weeping; there's most fire where there is least smoke.

Objection 4: But I have neither weeping one way or other, ordinary nor marred. Answer: Looking up to heaven, lifting up of the eyes, goes for prayer also in God's books (Psalm 5:3). My prayer will I direct to you, and I will look up (Isaiah 48:14). My eyes fail with looking upward (Psalm 69:3). Because: 1. Prayer is a pouring out of the soul to God, and faith will come out at the eye in lieu of another door; often affections break out at the window when the door is closed, as smoke vents at the window when the chimney refuses passage; Steven looked up to heaven (Acts 7:55). He sent a messenger — a greedy, pitiful, and hungry look up to Christ, out at the window, at the nearest passage — to tell a poor friend was coming up to him. 2. I would wish no more, if I were in hell, but to send a long look up to heaven; there are many love-looks of the saints lying up before the throne, in the bosom of Christ: the twinkling of your eyes in prayer is not lost to Christ; [reconstructed: like] Steven's look, David's look should not be registered so many hundred years in Christ's written testament.

Objection 5. Alas, I have no eyes to look up; the Publican, (Luke 18) looked down to the earth, and what spiritual senses have I to send after Christ. Answer. There is life going in and out at your nostrils: breathing is praying, and taken off our hand, as crying in prayer (Lamentations 3:56): "You have heard my voice, hide not your ear at my breathing, at my cry."

Objection 6. I have but a hard heart to offer to God in prayer, and what can I say then, wanting all praying disposition? Answer 1. Therefore pray, that you may pray. 2. The very aspect, and naked presence of a dead spirit, when there is a little vocal praying, it is acceptable to God; or if an overwhelmed heart refuses to come, it is best to go and tell Christ, and request him to come and fetch the heart himself. 3. Little of daylight comes before the sun, the best half of it is under ground (Romans 8:23): "We ourselves groan within ourselves;" all is here transacted in our own heart, the soul cries, O when will my Father come, and fetch his children? When shall the [reconstructed: Spouse rest] in her Husband's bosom? 4. If Christ's eye but look on a hard heart it will melt it. 5. I show here the Minimum quod sic, the smallest of prayer, in which the life and essence of prayer may breathe and live: now prayer being a pouring out of the soul to God, much of the affections of love, desire, longing, joy, faith, sorrow, fear, boldness, comes along with prayer out to God, and the heart is put in Christ's bosom, and it is neither up nor down to the essence of sincere praying; whether the soul come out in words, in groans, or in long-looks, or in sighing, or in pouring out tears to God (Job 16:20), or in breathing.

Objection 7. What shall be done with half praying, and words without sense? Answer. This is the woman of Canaan's case; Piscator observes an ellipsis of the word or particle [〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉] or (because) or (for) "Have mercy on me, my daughter is vexed," she should have said, "because my daughter is vexed:" but the mind is hasty, so that she lets slip words. So are broken prayers set down in Scripture, as prayers (Psalm 116:1): "I love, because the Lord has heard my voice:" there is nothing in the Hebrew but one word, [〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉] "I love," but he shows not whom he loves; it is a broken word, because as Ambrose says, he loved the most desirable thing: "I have love" (he would say) but its center and bed is only God. (Psalm 6:3) "My soul is sore vexed, but you, O Lord, how long?" — that is a broken speech also. (Psalm 109:4) "For my love they were my enemies," in the Hebrew it is [〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉] Vani Tephilla, at ego oratio: "But I prayer;" or, "I was all prayer," as if I in soul and body had been made of prayer. The reasons of broken prayers are often: 1. The hastiness of the affections, not the hastiness always of unbelief (Isaiah 28:16), but often of faith (2 Peter 3:10) — love and longing for Christ have eagle's wings, and love flies when words do but creep as a snail. 2. It comes from a [reconstructed: fainting] in the affections (they are broken as a too-highly-bent bow) that there is a swooning and [reconstructed: fainting] of words; every part of a supplication to a prince is not a supplication: a poor man out of fear may speak nonsense, and broken words that cannot be understood by the prince, but nonsense in prayer, when sorrow, blackness and a dark overwhelmed spirit dictates words, are well known in, and have a good sense to God. Therefore to speak morally, prayer being God's fire, as every part of fire is fire: so here every broken parcel of prayer is prayer. So the forlorn son forgot the half of his prayers; he resolved to say (Luke 15:19), "Make me as one of your hired servants;" but verse 21 he prays no such thing, and yet his father fell on his neck and kissed him. A plant is a tree in potency; an infant man, seeds of saving grace, are saving grace; prayer is often in the bowels and womb of a sigh; though it come not out, yet God hears it as a prayer (Romans 8:27): "And he that searches the hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God." (Psalm 10:17) "Lord, you have heard the desire of the humble:" desires have no sound with men, so as they come to the ear, but with God they have a sound as prayers have. Then when others cannot know what a groan means, God knows what is under the lap of a sigh, because his Spirit made the sigh: he first made the prayer as an intercessor, and then as God hears it: he is within praying, and without hearing.

Objection 8. But are all my cryings in prayer works of the Spirit? Answer. The flesh may come in and join in prayer, and some things may be said in haste, not in faith, as in that prayer (Psalm 77:9): "Has God forgotten to be gracious?" Nor is that of Jeremiah's to be put in Christ's golden censer to be presented to the Father (Jeremiah 15:18): "Will you be altogether to me as a liar, and as waters that fail?" Nor that of Job (Job 13:24): "Why do you hold me for your enemy?" Christ washes sinners in his blood, but he washes not sin: he advocates for the man that prays to have him accepted, but not for the upstarts and boilings of corruption, and the flesh that are mixed with our prayer, to have them made white: Christ rejects these things in prayer that are essentially ill, but he washes the prayer, and causes the Father to accept it. There are so many other things that are a pouring out of the soul in prayer, as groaning, sighing, looking up to heaven, breathing, weeping, that it cannot be imagined how far short printed and read prayers come of vehement praying; for you cannot put sighs, groans, tears, breathing, and such heart messengers down in a printed book, nor can paper and ink lay your heart in all its sweet affections out before God — the service-book then must be toothless and spiritless talk.