that compassionate Redeemer, may he smite his breast, and say, with the penitent publican, "God "be merciful to me a sinner!" Amen.

A prayer with one in sickness, especially for patience

under it.

O THOU infinitely great and glorious God, thou killest, and makest alive; thou woundest, and thy hands make whole; thou bringest down to the grave, and bringest back again; thou dost according to thy will in the armies of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay thine hand, or say unto thee, What dost thou?

Yet righteous art thou in all thy ways, and holy in all thy works. Even when thou afflictest and causest trouble and heaviness to fall upon us, it is that we may learn righteousness from thy judgments, and receive profit from thy correction. Wherefore, though thou hast now visited this our brother with sickness, and art calling him to humiliation for his sins, may he still speak good of thy name, love, and bless thee.

We pray, that at this season he may remember all the past mercies, with which thou hast been pleased to bless him. God forbid that his present illness should make him unmindful of the constant benefits he has enjoyed. How long has he laid down and risen up, come in and gone out, in health, strength, and peace? For these multiplied favours, O Lord, blessed be thy good and holy name; since the smallest of thy benefits is more than any of us deserve, and the sharpest affliction less. For to us, on account of our transgressions, is most justly due indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish.

Wherefore then should living men complain, men and transgressors too, for the punishment of their sins? Shall we receive so much good at the

hand of the Lord, and shall we not receive evil also? patiently receive it? This temper, O Lord, is our bounden duty; O form it in us!

And as, in great compassion to us, thou hast opened a way of relief for us under every trouble, (by directing, commanding, and encouraging us in all our afflictions to pour out our complaints unto thee, and to tell thee of all we fear and feel,) we make our supplication at this time to thee the Father of mercies. Be not thou, O Lord, far from us, when trouble is so near. In an entire submission to thy most wise and holy will, we now earnestly pray for this our sick brother: O look upon him in his low estate; suffer not, we beseech thee, his disorder to proceed, and let not his sickness be unto death, but for the manifestation of thy grace towards us all, and may he be supported by the promises of the Gospel, as declared by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

[If the sick person be too weak to attend to the whole of this prayer, it may be divided here; and after proper intervals, the minister (or any other) may proceed, as follows.]

Great God, thou knowest, and thou only canst know, the frame of this our sick brother. Lay on him no more than thou wilt enable him to bear with patience. And, O thou great Physician, (without whom all others are of no value,) do thou direct to the most proper medicines, and bless the art of healing to the relief of his present disease; and in the time thou seest most fit, restore him to health and strength again, that he may have a longer day of grace and salvation, prove more useful than he has hitherto been, and do good in his generation.

In the mean while, however thou shalt dispose of him, sanctify to him this affliction; work in him

deep humiliation for his sins; bless him with repentance unto life; enable him by faith to behold the Lamb of God, and to trust in the fountain opened in his blood for the remission of sins, that, being justified by faith, he may have peace with God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Make all his bed in his sickness, and "let patience have its "perfect work in him." (James i. 4.) It is, "if "need be, that he is in heaviness;" (1 Pet. i. 6.) and surely God knows what that need is, and how peculiar this affliction is to answer the present need, and to do him that peculiar good, which thou his heavenly Father art graciously intending him by it. Raise him up to praise thy name, to pay in thy house those vows he makes in trouble, and to walk in newness of life.

But if thou dost not see fit to spare this our afAlicted brother, whom we are now remembering before thee, O prepare him and all his relations for the awful stroke. With respect to himself, if the time of his departure draw nigh, let his heart be comforted by thy promises in Christ, and taste that thou art gracious unto him. May his soul be safe and happy at the hour of death; and in the great day of the Lord Jesus Christ may he be found among those who died in him.

And help us, who are now in health, to improve this loud and solemn call to prepare for our sickness and decease. Let us not abuse our bodily strength to encourage ourselves in sinful security and impenitence. Give us grace always to be ready, by performing the will of our Lord, that whensoever he shall come, we may be found of him in peace, and enter into his joy: that whenever our health is turned into sickness, and our strength into weakness, and our ease into sharp pain, we may be patient under it, and not cast down at the seizure, or perplexed, but feel in our souls those

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supports and consolations, which the world cannot give, nor death itself take away.

Hear us, O Lord our God, hear us in these our humble requests; forgive us our sins; and accept our persons and our services, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

A prayer with a backslider, one who has left off prayer, public worship, and other religious duties.

See p. 24.

O LORD, we humbly implore the restoration of this our sick brother to thy favour, who acknowledges, that to him belongeth confusion of face, because he has sinned against thee, the great and dreadful God, and has been guilty of the ungrateful abominable sin of backsliding. He confesses the justice and goodness of thy laws, and has chosen thy service, as the most perfect freedom; he knows, that" without holiness none shall ever see "thee; and that tribulation and anguish, indigna"tion and wrath, is the portion of all who do "evil." And yet, O Lord, foolish and miserable sinner that he is, he has yielded again to temptation, departed from thy ways and from holiness, for the sake of a present satisfaction, and a small and momentary pleasure or gain. And by this departure from thee and religious duties, he has justly incurred thy displeasure, abused thy grace and goodness to him, and hazarded the loss of thy eternal favour," which is better than life itself."

But, O Lord God, to whom belongeth mercy and forgiveness, we most earnestly beseech thee to have mercy on him. Hear us, O Lord, hear us, and forgive his offences. His conscience reproaches him, and his heart is troubled within him. He feels himself deprived by this backsliding of that hope and confidence in thee through Jesus Christ,

which he had attained on the Gospel terms of faith, repentance, and renewed obedience; and he now finds himself liable to thy wrath, and exposed to thy judgments, both temporal and eternal.

Thou art now correcting him by this sickness; but let it be with mercy, lest thou bring him to nothing. We know, that the "wages of sin is "death;" but we humbly beseech thee, merciful God, (who art slow to anger, and of great pity, and wouldest have none to perish, but all to come to repentance,) to spare him, and grant him further time for repentance, that he may finish the work thou hast given him to do, and which he now purposes and resolves by the aid of thy grace to make the great business of his future life.

Be pleased, O Lord, for the sake of thy wellbeloved Son, and of thine own goodness, to pardon this heinous offence of backsliding, and give him grace to bring forth the fruits of repentance in newness of life; and so to govern himself in the whole of his conduct for the future by that golden rule, which our Lord has taught us," to do unto "others as we would that they should do unto us." Matt. vii. 12.

Blessed be thy goodness, that there are hopes and assurances for returning sinners in and through Christ, who was pleased to shed his blood, as a meritorious sacrifice, expiation, and atonement for the sins of the world.

O let the blood of Christ (who "through the "eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God) 66 purge his conscience from dead works, to serve "thee, the living God," and purify his soul from all sin and uncleanness, that he may find the power of Christ's death in his dying to sin, and rising to righteousness, in having the old man cified with him, (Rom. vi. 6.) that the body of sin may be destroyed, that henceforth he may not serve sin, but that he may live as becomes the Gos

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