_Direct._ IV. Be less solicitous about words in secret than with others, and lay out your care about the heart; for that is it that God most esteemeth in your prayers. _Direct._ V. Do not through carnal unwillingness grow into a neglect of secret prayer, when you have time; nor yet do you superstitiously tie yourselves to just so long time, whether you are fit, or at leisure from greater duties, or not. But be the longer when you are most fit and vacant, and the shorter when you are not. To give way to every carnal backwardness, is the sin on one side; and to resolve to spend so long time, when you do but tire yourselves, and sleep, or business, or distemper maketh it a lifeless thing, is a sin on the other side. Avoid them both. _Direct._ VI. A melancholy person who is unfit for much solitariness and heart-searchings, must be much shorter, if not also seldomer in secret prayers, than other christians that are capable of bearing it: and they must, instead of that which they cannot do, be the more in that which they can do; as in joining with others, and in shorter ejaculations, besides other duties; but not abating their piety in the main upon any pretence of curing melancholy. [53] The Stoics say, Orabit sapiens ac vota faciet bona à diis postulans. Laert. in Zenone. So that when Seneca saith, Cur Deos precibus fatigatis, &c. he only intendeth to reprove the slothful, that think to have all done by prayer alone, while they are idle and neglect the means. [54] Plerumque hoc negotium plus genscibus quam sermonibus agitur. August. Epist. 121. [55] Bias navigabat aliquando cum impiis, et quum navis tempestate, quateretur, illique Deos invocarent; silete, inquit, ne vos hic illi navigare sentiant. Laert. p. 55. [56] Of the method of the Lord's Prayer, see Ramus de Relig. Christ. lib. iii. cap. 3. et Ludolphus de Vita Christi, part i. cap. 37. et Perkins in Orat. Dom. and Dr. Boys on the Liturgy, p. 5-7. [57] Selden in Eutychii Alexandr. Orig. p. 42, 43, showeth that before Ezra the Jews prayed without forms, and that Ezra and the elders with him, composed them a form which had eighteen benedictions and petitions, that is, the three first and the three last for the glorifying God, and the rest intermediate for personal and public benefits. And, pag. 48, that they might omit none of these, but might add others. [58] See Selden ubi supra, proving that the Jews had a form of prayer since Ezra's time; therefore it was in Christ's time. Yet he and his apostles joined with them, and never contradicted or blamed them for forms. [59] Three or four of these cases as to church prayers are largelier answered afterward, part iii. Socrates alius Cous deorum precationes, invocationesque conscripsit. Laert. in Socrate. [60] Psal. xlii. 9; xxii. 1; John ii. 14; Jer. xxxi. 9; Luke xv. 12, 17, 19; Mal. ii. 10. [61] Acts xv. 17; xvii. 27; viii. 22; Isa. lv. 6; Psal. xiv. 4. [62] Heb. xi. 6; Rom. x. 14.