pray to him under that notion: but especially consider him in the glorious and precious dimensions of his love," that we may comprehend with all saints what is the height, and length, and breadth, and depth, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge."

7. Let holy admiration be the issue of our thoughts of God, as in David, "Whither shall I go from thy spirit?" or glorious Deity; he looks at it as wonderfully filling all places: and he cannot express the thoughts of God towards him. And likewise let humility and reverence attend the same. So it was in Habakkuk's prayer, wherein he is carried out to a glorious conceiving of God, his heart the while trembling. The incomprehensibleness of God, and his unsearchable excellency, must make men therefore fear him. Let our shallowness in conceiving of God drive us more out of ourselves, and abase us much that we know so little of him, and inflame us with desire after that time when we shall in a glorious manner conceive of him: we understand but as children, but in part, in comparison of that time when we shall know the Lord as we are known by him, according to the measure of our capacity.

CHAPTER XI.

HOW AND IN WHAT ORDER WE ARE TO DIRECT OUR PRAYERS TO THE PERSONS OF THE BLESSED TRINITY.

THE last case briefly to be spoken unto is, how and in what order we are to direct our prayers to the persons of the blessed Trinity? and whether we may not single out any one of the persons, to whom we may direct more immediately such or such a

prayer.

This case has some more difficulty in it than the former, yet I will endeavor to lay down the answer thereunto, as briefly as I can, in these following conclusions.

1. That in all parts of divine worship, and so in this of prayer, the Trinity in unity, and unity in Trinity is to be worshipped, and therefore we are not so to fix our thoughts on God as one; but rather to have this meditation and thought attending, that this one God in essence is in personal proprieties three subsistences, really distinct: nor yet are we so to let our thoughts expatiate and feed themselves in musings upon the blessed persons as distinct in personal proprieties, but still with an attending apprehension of them as one in essence, one Jehovah, one God, and no more. He to whom the Scripture applies the property of begetting, is Jehovah, God the Father, and not the Son, or the Holy Ghost, to whom that property in reference to the eternal be

gotten of God is never ascribed: he to whom the Scripture gives the property of being the only begotten Son of God, he is Jehovah, God the Son, and no other person; the Scripture ascribing that propriety of communication of the divine being, in a way of begetting, to none other; and so he to whom the Scripture applies that propriety of proceeding, he and only he is God the Holy Ghost: the Scripture applying to none other of the persons that propriety of communication of the divine being in a way of proceeding, or being as it were breathed forth from the Father; and therefore is called his Spirit, and from the Son; therefore is called the Son's Spirit, yet the holy Scripture never mentions but one Jehovah, or any more than one God, even when it mentions him in personal distinctions three, yet essentially but one; and not otherwise surely are we to worship him, or to conceive of him in our worship. Let the beams of the glorious Unity of the Deity lead us in worshipping or praying unto God, to the consideration of the blessed Trinity; and let the mediation of the Trinity of the persons in our prayers lead us forthwith to this glorious Unity in the Deity.

2. In our prayers fix not our minds so upon one of the glorious persons, as not thereby to be led to the contemplation of the other; or direct any prayer so to one person in the blessed Trinity, as not to exclude the other: the Father being in the Son, and the Son in the Father, and the Holy Ghost in them both we cannot look at one, and behold one by a spiritual eye, but we must eye the other, and be led to the other; as our Saviour reasons, to prove that if they had seen him, they must see his Father also.

yea, they must Spirit and more

They who look at Christ as their mediator, must eye the Father, as giving him so to be; yea, and at the Holy Ghost as one who with the blessed Father consented to his designment to that office, as the Lord Christ says, Isa. 48: 16, "and now the Lord God and his Spirit hath sent me : eye the Holy Ghost as that blessed immediate efficient, by whose power and grace they thus come to the Lord, and are enabled to pray to him, or look to him. We cannot look aright to the blessed Father, but we must look to him as it were through the blessed Son; neither can we look upon the Son but by the Spirit. As he said in 1 Corinthians 12: 3, so may I in this: If we worship God as our Father, with whom we have union and communion, we believe him to be so to us in his Son, and that this union and communion is effected by the Holy Ghost: so that if we worship God aright, we worship each person in the Trinity in any one person, as united by the cause of our Sonship, and union with God the Father, as first in order regenerating and adopting of us; the Son as one in and by whom we are redeemed and reconciled, and for whose sake we are accepted with God, and expect to be heard; the Holy Ghost as the immediate efficient of and with the blessed Father and Son, of our calling and adoption, etc., and therefore is he called the spirit of Sonship, as the Greek word signifies, and he by whom more immediately we are enabled to pray to the Father in the name of his blessed Son. True, a Christian may not in every particular petition or confession, particularly and distinctly consider of the other two persons in that

one person, to whom more properly he directs his prayer; but yet he must in the general bent of his mind and spirit do it and intend it.

3. That in order we are first to direct our prayers to the blessed Father; yet not as first or chief in honor and dignity above the other two (for even the Son who though as man and as mediator is inferior to the Father, yet as God, as the Son of God he is equal with him, and the Son is to be honored, as equal with the same honor as the Father,) but as first in order of subsisting; according as the Scripture in two places, where the order of the blessed persons is set down, the Father is first set down in order of witnessing, and in invocation and worship, as first in order to be mentioned and invocated: and as he is the first in order, who was displeased, and to whom we are first in order reconciled in Christ; and who is first in order pleased on him, yea, who first in order among the persons laid the foundation of our redemption; and therefore to him is ascribed the work of giving his Son, and of sanctifying or anointing and appointing the Lord Christ to his office of mediator, (albeit as was said, the Holy Ghost be not excluded, but included, as acting in the blessed work,) so are we in that order to worship him, and to breathe after nearest fellowship with him, through Christ, by the help of his blessed Spirit.

4. In singling out any one person in the blessed Trinity, we are to pitch most usually upon the Father, as he to whom we direct our prayers through the mediation of Christ, and by the help of the Holy Ghost: that is the rule and method prescribed by Christ, to ask the Father in his name, and has been