heard him in heaven: and, therefore, though the breath of Jonah could have no sweetness, yet the prayer that he breathed forth came up as incense and a sweet perfume before God as it came into the holy temple. Thus God hears the prayers of his in heaven; but the prayers of the wicked he hears only upon earth: he hears them when they speak them, but God never hears their prayers in the mediation of Christ; but the prayers of his own people he hears on earth as he is an omnipresent, and omnipotent God, and he hears them in heaven as he is a gracious and reconciled Father. If thou dost but whisper thy prayer, God will hear it that, which is but whispered on earth, rings and echoes in the Court of Heaven; and, if Christ speaks your prayers over to God, they become so loud, that God cannot stop his ears against them. The voice of prayer is not like other voices the further they reach, the weaker thy grow: no; that voice, which is so weak that it cannot be heard beyond the compass of thy closet, yet when it is put forth in prayer, fills all heaven with its sound.

For

But where is the encouragement unto prayer in all this?" If thou dost belong to God, thou mayest have great encouragement to prayer from the consideration of his Omnipresence: for, because of this, there is no prayer of a child of God but shall be heard in heaven though it be uttered in secret. consider, that though Christ, as Man, is only in heaven; yet Christ, as God, is everywhere present, and hears the prayers of all men in the world. Those, who are wicked, he regards no further; but gives them the hearing: hut, for his own, he regards their prayers, and presents what he hears from them to God in heaven. Christ makes his omniscience and omnipresence to be subservient to the work of his mediatorship. One of his offices is, to be a faithful High-Priest and an Advocate to God for us; and Christ, being such an advocate as hears all the suits and all the causes of his clients, we may be assured, that there is not one prayer, which God hears on earth from us, but he hears it also in heaven, through Christ.

It was a notable scoff of Elijah to Baal's priests, 1 Kings xviii. 27. Cry aloud; for he is a god, &c. peradventure he sleepeth and must be awaked as if he should say, "You serve an unworthy God, that cannot hear those, who pray unto him! And, indeed, how should he do so, that is not omnipresent? He is talking, or he is pursuing, or travelling; Cry! Cry aloud! and, peradventure,

if he sleepeth, that will awaken him. But, though you should cry never so loud, though your cry should reach from earth to heaven, he would be silent: such a God as yours could never hear." And, therefore, when Elijah himself came to pray, v. 36, the text doth not tell us he cried aloud, but that he came near; but, when Baal's priests roared and howled, like distracted men, and cut themselves in an idolatrous manner, Baal is not prevailed with to hear them. Now, Elijah came near; that is, he came in a calm and sedate manner, and poured out his fervent composure to God; as knowing, that that God, whom he prayed to, present everywhere.

The voice in prayer is necessary, upon a Threefold ac

count:

(1) As it is that, which God requires should be employed in his service for this is the great end why our tongues were given to us, that, by them, we might bless and serve God: James iii. 9.

(2) When, in private, it may be a help and means to raise up our own affections and devotions, then the voice is requisite; keeping it still within the bounds of decency or privacy.

(3) In our joining also with others, it is a help likewise to raise and quicken their affections.

Otherwise, were it not for these three reasons, the voice is no more necessary to make known our wants to God, than it is to make them known to our own hearts; for God is always in us and with us, and knows what we have need of before we ask it.

USE ii. As the consideration of God's omnipresence should encourage us in prayer, as knowing that God certainly hears us; so it should affect us with A HOLY AWE AND REVERENCE OF GOD, in all our prayers and duties, and in the whole course of our lives and conversations.

is

Certainly, it is an excellent meditation, to prepare our hearts to duty, and to compose them in duty, to be much pondering the Omnipresence of God: to think that I am with God: he present in the room with me, even in the congregation with me, and likewise in my closet, and in all my converse and dealings in the world. How can it be possible for that man to be frothy and vain, who keeps this thought alive in his heart? If the presence of some earthly person strike an awe in our hearts

when we come before them, how much more should the cousi deration of God's presence affect as with a holy fear! suppose an angel should fly in the midst of us, who are here present; with a rushing and dazzling glory, how would it make all our hearts beat and throb within us! it would make us soon abandon all those vain thoughts, which now we feed upon; those thoughts, which eat out the heart and life of duty. How much more should it affect us and fill us with holy fear, that that God is now and always in the midst of us, whose glory stains and sullies the beauty and. extinguishes the light of angels! Oh! that God, who is always present with us, should be worshipped and served with a holy fear, and remembered with the greatest

veneration.

Now, to imprint this the more deeply, I shall suggest two or three particulars.

1. Because God is in all things, therefore he sees and knows all things.

The omniscience of God is grounded upon his omnipresence: Jer. xxiii. 24. Can any hide himself in secret places, that I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord. Nothing in heaven or earth can be hid or concealed from God's eye: Heb. iv. 13. All things are naked and opened before the Lord. There is no corner so retired, so shady, so dark, no gulf so deep, that can hide any thing from the piercing discovery of his eye. He knows our thoughts, those nimble and those spiritual things, which are so quick in their flight that they cannot be seized upon by any creature in the world; God knows them: the Devil cannot know them, nor can an angel know them; yet God discerns our thoughts more clearly than we can discern the faces of one another he sees our thoughts afar off, as the Psalmist tells us: he sees our thoughts in their first conception, when they first begin to heave in our breasts: he knows the least windings and turnings of our souls. Now would not this compose us to a habitual and holy awe of God, to be continually thinking, that, whatsoever we do, God's eye is now upon us? Let every one say within himself, "Wherever I am, or whatever I do, I am in the presence of the Holy God, who takes notice of all my carriages": there is not a glance of mine eye, but his eye observes it: there is not an irreverent or unseemly gesture, but he takes notice of it: not a thought of mine can escape, but he knows that thought:

and he knows my down-lying and up-rising, &c." Let this consideration season your lives and conversations: be still pondering in your minds, that, whatsoever you are doing, his eye is upon you, and he is present with you.

2. Consider, that God not only sees into all you do, but he sees it to that very end that he may examine and search into it..

He doth not only behold you with a common and indifferent look; but with a searching, watchful, and inquisitive eye: he pries into the reasons, the motives, the ends of all your actions. Psal. xi. 4. it is said, The Lord's throne is in heaven: his eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men. Rev. i. 14. where Christ is described, it is said, his eyes are as a flame of fire: you know the property of fire is, to search and make trial of those things, which are exposed unto it, and to separate the dross from the pure metal so, God's eye is like fire, to try and examine the actions of men he knows and discerns how much your very purest duties have in them of mixture and base ends of formality, hypocrisy, distractedness, and deadness: he sees through all your specious pretences, that which you cast as a mist before the eyes of men, when yet thou art but a juggler in religion: all your tricks and sleights of outward profession, all those things that you use to cozen and delude men withal, cannot possibly impose upon him: he is a God, that can look through all those fig-leaves of outward profession, and discern the nakedness of your duties through them.

3. God tries all your cases and actions, in order to an eternal judgment and sentence to be passed upon them.

This consideration might damp the stoutest sinner's heart in the whole world. Believe it, Sirs, God doth not only see your ways, but he sees them so as to remember them against you another day though you have forgot what you have thought, and what you have spoken, and what you have done; yet God for ever remembers it, and at that day he will sadly recal all these things again to your remembrance. Oh! that therefore this might prevail with you, so to do every thing, as being now already under the eye of God, and as shortly to be under his doom and sentence! If God should send an angel to stand at our backs, and tell us, whatever we are doing, this action of ours we must be judged for; it should make us as fearful of sinning, as that angel himself. True, we have no such monitor; but our conscience performs to us the same office: therefore, charge

it upon your consciences, that they still put you in mind of God; that he sees you; that he will judge you; and that he always looks upon you, and writes down in those eternal leaves of his memorial-book, whatsoever proceeds from you, either in the duties of religion or in the actions of your ordinary course and conversation therefore, because he is omnipresent and sees all things, stand in awe of his omnisciency; whereby he sees whatsoever we do, and whereby he will try and judge us at the Last Day.