← All quotes

The Means of Prayer

God will have us pray because prayer is an appointed means by Him as well as faith and repentance. Now God's purposes and promises must never be opposed to, or separated from the means, so that as God promises pardon of sin and salvation, but it is if we repent and believe, so likewise it is, if we earnestly pray and seek to Him. This is the very reason why divines say that though God has absolutely decreed and promised such mercies, yet prayer is not useless and unnecessary, because God has decreed and promised prayer as well as other things, so that it is a profane cavil to say, "What need I pray? I cannot alter God's purposes. What He has purposed, shall be, whether I pray or no." This is false reasoning; for as God has appointed such mercies, so also such means whereof prayer is the chief, without which they cannot be had, as Augustine said, if Stephen had not prayed for his persecutors, the church had never had such a glorious doctor as Paul was.