PRAYERS. 



61 



IV. 



An Evening Fmyer. 



0 Lord, our God, the Father of Mercies, and God of all Consolations, 

 by whose gracious providence it is that we, thy most unworthy servants, 

 have been preserved this day, we desire to acknowledge thy fatherly goodness 

 to us, and to offer up our evening sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, for 

 all thy undeserved mercies vouchsafed unto us ; and with shame and sorrow 

 do acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and transgressions. Thou 

 didst, at the first, create us after thine own image, in knowledge, righteous- 

 ness, and true holiness ; but we, by our apostacy, have miserably defaced 

 this thy image, and are become naturally prone to evil, and averse from 

 good, and we have followed the bent and inclination of our corrupt appe- 

 tites, gratifying and complying with our sensual and unreasonable desires, 

 and giving ear to the temptations of Satan, and the allurements of this 

 present evil world. [We have lived in the world, in a great measure with- 

 out thee in the world.] Great hath been the vanity of our thoughts, the 

 vanity and sinfulness of our words, and of all our ways. Our own hearts 

 and consciences must needs condemn us, when we consider our lives past, 

 and call to remembrance the vanities and follies of our youth, and the wicked- 

 ness of our riper years ; how much more then, thou art greater than our 

 hearts, and knowest aU things ! 0 Lord, enter not into judgment with us, 

 deal not with us after our deservings, neither reward us according to the 

 evil of our doings. Give us a due sense of our sins past, affect our hearts 

 with godly sorrow and contrition for them, and then be thou merciful to us 

 in the -free remission and forgiveness of them. Help us for the time to 

 come to walk before thee in newness and holiness of Hfe. Deliver us from 

 the miserable bondage of sin, into the glorious liberty of the children of God. 

 Conviace us of the equity and reasonableness of thy ways, and of the beauty 

 of holiness, that so we may be in love with them ; of the deformity and un- 

 reasonableness of sin, that so we may hate and abhor it. Settle and establish 

 us in a firm belief of every necessary truth ; acquaint us with thy will and 

 our duty ; and whatsoever we ought to do, though never so uneasy to flesh 

 and blood, give us grace, with all diligence, to set about the performance of 

 it. Help us to deny ourselves, and to take up the cross and to follow thee, 

 our blessed Saviour, God manifest in the flesh, to destroy the works of the 

 devil. Assist us also, by thy grace, manfully to fight against our spiritual 

 enemies, the devil, the world, and the corrupt flesh we carry about with us. 

 The more weak we are, the more vigilant and watchful cause us to be, and 

 the more careful to avoid the occasions of and temptations unto evU. Re- 



