Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: did least comes in with a brag, and tells his lord what he had done: Behold here is thy pound, which I have kept laid up in a napkin. Least doers are greatest boasters. CHAP. VI. TWO MORE PROPERTIES OF FAITH, IT IS PRAYERFUL, AND UNIFORM IN ITS ACTING. TRUE faith is prayerful. Prayer is the child of faith; and as the child bears his father's name upon him, so doth prayer the name of faith; what is it known by but by the prayer of faith ? James v. 15. Prayer is the very natural breath of faith; supplication and thanksgiving, the two parts of prayer, by these, as the body by the double motion of the lungs, doth the Christian suck in mercy from God, and breathe back again that mercy in praise to God; but without faith he could do neither. He could not by supplication draw mercy from God; for he that comes to God, must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. Heb. xi. 6. Neither could he return praises to God without faith. David's heart must be fixed, before he can sing and give thanks. Psalm Ivi. Thanksgiving is an act of self-denial, and it is faith alone that will shew us the way out of our own doors; and as the creature cannot pray (I mean acceptably) without faith, so with faith he cannot but pray. The new creature, like our infants in their natural birth, comes crying into the world. And therefore Christ tells it for great news to Ananias of Saul, a new-born believer, Behold he prays. But is that so strange, that one brought up at the foot of Gamaliel, and so precise a Pharisee as he was, should be found upon his knees at prayer? Truly no: it was that his sect gloried in, their fasting and praying, and therefore he being strict in his way, was no doubt acquainted with this work as to the exterior part of it; but h...