A Week of Soliloquies and Prayers, Title page – To the reader
A WEEK OF Soliloquies AND PRAYERS. With a PREPARATION for the Holy Communion.
By PETER Du-MOULIN the Son, so D. Moulin.
LONDON, Printed for H. Moseley at the Princes Arms in S. Pauls Church-yard. 1657.
TO THE Right Honourable ELIZABETH Countesse of CORKE.
MADAM,
GOD hath sent mee lately a visitation, enough to humble me, and make me keep my Chamber, not to disable me (I praise him for it) in any faculty of my body or minde. Which therefore I esteemed my self obliged to imploy to the best service of God and your Ladiship, since I am called to that honour in your noble House to discharge those two services in one. And I have endeavoured that my retirement should make some amends for the discontinuance of mine attendance. Whilst your Ladiship exprest so much charity and tender care for my recovery, I spent some thoughts upon a care proper to my place, to give to your devotion what help lieth in me, that when you pray you may ever meet God, whom many times wee misse when we go about to seek him by prayer.
Truly we ought to observe with our best care what may be the reason why so often either wee finde no return of our prayers, or finde a return of displeasure instead of comfort. As for the perverse and hard-hearted, who yet take upon them to pray, the blinde man healed by Christ saith, John 9.31. That God heareth not sinners, and hee saith right, for he means impenitent sinners.
But what have I to do with them that are without, speaking now to your godly soul endowed with Gods fear and love? Why then are the prayers of them that love and fear God so little effectual many times? The main cause is the wandring of their thoughts when they are about that holy duty. For it is no wonder that God granteth not what we ask when we think not what we ask. And it were a wonder if that Holiest of Holies, being spoken to without attention, did not resent so great a contempt which we would not use to our inferiours. Since then the wandring of our thoughts is the cause of that great evil, what is the cause of that wandering? Indeed the prime cause is the incapacity of our low carnal nature to comprehend the infinite God; who being invisible and immaterial doth not help the minde with any image proportionate to the sense and imagination; without which it is very hard for the understanding to fix his thoughts. And that defect in our nature is made worse by this defect in our duty, that we make our addresses to God having not considered before what we are going about, what God is, and what we are.
And as the best things may be of ill use, the saying of prayers by heart so necessary to many people, as uncapable to frame prayers, yet without an especial good heed will give more license to the wandering of our thoughts: For words setled in the memory by long custome will come to our tongues end before they enter into our mind; and such is mans weaknesse that things most ordinary are least heeded.
For a help against these inconveniencies, I have here set down models of prayers for every day of the week, and two for the Lords day. And before every prayer I have set a Soliloquie guided by a text of Scripture. That diversity of prayers may help to stay your attention, and more yet, the Soliloquies that usher them.
For because we use to fall on our knees with our mindes full of the businesses and companies from which we come, it will be a wise course to take time to meditate a little, and recollect our thoughts before we begin to pray. And because many times we are no more fit to speak to our selves of God then to God, your Ladiship shall find here Soliloquies ready made.
For the several dayes I have chosen different subjects, and such as contain in this smal number the whole duty of the Christian, and laid them in the order that I thought fittest to set a conscience in a good frame. For otherwise I intend not to tie devotion to certain dayes; the prayer for Munday being alike good for Tuesday.
To these prayers your Ladiship may adde according as your necessity or discretion shall suggest. Which that you might freely do, I made them not overlong, so that one Soliloquie with the prayer will not hold you above a quarter of an hour.
I know your Ladiship useth other good helps, to your own more particular aspirations to heaven. And I presume not hereby to make you decline any form or devout custome where you have found edification. But by using these sometimes the other will become new to your Ladiship, and variety will make them more acceptable and profitable.
One counsel I humbly crave leave to urge upon your godlinesse, that you never set your self to pray without some foregoing meditation, either of your owne good thoughts, or anothers made ready to your hand. To which end, I have in the end of this Week of Devotions added a preparatory Soliloquie for any kinde of prayer. For there being such an immense distance between God in heaven and man upon earth, it is almost impossible for him that prayeth, to fix his minde newly come from worldly businesses upon his Father which is in heaven, except hee make before a Bridge of meditation between these so distant shores.
Here also your Ladiship shall finde a preparation for the holy Communion, although you want not the labours of others that have worthily meditated upon this subject, whose good example ought not to slacken the diligence of other Divines, but encourage their industry. And the more this duty is oppos'd or neglected by others, the more it concernes us to attend it with devotion and diligence.
Though there be better helps abroad for the practise of piety, these may bee more effectual with your Ladiship, because they are your domestical goods, and productions of your charitable care of my health, which provoked my endeavours to take this care for the health of your soul.
Yet by these helps of devotion I do not so much intend to ease your meditation of a labour, as to stir up towards these sacred duties the rare abilities of your brave mind, blest with a gracious disposition to godliness and good works. Of which I could say much, but that it is not the duty of my place to praise it, but to labour to encrease it.
For that end I humbly present these Meditations as Handmaids to your Ladiships devotion, beseeching God to assist them with his vertue from above, that you may be strengthned with might by his Spirit in the inner man, growing every day from grace to grace, and finally from grace to glory. I rest
Madam Your Ladiships Most dutiful and and most affectionate Servant, P. Du Moulin. From your House at Yoghall, Febr. 20. 1653.
READER,
I Intended not to publish this smal thing in this Learned and Curious Age. But seriously I was so weary of giving Copies, and so afraid to see this printed upon some negligent transcript, that in the end I give way to the counsel of many good foules, who represented to me that these Meditations, being of their nature of general use, ought not to be confined to private benefit.