“A father calls his child to him, saying, ’Child, pull off this stocking!’ The child, mightily joyful that it should pull off father’s stocking, takes hold of the stocking, and tugs! and pulls! and sweats! but to no purpose:  for stocking stirs not, for it is but a child that pulls!  Then the father bids the child to rest a little, and try again.  So then the child sets on again, tugs again; but no stocking comes:  for child is but a child!  Then the father taking pity upon his child, puts his hand behind and slips down the stocking; and off comes the stocking!  Then how does the child rejoice! for child hath pulled off father’s stocking, Alas, poor child! it was not child’s strength, it was not child’s sweating that got off the stocking; but yet it was the father’s hand that slipped down the stocking.  Even so—­”

Not much unlike to this, was he that, preaching about the Sacrament and Faith, makes CHRIST a shopkeeper; telling you that “CHRIST is a Treasury of all wares and commodities,” and thereupon, opening his wide throat, cries aloud,

“Good people! what do you lack?  What do you buy?  Will you buy any balm of Gilead? any eye salve? any myrrh, aloes, or cassia?  Shall I fit you with a robe of Righteousness, or with a white garment?  See here!  What is it you want?  Here is a choice armoury!  Shall I shew you a helmet of Salvation, a shield, or breastplate of Faith? or will you please to walk in and see some precious stones? a jasper, a sapphire, a chalcedony?  Speak, what do you buy?”

Now, for my part, I must needs say (and I much fancy I speak the mind of thousands) that it had been much better for such an imprudent and ridiculous bawler as this, to have been condemned to have cried oysters or brooms, than to discredit, after this unsanctified rate, his Profession and our Religion.

It would be an endless thing, Sir, to count up to you all the follies, for a hundred years last past, that have been preached and printed of this kind.  But yet I cannot omit that of the famous Divine in his time, who, advising the people in days of danger to run unto the LORD, tells them that “they cannot go to the LORD, much less run, without feet;” that “there be therefore two feet to run to the LORD, Faith and Prayer.”

    “It is plain that Faith is a foot, for, ‘by Faith we stand,’ 2
    Cor. i. 24; therefore by Faith, we must run to the LORD who is
    faithful.

“The second is Prayer, a spiritual Leg to bear us thither.  Now that Prayer is a spiritual Leg appears from several places in Scripture, as from that of JONAH speaking of coming, chap. ii. ver. 7, ‘And my prayer came unto thy holy temple.’  And likewise from that of the Apostle who says, Heb. iv. 16, ’Let us therefore go unto the throne of grace.’  Both intimating that Prayer is a spiritual Leg:  there being no coming or going to the LORD without the Leg of Prayer.”