An edited extract from Boston’s Works, vol 2, giving lessons from what he has said on the Shorter Catechism answer to the Question: How is the word made effectual to salvation?
By whose assistance is acceptable prayer performed? By the help of the Holy Spirit (Gal 4:6, Rom 8:26). There are two sorts of prayers:
1. A prayer made by virtue of a gift of knowledge and utterance.
This is bestowed on many reprobates, and that gift may be useful to others and to the Church. But as it is merely of that sort, it is not accepted, nor does Christ put it in before the Father for acceptance.
2. There is a prayer wrought in men by virtue of the Holy Spirit.
“I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplications” (Zec 12:10); and that is the only prayer acceptable to God (Jas 5:16). Right praying is praying in the Spirit. The breathing of the Spirit in the saints is a gale blowing from heaven that carries them out in the prayer, and it comes as far as the throne.
1. The Spirit helps to pray as a teaching and instructing Spirit, granting proper matter of prayer, causing us to know what we pray for (Rom 8:26); enlightening the mind in the knowledge of our needs and those of others; bringing to our remembrance these things, suggesting them to us according to the Word, together with the promises of God, on which prayer is grounded.
“The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost . . . shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (Jn 14:26). Hence the saints are sometimes carried out in prayer for things which they had no view of before, and carried past some things they had.
2. The Spirit helps to pray as an enlivening Spirit (Rom 8:26), the Spirit qualifying the soul with praying graces and affections, working in the praying person a sense of need – of faith, fervency, humility etc.
“Thou wilt prepare their heart” (Ps 10:17). The man may go to his knees in a very unprepared frame for prayer, yet the Spirit blows, and he is helped. It is for this reason the Spirit is said to make intercession for us – insofar as He teaches and enlivens, puts us in a praying frame and, as it were, draws our petitions, which the Mediator presents.
This praying with the help of the Spirit is confined to the saints (Jas 5:16); yet they do not have that help at all times, nor always in the same measure; for sometimes the Spirit, being provoked, departs, and they are left in a withered condition. So there is great need to look for a breathing, and to pant for it, when we are to go to duty; for if there is no gale, we will only tug heartlessly at the oars.
Let no one think that a readiness and volubility of expression in prayer is always the effect of the Spirit’s assistance. For that may be the product of a natural gift, and of the common operations of the Spirit, removing hindrances to the exercise of prayer. And it is evident that one may lack words, and have groans instead of them, while the Spirit helps him to pray (Rom 8:26). Neither is every flood of affections in prayer the effect of the Spirit of prayer. Some of them puff up a man, but make him no more holy or tender in his walk. But the influences of the Spirit will always be humbling and sanctifying. Hence David says, “Who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? For all things come of Thee, and of Thine own have we given Thee” (1 Chr 29:14). And the Apostle says, “We . . . have no confidence in the flesh” (Phil 3:3).
Man’s light may make us more learned, but God’s light more holy. It is a degree of spiritual knowledge to know that we know nothing. God’s laws are ways that lead us to God.
Thomas Manton