3. The third weapon is prayer itself, beseeching our Lord to " build" in my soul a city of " Jerusalem," [1] that it may become a vision of peace, collecting my thoughts and wandering affections that they may inhabit there and busy themselves quietly in prayer. The like will I beseech the holy angels, who assist those that pray. And in this manner I will employ all my strength; (for prayer is so powerful that it can obtain of God all things, and itself with them;) using in the midst of these disturbances some brief prayers to this purpose. Sometimes I will say with David, " My heart hath forsaken me: be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me" from the violence I suffer, and " look down, O Lord, to help me." [2] At other times I will say with the same royal prophet, "My soul is as earth without water to Thee; hear me speedily, O Lord, my spirit hath fainted away." [3] At other times I will cry out with the apostles in the midst of the tempest, saying, " Lord, save" me, for I " perish." [4] Or like the blind whose prayer was hindered by the press of the people, I will lift up my voice, saying, "Son of David, have mercy on me." [5] And if I persevere crying, though it be with dryness and violence, our Lord Jesus Christ will not fail to have, compassion on me, as He had on this blind man; which we shall consider in its place.
4. The last weapon must be a great confidence in God our Lord, persuading ourselves that, seeing He commands us to pray, He will give us grace and help for the same, by which we may be able to resist the Devil, to bridle our imagination, to repress our passions, to moderate our cares, and to cast from us our lukewarmness, that they may not hinder us in the exercise of prayer. But with this confidence we must join diligence, endeavouring, as Cassian says, before prayer to remove all such occasions as we
