Meditations and motives for prayer upon the seven dayes of the weeke written and enlarged by Sr. Richard Baker ...

A Prayer for Tuesday.

O Most Gracious God, although bo∣dily health be a blessing, as from thee, yet as to us it will prove no bles∣sing at all, if wee imploy it not in labour, and use it as wee ought. For if wee spend our time of health in idlenesse, or in sedentary pleasures, it is so farre from being a blessing, that it will rather be a curse: and make us but the more unworthy servants, for making no better use of so good a talent. O therefore be pleased, most gracious God, as thou hast given mee health, to make mee able; so to give mee grace, to make mee willing to la∣bour

in my vocation; that I turne not thy blessing into a curse; and be the worse for a gift, which is given to make mee better. For alas, O Lord, if thou incline not my will to labour, I shall never of my selfe but be longing after ease, so faint are my spirits to all goodnesse, if they be not strengthen∣ed by thy Spirit. O therefore take from mee O God, the spirit of slum∣ber, and idlenesse; the spirit of lazi∣nesse and sloath: that I may not thinke it a paine to labour, but a Pleasure: for till we thinke it a pleasure and take a delight in it, wee shall never goe about it kindly; never labour but with a kind of reluctance. And yet why should labour be unpleasing to us, seeing labour is a thing that was injoyned us in Para∣dise, and therefore abates nothing of our true happinesse? and if our first Parents had followed it well, they had never per∣haps fallen into the hands of Satan. For

our idlenesse is Satans opportunitie; when we are doing nothing, then is hee most busie; and when hee finds us neglect to labour, in the workes which thou hast appointed us, hee then thinkes us fit for entertaining the workes which he appointeth us. O therefore vouchsafe O God, not to suffer mee through idle∣nesse to draw on temptations; but that by labouring in my vocation, I may give Satan no apportunitie of assaulting mee; no meanes of prevailing up∣on mee. Besides, O God, there is a mercifull respect also in thy injoyning us to labour; seeing no ease is so grate∣full, as that which labour precedeth; or rather indeed, where there is no labour, there can be no rest. And seeing O God, as thou hast beene pleased thy selfe to take sixe dayes for making thy great workes of Heaven and Earth: so thou hast given mee also sixe dayes, to do that great worke, which must in them be

performed; or never after. Vouch∣safe, O Lord, to make mee so to labour in the course of my calling, that I may this day do something towards the per∣fecting of my great worke, lest otherwise the Sabbath overtake mee before it be perfected, and then I be excluded from entring into rest, for want of having laboured.