Now are such persons to neglect their prayers, because they cannot pray without being seen? Are they not rather obliged to be more exact in them, that others may not be witnesses of their neglect, and so corrupted by their example?
And what is here said of devotion, may surely be said of singing a psalm.
The rule is this: Don’t pray that you may be seen of men; but if your confinement obliges you to be always in the sight of others, be more afraid of being seen to neglect, than of being seen to have recourse to prayer.
Thirdly, Either people can use such privacy in this practice, as to have no hearers, or they cannot. If they can, then this objection vanishes as to them; and if they cannot, they should consider their confinement, and the necessities of their state, as the confinement of a prison; and then have an excellent pattern to follow: they may imitate St. Paul and Silas, who sang praises to God in prison, tho’ we are expresly told, that the prisoners heard them. They did not refrain this kind of devotion, for fear of being heard by others. If therefore any one is in the same necessity, either in prison or out of prison, what can he do better, than to follow this example?
Fourthly, The privacy of our prayers is not destroyed by our having, but by our seeking witnesses of them.
If therefore nobody hears you but those you cannot separate yourself from, you are as much in secret, and your Father who seeth in secret, will as truly reward your secrecy, as if you was seen by him alone.
CHAP. XIII.
Recommending devotions at nine o’clock in the morning, called in scripture, the third hour of the day. The subject of these prayers may be humility.
I AM now come to another hour of prayer, which in scripture is called the third hour of the day; but according to our way of numbering the hours, it is called the ninth hour of the morning.