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and by prayer; but you must alone renew and confirm your peace with God by faith and prayer, and with like preparations thereto, as you received directions for the morning; commending and committing yourself to God's tuition by prayer, Psa. iii. 4, 5. xcii. 2, with thanksgiving, before you go to bed. Then shall you lie down in safety, Psa. iv. 8.

All this being done, yet while you are putting off your apparel, when you are lying down, and when you are in bed, before you sleep, it is good that you commune with your own heart, Psa. iv. 4. If other good and fit meditations offer not themselves, some of these will be seasonable:

1. When you see yourself without your apparel, consider what you were at your birth, and what you shall be at your death, when you put off this earthly tabernacle (if not in the mean time, as concerning your outward estates:) how that you brought nothing into this world, nor shall carry any thing out, 1 Tim. vi. 7; naked you came from your mother's womb, and naked shall you return, Job i. 21. This will be an excellent means to give you sweet content in any thing you have, 1 Tim. vi. 8, though never so little; and in the loss of what you have had, Job i. 21, though never so much.

2. When you lie down, you may think of lying down in your winding-sheet, and in your grave. For besides that sleep, 1 Cor. xi. 30, and the bed do aptly resemble death and the grave, Isa. lvii. 2, who knoweth when he sleeps, that ever he shall awake again to this life?

3. You may think thus also: if the sun must not go down upon my wrath, Eph. iv. 26, lest it become hatred, and so be worse ere morning; then it is not safe for me to lie down in the allowance of any sin, lest I sleep not only the sleep of natural death, Psa. xiii. 3, but of that death which is eternal; for who knows what a night will bring forth? Now, it is a high point of holy wisdom, Deut. xxxii. 29, upon all opportunities, to think of, and to prepare for your latter end.

4. Consider likewise, that if you walk with God in