MHCC 46: Preparation to Prayer

Matthew Henry on Psalm 5:

As meditation is the best preparative for prayer, so prayer is the best issue of meditation. Meditation and prayer should go together, Ps. xix. 14.

Daniel Featley, Ancilla Pietatis, or, The Hand-Maid to Private Devotion Being Instructions, Hymns, and Prayers, Containing the Duty of a Christian, pp. 10-11:

My heart is inditing of a good matter: my tongue is the pen of a ready writer, said the Kingly Prophet. And againe, My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned, then spake I with my tongue. If this sweet sing of Israel first pricked the notes in his heart before he began to sing them; If he who was inspired by the holy Ghost, framed his Prayers and Psalms of thanksgiving in his mind, before he delivered them by his tongue; ought not we, who are as far behind him in his gifts, as we are below him in condition much more meditate, before we utter any thing to the Lord? I speak not of pious ejaculations, which must needs be sudden, as their occasions are, and the motions of Gods Spirit within us; but of a set conceived prayer, wherein we ought not only well to ponder the matter, but even weigh (if we have time) every word in the ballance, that they be not found too light, and thereby our Prayers against sin, be turned into sin. Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God. Seneca observing how bold men made with God, and what strange petitions they blushed not to prefer unto him, gave this sage advise, So deal with men as if God saw thee, and so speak with God as if men heard thee.