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Subsection
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Order of Contents
Articles 10
Quotes 5+
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Articles
1600’s
English Puritans – pt. 1, Objection 2, point 1, pp. 221-27 & 247-49 in A Refutation of the Errors of Separatists (1604; 1644; RBO, 2025)
“…the ministers include not only a defense of the lawfulness of stinted
forms for public church prayers (while giving place for free prayer), but give a most persuasive case for their positive value from Scripture precedents (which are hard to argue with).” – p. 9
Ball, John – Chs. 1-8 of A Friendly Trial of the Grounds Tending to Separation in a plain and modest dispute touching the lawfulness of a stinted liturgy and set form of prayer… (Cambridge, 1640)
Ball (1585-1640) was a reformed, English puritan. It may be the case that Ball argues against the need for having any free-prayer in a worship service, which was contrary to the majority view of the puritans.
Cotton, John – Twelve Reasons Laid Down Against Prescribed & Stinted Forms of Prayers or Praises in A Conference Mr. John Cotton held at Boston with the Elders of New-England… (London, 1646)
Woodward, Hezekiah – Ch. 1, section 1 & section 2 of A Treatise of Prayer, Two Quæries Resolved Touching Forms of Prayer. And Six Quæries Relating specially to the Lord’s Prayer (London, 1656), pp. 2-18
Woodward (c.1591-1675) was an English, reformed, puritan, nonconformist minister and educator, who was involved in the pamphlet wars of the 1640’s. He was one of those articulating the Puritan argument against the celebration of Christmas.
Baxter, Richard
Question 4, ‘Whether a stinted Liturgy, or form of worship, be a desirable means for the peace of these churches?’ in Five Disputations of Church-Government & Worship (London, 1659) Note this was published the year before Charles II returned, as persons were contemplating seeking to unify the nation in a form of church government and worship.
Baxter seeks to prove in his treatment ten propositions:
“1. A stinted liturgy is in it self lawful.
2. A stinted liturgy in some parts of public holy service is ordinarily necessary.
3. In the parts where it is not of necessity, it may not only be submitted to, but desired when the peace of the Church requires it.
4. There is so great difference between ministers and people, and times, that it may be convenient and eligible to some, at some times, and unfit and not eligible to others, and at other times.
5. The ministers and Churches that earnestly desire it, should not by the magistrate be generally or absolutely forbidden the use of a convenient prescribed liturgy.
6. To prescribe a frame of stinted service, or prayer, etc. and lay a necessity, or the peace of the Church upon it, and to punish, silence, suspend, excommunicate, or reproach the able, peaceable, godly ministers, or people that (justly or unjustly) scruple the using of it, is so great a sin that no conscionable ministers should attempt it or desire it, nor any godly magistrate suffer it.
7. The safest way of composing such a public form is to take it all, for matter and words, out of the Holy Scriptures.
8. Yet is not this of such necessity, but that we may join in it, or use it, if the form of words be not from Scripture.
9. The matter of a common liturgy, in which we expect any general concord, should not be any unnecessary things, much less things doubtfull, or forbidden.
10. Forms of public prayer should not be constantly used by ministers that are able to pray without them: and none else should be admitted ordinarily to the ministry, but such as are able competently to pray without such forms; unless in great necessities of the Church.”
pp. 16-23, 39-41, 44-54, 64-66, 70-72, 80-81 & passim in Richard Baxter on Worship & Catholicity against Separatism & John Owen (1684; RBO, 2024) See especially ‘Pros and cons of liturgies and free prayer’ on pp. 53-54.
Bernard, Richard – ch. 6, ‘of the Manner’ in The Anatomy of the Common Prayer-Book: wherein is remonstrated the unlawfulness of it, and that by five several arguments, namely, from the name of it, the rise, the matter, the manner, and the evil effects of it (1661), pp. 28-31
Bernard (bap.1568-1642) was a reformed puritan.
Tombes, John – section 4, ’Prayer in a stinted form may be worship of God of his appointment’ in Theodulia, or a Just Defence of Hearing the Sermons & other teaching of the present Ministers of England… (London: E. Cotes, 1667), pp. 218-23
Tombes (c. 1603–1676) was a student of William Pemble and an Anglican clergyman, who came to develop baptist views. In church government he is said to have been presbyterian. Towards the end of his life he was a communicating Anglican layman.
Collinges, John – A Reasonable Account, why some Pious, Nonconforming Ministers in England judge it sinful for them to perform the ministerial acts, in Public, Solemn Prayer by the Prescribed Forms of others… ([London?], 1679)
Collinges (1623-1691) was an English Presbyterian theologian, and prolific writer. He was one of the representatives of the Presbyterians in the Savoy Conference, but was later forced to resign his livings.
Owen, John
A Discourse of the Work of the Holy Spirit in Prayer with a Brief Inquiry into the Nature and Use of Mental Prayer and Forms (London, 1682) being Book 7 of Pneumatologia: or a Discourse concerning the Holy Spirit in Works, 4.235-350
Ch. 8, ‘The Duty of External Prayer by Virtue of a spiritual Gift Explained and Vindicated’
Ch. 9, ‘Duties inferred from the preceding Discourse’
Ch. 11, ‘Prescribed forms of Prayer Examined’
“Where these Forms are contended for by men, with respect unto their own use and practice only, as suitable to their experience, and judged by them a serving of God with the best that they have; I shall not take the least notice of them, nor of any dissent about them. But whereas a persuasion not only of their lawfulness but of their necessity is made use of unto other ends and purposes, wherein the peace and edification of believers is highly concerned, it is necessary we should make some inquiry thereinto.” – p. 212
Humphrey, John – ‘Of Prayer, with Reference to Liturgical & Extemporary Devotion’ in Free Thoughts upon these Heads : Of Predestination, Redemption… (London, 1710), pp. 45-49
Humphrey (1621-1719) was a reformed puritan and presbyterian, though he often took mediating views. He here argues for the lawfulness of using forms and stinted liturgies, granting that the minister may and generally ought to have liberty for free-prayer.
Quotes
Order of
English Puritans
Rutherford
Baxter
Presbyterians & Independents
Ryle
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1600’s
English Puritans
A Refutation of the Errors of Separatists (1604; 1644; RBO, 2025), pt. 2, p. 248
“…if to have a prescript form of prayer is lawful in itself, we see not how this should make it unlawful, that it is prescribed by the Church and authorized by the Christian magistrate…”
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Samuel Rutherford
The Trial & Triumph of Faith, p. 61
“There be so many other things that are a pouring out of the soul in prayer, as groaning, sighing, looking up to heaven, breathing, weeping, that it cannot be imagined how far short printed and read prayers comes of vehement praying; for you cannot put sighs, groans, tears, breathing, and such heart messengers down in a printed book, nor can paper and ink lay your heart in all its sweet affections out before God; the Service-book then must be toothless and spirit-less talk.”
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Richard Baxter
Five Disputations of Church-Government & Worship (London: R.W., 1659), 5th Disputation, ch. 2, pp. 421-22
Ҥ63. As for the Common Prayer itself, I never rejected it because it was a form, nor thought it simply unlawful because it was such a form, but have made use of it and would do again in the like case. But I must needs say:
1. That the shredding it into such abundance of small parcels seems to me very inconvenient. It seems too light and ludicrous to toss sentences so formally between the priest and clerk, and to make such a multitude of prayers consisting but of a sentence, or two at most: And it seems to be tautology and vain repetition to repeat over the same word so oft: and a taking of God’s name in vain, or too unreverently, to begin with his titles and attributes, and end with his name again, and the merits or sake of Christ, and this at almost every sentence: as if we had done with Him and were taking our leave, and had forgot somewhat that called us to begin again: and thus we begin and end, and begin and end again, it may be twenty times together.
2. But the enforcing imposition of these prayers is most to be condemned, of which I have spoken in the former disputation. But for my part, I censure none that use them, nor take them to be therefore men of another religion or worship: It is but a modal difference in the same worship.”
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The Cure of Church Divisions… (London, 1670), pt. 1
p. 176
“Certainly in Christ’s time both liturgies by forms and also prayers by habit were used [Lk. 18:11-13]. And yet Christ never interposed in the controversy, so as to condemn the one or the other. He condemns the Pharisees for making long prayers to cover their devouring widows’ houses, and for their praying to be seen of men: But whether their prayers were a liturgy and set form, or whether they were extemporary, He takes no notice, as telling us that He condemned neither! (And it’s likely the Pharisees’ long liturgy was in many things worse than ours, though the psalms were a great part of it: and yet Christ and his apostles oft joined with them, and never condemned them).
Nay as far as I can find, the Pharisees and other Jews were not in this so blind and quarrelsome as we; nor never made a controversy of it, nor ever presumed to condemn either liturgies or prayers by habit.”
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p. 179
“He is void of common sense that thinks that his extemporary prayer is not as truly a form to all the people [of the congregation] as if it had been written in a book.”
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p. 180
“I could heartily wish that we could say that all ministers (of any party) were such as were wholly above the need of forms. Or at least such whose own composures were better for the Church than any that could be offered them by others.”
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pp. 183-85
“The famousest divines in the Church of God, even Luther, Zwingli, Melancthon, Calvin, Perkins, Sibbes and abundance of nonconformists of greatest name in England did ordinarily use a form of prayer of their own before their sermons in the pulpit, and some of them in their families too. Now these men did it not through idleness or through temporizing, but because some of them found it best for the people to have oft the same words: and some of them found such a weakness of memory that they judged it the best improvement of their own gifts.
Now besides the first composure of these prayers (which perhaps was done 20 years before) none of these men did use their own gifts, any more than if they had used a form composed by another. For the memory and utterance is the same of both.
…
And in some ordinances as baptism and the Lord’s Supper, etc. the same things must be daily prayed for: And he that thinks he must not frequently speak the same things, will quite corrupt the ordinance of Christ. And he that will imagine that he must have always new words will at last have new things or worse than nothing. If then it be meet to use often the same words, why may not a weak minister use the better words of others when he has none merely of his own that are so fit?
Nay is it not the duty of such to do it? Every man is bound to do God’s service in the best manner that he can: ‘Cursed be the deceiver that hath a better in his flock, and bringeth that which is corrupt.’
But to utter prayers and praise to God in a full, methodical and congruous manner, and in words suitable to the majesty of the worship of God, is better (to the people and to the honor of religion) than to do it in a more confused, disorderly, broken manner, with barrenness and incongruity of speech. But this l […]st is the best that many honest ministers can do by their own gifts, when they may do it in the former better manner, by making use of the words and gifts of others. Therefore it is a duty for such men so far to use others’ gifts of inventing words before their own.
And among us there is no man forbidden in the pulpit to use his own gifts to the utmost and pray without any set form of his own or other men’s.
And I would at last desire any of the objectors but to name that text of Scripture which directly or indirectly commands every minister to use his gift of inventing words and method, or his gift of extemporary prayer, every time that he prays to God: Or which forbids to use the gifts of others though better than his own.”
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Direction 58, p. 290
“Thirteenthly, [it is superstition] that it is simply unlawful to use a form of prayer or to read a prayer on a book.
Fourteenthly, that if a school-master impose a form upon a scholar, or a parent on a child, it makes it become unlawful.”
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A Second Admonition to Mr. Edward Bagshaw (London: Simmons, 1671), ‘To those Readers…’, pp. 5-6
“When as God has neither tied us to set forms, nor from them, save only as unsuitableness to any particular persons may make one less edifying than the other:
And both free prayers and set forms, studied prayers and sudden prayers are all the work of man (as to man’s part): and therefore they must needs be imperfect and faulty as man is: And yet in both we may pray by the Spirit, even with the holy and fervent desires which the Spirit excites in us: And the Spirit may ordinarily be a Spirit of supplication in us and help our infirmities in the one way and in the other:
And therefore, though I will not equal them (for I prefer some men’s free praying before any forms, and I prefer the Common prayers before some men’s free prayers), yet I may say that I will neither assent and consent to every word in the one, nor in the other, no not of any man that ever I heard: And yet I will not take it for unlawful to join with Church, or family, or person in the one or in the other: yea, upon long experience, if I had fully my own choice and liberty, I would use free prayer one part of the day (or one day) and a well composed form another part, because I see commodities by both, and such inconveniences of either way alone, as are, if possible to be avoided.
But when the mind has received a prejudice against either way, by education, custom, or former distastes, no reason how clear soever will overcome it, till age and experience do mellow green and sour spirits and teach them to judge of things soberly and impartially, not as others judge of them, but as indeed they are.”
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Catholic Communion Doubly Defended by Dr. Owen’s Vindicator & Richard Baxter… (London: Parkhurst, 1684)
section 2, pp. 12, 14
“17. As God has not tied us to words in prayer or preaching (though he have recorded many forms in Scripture), but left all to choose what words, time and circumstances make fit (by book, or without) so the conveniences and inconveniences both of set forms and of free speaking are on each part so great and undeniable that we have no cause to censure that Church which uses both; that is, which agrees on a set form to show what the Church professes to own, if the minister should blutter out any error or indecency, and yet not restrain ministers from the due use of free speech.
18. It is a great sin out of a fond conceit of the excellency of either way above its due value to think and speak with unjust vilifying of the other way when God has tied us to neither alone: It is contrary to knowledge, love, peace and concord out of a self-conceitedness, peevishness or false prejudice received from others to think and speak worse of other men’s words in prayer than they deserve and to frighten the ignorant from lawful communion by calling that sin or false worship that is not so.
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“39. The use of faulty liturgies is no worse than the use of faulty translations of the Holy Scripture, which yet Christ and his apostles ordinarily [and voluntarily] used [i.e. the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament] (of which I shall say more anon).ª
ª [See Baxter’s defense of this in the section of principles on ‘Reformation & Conformity’.]”
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section 5, ‘A comparison of the use of a faulty translation of the Scripture and a faulty liturgy’
Question 1: Do you think that the Pharisees and scribes had so much of the gift of extemporary prayer that they could, and did use to make long prayers, as if it were by the spirit-extempore? Say so and you will disgrace the doctors’ arguments that lay so much on this manner of praying [by forms]. No doubt but it was forms and liturgies that they used; yet when Christ condemns them for praying in the streets to be seen and using long prayer for a pretence to devour widows’ houses:
2. Did Christ speak one word against them as forms or liturgies? Did He want [lack] zeal or knowledge?
3. Had they not been good in themselves, what cloak could they have made for so great evil?
4. Did Christ or his apostles ever forbear [abstain from] the synagogues for the sake of these long liturgies?”
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Richard Baxter on Worship & Catholicity against Separatism & John Owen (1684; RBO, 2024), pp. 53-54, on a mixture of a minister praying with forms in public worship with free prayer as the ideal.
“1. The benefits of a sound liturgy are:
1. to keep out heresy and ill words from public worship,
2. to be a help to men of unready utterance,
3. that the people may know beforehand what they join in.
The inconveniences are:
1. the dulling of affection in hearing still the same words,
2. the tempting of slothful worldly candidates and ministers to learn no other way of praying when this will serve all their worldly turns.
But I must add that this follows not from the imposing of a liturgy, but from the exclusion of other prayer and taking up with this alone.
2. The conveniences of praying from a habit are:
1. a just variation, as occasions vary,
2. help to fresh affection,
3. forcing ministers to get ability for utterance.
The inconveniences are:
1. That the people know not till the words are past whether they may own them, and so hardly try all and follow with just consent.
2. That abundance of young, raw, unskillful men do ordinarily disgrace prayer by their unskillful methods and expressions.
3. That heretics and erroneous men have great opportunity to put their sins into their prayer, which yet the people should by joining in make their own were they sound (which they are not bound to do by sermons): And no man of understanding can choose, but suspect that weak ignorant ministers will be showing their weakness in the highest duties, and so must suspend their consent till late.
4. That less care will be taken in speaking to God than in speaking to men, while most sober ministers study their sermons.
5. That when to avoid disgraceful words and manner of praying, men must decree that no such weak or unready men shall be ministers, the number that can do it better will be so small as that most churches on earth must be so deprived of ministers and all public worship if that take place.
6. That by this means young ignorant men that by use can speak fluently and fervently in prayer shall be followed by the people when many great divines, judicious and holy that have not that readiness of utterance, shall be rejected as having not the Spirit.
7. That as all men’s bodies and minds be not in the like quickness and fitness at all times, but sometimes clouded by fumes or weakness, the public worship shall be as mutable, uncertain and various as men’s tempers are.
All these on both sides are so great inconveniences that though both Formalists and Fanatics have derided me for it, I have formerly said, and still say that I believe that the best way to avoid both sorts of evils is to have meet set forms, which shall be owned by the Church as their professed desires, not being so long as to take up too much time from freer prayer, much less to forbid it, which Calvin wisely ordered for France and Geneva.”
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The English Nonconformity as under King Charles II & King James II Truly Stated & Argued (1683; London: Parkhurst, 1689), ch. 3, p. 11
“But those [leading presbyterian and congregationalist ministers] that were called by the king, and one another, 1660 and 1661, to treat of concord, and that assembled at Sion College, and elsewhere about it, did openly make known their minds: And I think they meddled not against any of these things following, by any accusation of them as sinful:
…
I. They never denied the lawfulness of a form of prayer or a liturgy: Though some falsely so accuse them.
II. They denied not the soundness of the matter of prayer contained in the form of the English Liturgy in the main: They though it a good book, and the making of it a great reformation, and honored the excellent men that made it; but they thought it not such as could not or should not in any thing be amended, or that all might say was without fault.
III. They thought not the imposition of it a reason sufficient to prove it unlawful for them to use it were there no more.
IV. They offered to use it when amended, and if that could not be had, they told you in their reply their purpose rather to communicate in the use of it than not at all, and to have used all the lawful part themselves if they might be suffered in their public places and ministry on such terms.”
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Leading English Presbyterian & Independent Ministers
The Grand Debate between the most reverend Bishops & the Presbyterian Divines appointed by His Sacred Majesty as Commissioners for the Review & Alteration of the Book of Common Prayer... (London, 1661)
‘Exceptions’, pp. 4-5
“VII. That the gift of prayer being one special qualification for the work of the ministry bestowed by Christ in order to the edification of his Church and to be exercised for the profit and benefit thereof according to its various and emergent necessities, it is desired that there may be no such imposition of the [Anglican] Liturgy as that the exercise of that gift be thereby totally excluded in any part of public worship; and further, that considering the great age of some ministers and the infirmities of others, and the variety of several services oft time occurring upon the same day, whereby it may be inexpedient to require every minister at all times to read the whole, it may be left to the discretion of the minister to omit it as occasion shall require, which liberty we find to be allowed even in the first Common Prayer Book of Edward VI.”
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pp. 57-62
“‘We [bishops at the Savoy Conference] heartily desire that according to this proposal great care may be taken to suppress these private conceptions of prayers before and after sermon, lest private opinions be made the matter of prayer in public, as has and will be if private persons take liberty to make public prayers.’
Reply [of the presbyterian and independent ministers]: The desire of your hearts is the grief of our hearts; the conceptions of prayer by a public person, according to a public rule, for a public use, are not to be rejected as private conceptions: We had hoped you had designed no such innovation as this in the Church: When we have heard any say that it would come to this, and that you designed the suppression of the free prayers of ministers in the pulpit suited to the variety of subjects and occasions, we have rebuked them as uncharitable in passing so heavy a censure on you: And what would have been said of us a year ago if we should have said that this was in your hearts?
Nothing will more alienate the hearts of many holy prudent persons from the Common-Prayer than to perceive that it is framed and used as an instrument to shut out all other prayers as the ministers’ private conceptions. Such an end and design will make it under the notion of a means, another thing than else it would be, and afford men such an argument against it as we desire them not to have: but we hope you speak not the public sense.
As the apostles desired (as aforesaid) that all would speak the same things, without giving them (that ever was proved) a form of words to speak them in, so might we propose to you that uncertain opinions be made no part of our [Anglican] Liturgy without putting all their words into their mouths in which their desires must be uttered. Your hearty desire, and the reason of it, makes not only against extemporary prayer, but all prepared or written forms or liturgies that were indited only by one man, and have not the consent antecedently of others.
And do you think this was the course of the primitive times? Basil thus used his private conceptions at Caesarea, and Gregory Thaumaturgus before him at Neocesarea, and all pastors in Justin Martyr’s and Tertullian’s days. And how injurious is it to the public officers of Christ, the bishops and pastors of the churches, to be called private men, who are public persons in the Church, if they be not? every single person is not a private person, else kings and judges would be so. And have you not better means to shut out private opinions than the forbidding ministers praying in the pulpit, according to the variety of subjects and occasions: You have first the examination of persons to be ordained, and may see that they be able to speak sense, and fit to manage their proper works with judgement and discretion, before you ordain them; And some confidence may be put in a man in his proper calling and work to which he is admitted with so great care, as we hope (or desire) you will admit them; If you are necessitated to admit some few that are injudicious or unmeet, we beseech you (not only to restore the many hundred worthy men laid by to a capacity, but that you will not so dishonor the whole Church as to suppose all such, and to use all as such, but restrain those that deserve restraint, and not all others for their sakes: And next you have a public rule (the Holy Scripture) for these men to pray by, and if any of them be intolerably guilty of weaknesses or rashness, or other miscarriages, the words being spoken in public, you have witness now, and sure there is power enough in magistrates and bishops to punish them, and if they prove incorrigible, to cast them out.
In all other professions these means are thought sufficient to regulate the professors; his Majestie thinks it enough to regulate his judges that he may choose able men, and fit to be trusted in their proper work, and that they are responsible for all their maladministrations, without prescribing them forms beyond which they may not speak anything in their charge. Physicians being first tried and responsible for their doings, are constantly trusted with the lives of high and low, without tying them to give no counsel, or medicine, but by the prescript of a book or determination of a college:
And it is so undeniable that your reason makes more against preaching, and for only reading homilies, as that we must like it the worse, if not fear what will become of preaching also. For:
1. It is known that in preaching a man has far greater opportunity and liberty to vent a false or private opinion than in prayer.
2. It is known de eventu, that it is much more ordinary.
And if you say that ‘he speaks [in preaching] not the words of the Church, but his own, nor unto God, but man, and therefore it is less matter’:
We answer: it is as considerable, if not much more, from whom he speaks, than to whom: he speaks as the minister of Christ, in his stead and name, 2 Cor. 5:19-20. And it is as a higher, so a more reverend thing to speak in God’s name to the people than in the people’s name to God; and to speak that which we call God’s Word, or truth, or message, than that which we call but our own desire: We make God a liar, or corrupt in his words, if we speak a falsehood in his name; we make but ourselves liars if we speak a falsehood to Him in our own names. The former therefore is the more heinous and dreadful abuse and more to be avoided: or if but equally, it shows the tendency of your reason (for we will not say of your design, as hoping you intend not to make us Russians).
We do therefore for the sake of the poor threatened Church, beseech you that you will be pleased to repent of these desires and not to prosecute them, considering that to avoid a lesser evil (avoidable by safer means) you will bring a far greater evil on the churches, and such as is like to strip these nations of the glory in which they have excelled the rest of the world, even a learned, able, holy ministry and a people sincere and serious, and understanding in the matters of their salvation. For:
1. As it is well known that an ignorant man may read a prayer and homily as distinctly and laudably as a learned divine, and so may do the work of a minister, if this be it; so it is known that man’s nature is so addicted to ease and sensual diversions, as that multitudes will make no better preparations when they find that no more is necessary, when they are as capable of their places and maintenance if they can but read, and are forced upon no exercise of their parts which may detect and shame their ignorance, but the same words are to be read by the ablest and ignorantest man; it is certain that this will make multitudes idle in their academical studies, and multitudes to spend their time idly all the year in the course of their ministry: and when they have no necessity that they are sensible of, of diligent studies, it will let loose their fleshly voluptuous inclinations and they will spend their time in sports and drinking, and prating and idleness, and this will be a seminary of lust: or they will follow the world and drown themselves in covetousness and ambition, and their hearts will be like their studies: As its the way to have a holy, able ministry, to engage them to holy studies, to meditate on God’s Law day and night, so it’s the way to have an ignorant, profane and scandalous ministry (and consequently enemies to serious godliness in others) to impose upon them but such a work, as in ignorance and idleness they may perform as well as the judicious and the diligent.
If it be said that ‘their parts may be tried and exercised some other way,’ we answer: where should a ministers parts be exercised, if not in the pulpit or the church, and in catechizing, in private baptism and communion, and in the visitation of the sick? Their work also is such as a school-boy may do as well as they, their ignorance having the same cloak, as in public.
If it be said that ‘a minister’s work is not to show his parts,’ we answer: But his ministerial work is to show men their sins, and to preach the wonderful mysteries of the Gospel to help men to search and understand the Scriptures, and to search and to know their hearts, and to know God in Christ, and to hope for the glory that is to be revealed: and fervently to pray for the success of his endeavors, and the blessings of the Gospel on the people, and cheerfully to praise God for his various benefits, which cannot be well done without abilities. A physician’s work is not to show his parts ultimately, but it is to do that for the cure of diseases which without parts he cannot do, and in the exercise of his parts, on which the issue much depends, to save men’s lives. The ostentation of his good works is not the work of a good Christian: and yet he must so let his light shine before men that they may see his good works and glorify God. And undeniable experience tells us that God ordinarily proportions the success and blessing to the skill and holiness and diligence of the instruments, and blesses not the labors of ignorant, ungodly drones, as He does the labors of able faithful ministers. And also that the readiest way to bring the Gospel into contempt into the world, and cause all religion to dwindle away into formality first, and then to barbarism and brutishness, is to let in an ignorant, idle, vicious ministry that will become the people’s scorn: Yea, this is the way to extirpate Christianity out of any country in the world, which is decaying a pace when men grow ignorant of the nature and reasons of it and unexperienced in its power and delightful fruits, and when the teachers themselves grow unable to defend it.
And we must add, that whatsoever can be expected duly to affect the heart, must keep the intellect, and all the faculties awake in diligent attention and exercise: And in the use of a form, which we have frequently heard and read, the faculties are not so necessitated and urged to attention, and serious exercise, as they be when from our own understanding we are set about the natural work of representing to others what we discern and feel. Man’s mind is naturally slothful and will take its ease, and remit its seriousness longer than it is urged by necessity, or drawn out by delight, when we know beforehand that we have no more to do, but read a prayer, or homily, we shall ordinarily be in danger of letting our minds go another way and think of other matters, and be senseless of the work in hand. Though he is but an hypocrite that is carried on by no greater motive than man’s observation and approbation, yet is it a help not to be despised when even a necessity of avoiding just shame with men shall necessarily awake our invention and all our faculties to the work, and be a concurrent help with spiritual motives.
And common experience tells us that the best are apt to lose a great deal of their affection by the constant use of the same words or forms; Let the same sermon be preached an hundred times over, and try whether an hundred for one will not be much less moved by it than they were at first. It is not only the common corruption of our nature, but somewhat of innocent infirmity that is the cause of this. And man must cease to be man, or to be mortal, before it will be otherwise; so that the nature of the thing, and the common experience of our own dispositions, and of the effect on others assures us that understanding serious godliness is like to be extinguished if only forms be allowed in the Church, on pretense of extinguishing errors and divisions:
And though we have concurred to offer you our more corrected nepenthes, yet must we before God and men protest against the dose of opium which you here prescribe or wish for as that which plainly tends to cure the disease by the extinguishing of life, and to unite us all in a dead religion. And when the prayers that avail must be effectual and fervent, Jam. 5:16, and God will be worshipped in spirit and truth, and more regards the frame of the heart than the comeliness of expression, we have no reason to be taken with anything that pretends to help the tongue, while we are sure it ordinarily hurts the heart: And it is not the affirmations of any men in the world persuading us of the harmlessness of such a course that can so far unman us as to make us disbelieve both our own experience and common observation of the effect on others.
Yet we confess that some forms have their laudable use to cure that error and vice that lies on the other extreme. And might we but sometimes have the liberty to interpose such words as are needful to call home and quicken attention and affection, we should think that a convenient conjunction of both, might be a well-tempered means to the common constitutions of most. But still we see the world will run into extremes, whatever be said or done to hinder it. It is but lately that we were put to it, against one extreme, to defend the lawfulness of a form of liturgy, now the other extreme it troubles us, that we are forced against you, even such as you, to defend the use of such prayers of the pastors of the churches as are necessarily varied according to subjects and occasions, while you would have no prayer at all in the Church but such prescribed forms.
And why may we not add that whoever makes the forms imposed on us, if he use them, is guilty as well as we of praying according to his private conceptions? And that we never said it proved from Scripture that Christ appointed any to such an office as to make prayers for other pastors and Churches to offer up to God: and that this being none of the work of the apostolic or common ministerial office in the primitive Church, is no work of any office of divine institution.”
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pp. 71-76
“[Bishops:] ‘This makes the liturgy void, if every, minister may put in and leave out all at his discretion.’
Reply: You mistake us: we speak not of putting in and leaving out of the Liturgy, but of having leave to intermix some exhortations or prayers besides, to take off the deadness which will follow if there be nothing but the stinted forms; we would avoid both the extreme that would have no forms and the contrary extremes that would have nothing but forms; But if we can have nothing but extremes, there’s no remedy; its not our fault. And this moderation and mixture which we move for is so far from making all the Liturgy void, that it will do very much to make it attain its end and would heal much of the distemper which it occasions, and consequently would do much to preserve the reputation of it.
As for instance, if besides the forms in the Liturgy, the minister might at baptism, the Lord’s Supper, marriage, etc. interpose some suitable exhortation or prayer upon special occasion when he finds it needful. Should you deny this at the visitation of the sick, it would seem strange, and why may it not be granted at other times: It is a matter of far greater trouble to us that you would deny us and all ministers the liberty of using any other prayers besides the Liturgy than that you impose these.
‘The gift or rather spirit of prayer consists in the inward graces of the spirit, not in ex tempore expressions, which any man of natural parts, having a voluable tongue and audacity, may attain to without any special gift.’
Reply: All inward graces of the spirit are not properly called the spirit of prayer, nor is the spirit of prayer that gift of prayer which we speak of; Nor did we call it by the name of a special gift, nor did we deny that ordinary men of natural parts and voluable tongues may attain it [the gift of prayer]; but yet we humbly conceive that as there is a gift of preaching, so also of prayer, which God bestows in the use of means, diversified much according to men’s natural parts, and their diligence, as other acquired abilities are, but also much depending on that grace that is indeed special, which makes men love and relish the holy subjects of such spiritual studies and the holy exercise of those graces that are the soul of prayer, and consequently making men follow on such exercises with delight and diligence and therefore with success; and also God is free in giving or denying his blessing to man’s endeavors.
If you think there be no gift of preaching, you will too dishonorably level the ministry: If reading be all the gift of prayer or preaching, there needs no great understanding or learning to it. Nor should cobblers and tinkers be so unfit men for ministers as they are thought; Nor would the reason be very apparent why a woman might not speak by preaching or praying in the Church.
‘But if there be any such gift as is pretended, it is to be subject to the prophets, and to the order of the Church.’
Reply: The text speaks (as Dr. Hammond well shows) of a subjection to that prophet himself who was the speaker; Inspiration excluded not the prudent exercise of reason; But it is a strange ordering that totally excludes the thing ordered. The gift of preaching (as distinct from reading) is to be orderly and with due subjection exercised, but not to be on that pretense extinguished and cast out of the Church: And indeed if you should command it, you are not to be obeyed, whatever we suffer; and why then should the gift of prayer (distinct from reading) be cast out.
‘The mischiefs that come by idle, impertinent, ridiculous, sometimes seditious, impious and blasphemous expressions under pretense of the gift, to the dishonor of God and scorn of religion, being far greater than the pretended good of exercising the gift: It is fit that they who desire such liberty in public devotions should first give the Church security that no private opinions should be put into their prayers, as is desired in the first proposal, and that nothing contrary to the Faith should be uttered before God or offered up to Him in the Church.’
Reply: The mischiefs which you pretend are inconveniencies attending human imperfection, which you would cure with a mischief; Your argument from the abuse against the use is a palpable fallacy, which cast out physicians in some countries, and rooted up vines in others, and condemns the reading of the Scriptures in a known tongue among the Papists.
If the apostles (that complained then so much of divisions and preaching false doctrines, and in envy and strife, etc.) had thought the way of cure had been in sending ministers about the world with a prayer-book and sermon-book, and to have tied them only to read either one or both of these, no doubt but they would have been so regardful of the Church as to have composed such a prayer-book or sermon-book themselves and not left us to the uncertainties of an authority not-infallible, nor to the divisions that follow the impositions of a questionable power or that which unquestionably is not universal and therefore can procure no universal concord.
If one man among you draw up a form of prayer, it is his single conception: And why a man as learned and able may not be trusted to conceive a prayer for the use of a single congregation without the dangers mentioned by you, as one man to conceive a prayer for all the churches in a diocess or a nation? we know not; These words ‘That the mischief is greater than the pretended good’ seem to express an unjust accusation of ordinary conceived prayer and a great undervaluing of the benefits: If you would intimate that the crimes expressed by you are ordinarily found in ministers’ prayers, we that hear so much more frequently than you must profess we have not found it so (allowing men their different measures of exactness, as you have even in writing). Nay to the praise of God we must say that multitudes of private men can ordinarily pray without any such imperfection as should nauseate a sober person, and with such seriousness and aptness of expression as is greatly to the benefit and comfort of ourselves when we join with them;
And if such general accusations may serve in a matter of public and common fact, there is no way for the justification of the innocent. And that it is no such common guilt, will seem more probable to them that consider that such conceived prayers, both prepared and extemperate, have been ordinarily used in the pulpits in England and Scotland before our days till now, and there has been power enough in the bishops and others before the wars to punish those that speak ridiculously, seditiously, impiously or blasphemously; And yet so few are the instances (even when jealousy was most busy) of ministers punished, or once accused of any such fault in prayer as that we find it not easy to remember any considerable number of them: There being great numbers punished for not reading the Book, for playing on the Lord’s Day’s or for preaching too oft and such like, for one that was ever questioned for such kind of praying. And the former showed that it was not for want of will to be severe that they spared them as to the latter. And if it be but few that are guilty of any intolerable faults of that nature in their prayers, we hope you will not go on to believe that the mischiefs that come by the failings of those few are far greater than the benefit of conceived prayer by all others.
We presume not to make our experiences the measure of yours or of other men’s. You may tell us what does most good or hurt to yourselves, and those that have so communicated their experiences to you; But we also may speak our own, and theirs that have discovered them to us. And we must seriously profess that we have found far more benefit to our selves and to our congregations (as far as our conference and converse with them, and our observation of the effects allows us to discern) by conceived prayers than by the Common-Prayer-book. We find that the benefit of conceived prayer is to keep the mind in serious employment and to awaken the affections and to make us fervent and importunate. And the inconvenience is that some weak men are apt as in preaching and conference, so in prayer to show their weakness by some unapt expressions or disorder, which is an evil no way to be compared with the forementioned good, considering that it is but in the weak and that if that weakness be so great as to require it, forms may be imposed on those few without imposing them on all for their sakes (as we force not all to use spectacles or crutches because some are purblind or lame), and considering that God hears not prayers for the rhetoric and handsome cadencies, and neatness of expression, but will bear more with some incuriosity of words (which yet we plead not for) than with an hypocritical, formal heartless, lip-service; For He knoweth the meaning of the Spirit even in the groans, which are not uttered in words; And for the Common-Prayer our observation tells us that though some can use it judiciously, seriously, and we doubt not profitably, yet as to the most of the vulgar, it occasions a relaxing of their attention and intention, and a lazy taking up with a corpse or image of devotion, even the service of the lips, while the heart is little sensible of what is said. And had we not known it we should have thought it incredible how utterly ignorant abundance are of the sense of the words which they hear and repeat themselves from day to day, even about Christ Himself and the essentials of Christianity. It is wonderful to us to observe that rational creatures can so commonly separate the words from all the sense and life, so great a help or hinderance even to the understanding is the awakening or not awakening of the affections about the things of God.
And we have already showed you many unfit expressions in the Common-Prayerbook, especially in the epistles and Gospels, through the faultiness of your translations, as Eph. 3:15, ‘Father of all,’ that is called, ‘Father in Heaven and earth’; and that ‘Christ was found in his apparel as a man,’ that ‘Mount Sinai is Agar in Arabia, and borders upon the city now called Jerusalem,’ Gal. 4:25. ‘This is the sixth month, which is called barren,’ Lk. 1. ‘And when men be drunk,’ Jn. 2, with many such like, which are parts of your public worship; And would you have us hence conclude that the mischiefs of such expressions are worse than all the benefits of that worship? And yet there is this difference in the cases, that weak and rash ministers were but here and there one; but the Common-Prayer is the service of every Church, and every day had we heard any in extemporary prayer use such unmeet expressions, we should have thought him worthy of sharp reprehension, yea though he had been of the younger or weaker sort; Diverse other unfit expressions are mentioned in the exceptions of the late archbishop of York and primate of Ireland, and others (before spoken of). And there is much in the prejudice or diseased curiosity of some hearers to make words seem idle, impertinent or ridiculous which are not so (and which perhaps they understand not). Some thought so of the inserting in the late Prayer-book the private opinion of the souls departed praying for us; and our praying for the benefit of their prayers.
As for the security which you call for, though (as is showed) you have given us none at all against such errors in your forms, yet we have before showed you that you have as much as among imperfect men can be expected: The same that you have, that physicians shall not murder men, and that lawyers and judges shall not undo men, and that your pilot shall not cast away the ship, you have the power in your hands of taking or refusing as they please or displease you, and of judging them by a known law for their proved miscarriages according to the quality of them and what would you have more.
‘To prevent which mischief, the former ages know no better way than to forbid any prayers in public but such as were prescribed by public authority: Council of Carthage, canon 106; Milan, canon 12.’
Reply: To what you allege out of two councils, we answer:
1. The acts of more venerable councils are not now at all observed (as Nicea 1, canon last etc.) nor many of these same which you cite.
2. The Scripture and the constant practice of the more ancient Church allowed what they forbid.
3. Even these canons show that then the Churches thought not our Liturgy to be necessary to their concord: Nor indeed had then any such form imposed on all, or many Churches to that end. For the canon of Council of Carthage (we suppose you meant Council 3, canon 23) mentions prayers even at the altar and allows any man to describe and use his own prayers, so he do but first, cum instructionibus fratribus eas conferre, ‘Take advice about them with the abler brethren.’ If there had been a stated form before imposed on the Churches, what room could there be for this course. And even this much seems but a caution made newly upon some late abuse of prayer. The same we may say of Council Male, canon 12: If they were but a prudentioribus tractata, vel comprobata in Synodo, new prayers might by any man at any time be brought in, which shows they had no such stated public liturgy as is now pleaded for. And even this seems occasioned by Pelagianism, which by this caution they would keep out.”
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1800’s
Ryle, J.C.
‘Prayer’ in Practical Religion (Evangelical Press), pp. 97-98
“As to praying a written prayer out of a book, it is a habit I cannot commend. If we can tell our doctors the state of our bodies without a book, we ought to be able to tell the state of our souls to God. I have no objection to a man using crutches, when he is first recovering from a broken limb. It is better to use crutches than not to walk at all. But if I saw him on crutches all his life, I would not consider it a matter for praise. I would like to see him strong enough to throw his crutches away.”
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