Under Construction
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Order of Contents
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Introduction
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References
Leishman, Ritual of the Church, top of p. 329
Book of Common Order, 1564, Cumming, p. 1
John Knox’s Genevan Liturgy, Maxwell, p. 85
Samuel Rutherford, Divine Right of Church Government, p. 6
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Quotes
John Owen
‘A Short Catechism on Worship’ 1667
“Q 17. Which are the principal institutions of the Gospel to be observed in the worship of God?
A. (1.) The calling, gathering and settling of churches with their officers, as the seat and subject of all other solemn instituted worship. (2.) Prayer with thanksgiving. (3.) Singing of Psalms. (4.) Preaching the Word. (5.) Administration of the Sacraments of Baptism, and the Supper of the Lord. (6.) Discipline and rule of the Church collected and settled; most of which have also sundry particular duties relating unto them, and subservient unto their due observation.”
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Sinclair Ferguson
Foreword, p. xx in ed. Gibson & Earngey, Reformation Worship: Liturgies from the Past for the Present (New Growth, 2018)
“In my childhood, virtually every service of worship began with the same words: ‘Let us worship God.'”
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On Westminster
The Form of Presbyterial Church Government never speaks of a call to worship being a function of the pastor’s office, though it does of the Benediction.
Westminster Directory for Public Worship
Of the Assembling of the Congregation
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The congregation being assembled, the minister, after solemn calling on them to the worshipping of the great name of God, is to begin with prayer…
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Concerning the Observation of Days of Publick Thanksgiving
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The day being come, and the congregation (after private preparations) being assembled, the minister is to begin with a word of exhortation, to stir up the people to the duty for which they are met, and with a short prayer for God’s assistance and blessing (as at other conventions for publick worship)…
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On the Independents
Quote
Robert Baillie
A Dissuasive from the Errors of the Time, wherein the Tenets of the Principal Sects, Especially of the Independents, are Drawn Together in One Map (1645), ch. 6, p. 118
“In the ordering of the parts of their worship after Mr. [John] Cotton’s invention, they take it for an apostolic injunction to begin first of all with a large solemn prayer for the king and the Church, applying the words of the apostle against the clear scope of the text and all the writers which I have consulted upon it, to this very method of the ordinances and to this matter of the first prayer.”
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