BOOK V. Ch. xxxv, I. The number of our prayers things, and our oft re hearsing of the Lord's Prayer. 152 66 Puritan Ways of shortening the Liturgy. thy prince. Will he be content, or accept thy person? "saith the Lord of hosts. Cursed be the deceiver which "hath in his flock a male, and having made a vow sacrificeth "unto the Lord a corrupt thing. For I am a great king, "saith the Lord of hosts." Should we hereupon frame a rule that what form of speech or behaviour soever is fit for suitors in a prince's court, the same and no other beseemeth us in our prayers to Almighty God? XXXV. But in vain we labour to persuade them that any for earthly thing can take away the tediousness of prayer, except it be brought to the very same both measure and form which themselves assign. Whatsoever therefore our liturgy hath more than theirs, under one devised pretence or other they cut it off. We have of prayers for earthly things in their opinion too great a number; so oft to rehearse the Lord's Prayer in so small a time is as they think a loss of time; the people's praying after the minister they say both wasteth time, and also maketh an unpleasant sound; the Psalms they would not have to be made (as they are) a part of our common prayer, nor to be sung or said by turns, nor such music to be used with them; those evangelical hymns they allow not to stand in our liturgy; the Litany, the Creed of Athanasius, the sentence of glory wherewith we use to conclude psalms, these things they cancel, as having been in 66 "doth not there give a prescript "form of prayer whereunto he "bindeth us: but giveth us a rule "and square to frame all our prayers "by. I know it is necessary to pray, " and pray often. I know also that "in a few words it is impossible for any man to frame so pithy a prayer " and I confess that the Church "doth well in concluding their 4 T. C. lib.i. p. 136. [107.] "I can 5 T. C. lib. i. p. 219. [176.] "What a reason is this, we must repeat the Lord's Prayer often"times, therefore oftentimes in half "an hour, and one on the neck of another!... Our Saviour Christ prayers with the Lord's Prayer: "but I stand upon this, that there "is no necessity laid upon us to use these very words and no "more." . Prayers for things earthly; their spiritual Use. 153 Ch. xxxv. 2. stituted in regard of occasions peculiar to the times of old, and BOOK V. as being therefore now superfluous. [2.] Touching prayers for things earthly, we ought not to think that the Church hath set down so many of them without cause. They peradventure, which find this fault, are of the same affection with Solomon, so that if God should offer to grant them whatsoever they ask, they would neither crave riches, nor length of days7, nor yet victory over their enemies, but only an understanding heart: for which cause themselves having eagles' wings, are offended to see others fly so near the ground. But the tender kindness of the Church of God it very well beseemeth to help the weaker sort, which are by so great odds more in number, although some few of the perfecter and stronger may be therewith for a time displeased. Ignorant we are not, that of such as resorted to our Saviour Christ being present on earth, there came not any unto him with better success for the benefit of their souls' everlasting happiness, than they whose bodily necessities gave them the first occasion to seek relief, where they saw willingness and ability of doing every way good unto all. The graces of the Spirit are much more precious than worldly benefits; our ghostly evils of greater importance than any harm which the body feeleth. Therefore our desires to heavenward should both in measure and number no less exceed than their glorious object doth every way excel in value. These things are true and plain in the eye of a perfect judgment. But yet it must be withal considered, that the greatest part of the world are they which be farthest from perfection. Such being better able by sense to discern the wants of this present life, than by spiritual capacity to apprehend things above sense, which tend to their happiness in the world to come, are in that respect the more apt to apply their minds even with hearty affection and zeal at the least unto those branches of public prayer, wherein their own particular is moved. And by this mean there stealeth upon them a double benefit: first because that good affection, which things of smaller account have once set on work, is by so much the more easily raised higher; and secondly in that the very [1 Kings iii. 11.] 7 Ch. xxxv. 3. 154 Iteration of the Lord's Prayer; prescribed by Himself. BOOK V. custom of seeking so particular aid and relief at the hands of God, doth by a secret contradiction withdraw them from endeavouring to help themselves by those wicked shifts which they know can never have his allowance, whose assistance their prayer seeketh. These multiplied petitions of worldly things in prayer have therefore, besides their direct use, a service, whereby the Church underhand, through a kind of heavenly fraud, taketh therewith the souls of men as with certain baits 8. If then their calculation be true (for so they reckon) that a full third of our prayers be allotted unto earthly benefits, for which our Saviour in his platform hath appointed but one petition amongst seven, the difference is without any great disagreement; we respecting what men are, and doing that which is meet in regard of the common imperfection; our Lord contrariwise proposing the most absolute proportion that can be in men's desires, the very highest mark whereat we are able to aim. [3] For which cause also our custom is both to place it in the front of our prayers as a guide, and to add it in the end of some principal limbs or parts as a complement which fully perfecteth whatsoever may be defective in the rest. Twice we rehearse it ordinarily, and oftener as occasion requireth more solemnity or length in the form of divine service; not mistrusting, till these new curiosities sprang up, that ever any man would think our labour herein mispent, the time wastefully consumed, and the office itself made worse by so repeating that which otherwise would more hardly be made familiar to the simpler sort; for the good of whose souls there is not Iteration of the Lord's Prayer: Primitive Usage. 155 in Christian religion any thing of like continual use and force BOOK V. throughout every hour and moment of their whole lives. I mean not only because prayer, but because this very prayer, is of such efficacy and necessity. For that our Saviour did but set men a bare example how to contrive or devise prayers of their own, and no way bind them to use this, is no doubt an error. John the Baptist's disciples which had been always brought up in the bosom of God's Church from the time of their first infancy till they came to the school of John, were not so brutish that they could be ignorant how to call upon the name of God; but of their master they had received a form of prayer amongst themselves, which form none did use saving his disciples, so that by it as by a mark of special difference they were known from others. And of this the Apostles having taken notice, they request that as John had taught his, so Christ would likewise teach them to pray 10. Tertullian and St. Augustine 11 do for that cause term it Orationem legitimam, the Prayer which Christ's own law hath tied his Church to use in the same prescript form of words wherewith he himself did deliver it; and therefore what part of the world soever we fall into, if Christian religion have been there received, the ordinary use of this very prayer hath with equal continuance accompanied the same as one of the principal and most material duties of honour done to Jesus Christ. "Seeing that we have" (saith St. Cyprian) "an Advocate with "the Father for our sins, when we that have sinned come to "seek for pardon, let us allege unto God the words which our "Advocate hath taught. For sith his promise is our plain warrant, that in his name what we ask we shall receive, must we not needs much the rather obtain that for which we sue "if not only his name do countenance but also his speech 66 66 Though men should speak with the tongues of Angels, yet Ch. xxxv. 3. Ch.xxxvi. I. 156 Repetition after the Minister in Confession : BOOK V. words so pleasing to the ears of God as those which the Son of God himself hath composed were not possible for men to frame. He therefore which made us to live hath also taught us to pray, to the end that speaking unto the Father in the Son's own prescript form without scholy or gloss of ours, we may be sure that we utter nothing which God will either disallow or deny. Other prayers we use many besides this, and this oftener than any other; although not tied so to do by any commandment of Scripture, yet moved with such considerations as have been before set down: the causeless dislike whereof which others have conceived, is no sufficient reason for us as much as once to forbear in any place a thing which uttered with true devotion and zeal of heart affordeth to God himself that glory, that aid to the weakest sort of men, to the most perfect that solid comfort which is unspeakable. The people's saying after XXXVI. With our Lord's Prayer they would find no the Minister. fault, so that they might persuade us to use it before or after sermons only (because so their manner is) and not (as all Christian people have been of old accustomed) insert it so often into the liturgy. But the people's custom to repeat any thing after the minister, they utterly mislike 13. Twice we appoint that the words 14 which the minister first pronounceth, the whole congregation shall repeat after him. As first in the public confession of sins, and again in rehearsal of our Lord's Prayer presently after the blessed Sacrament of his 13 Another fault is that all the people are appointed in divers places "to say after the minister, whereby "not only the time is uprofitably "wasted, and a confused noise of "the people one speaking after ano"ther caused, but an opinion bred « in their heads that those only be « their prayers which they pronounce « with their own mouths after the « minister, otherwise than the order " which is left to the Church doth bear, 1 Cor. xiv. 16, and otherwise "than Justin Martyr sheweth the "custom of the churches to have "been in his time." T. C. lib. i. p. 139. [al. 109.] and lib. iii. p. 211, 212, 213. [The passage in St.Justin Martyr is not specified, but if he mean p. 97. D. Paris. 1636, (ouvreλέσαντος τὰς εὐχὰς καὶ τὴν εὐχαριστίαν, πᾶς ὁ παρὼν λαὸς ἐπεύφημεί λέγων, dunv) this relates to the consecration of the Eucharist. In p. 98. E. the form of common prayer on Sundays is described; first the Lessons, then the Sermon, ἔπειτα ἀνιστάμεθα ΚΟΙΝΗ ΠΑΝΤΕΣ, καὶ εὐχὰς πέμπου μεν καὶ, ὡς προέφημεν, παυσαμένων ἡμῶν τῆς εὐχῆς, ἄρτος προσφέρεται καὶ οἶνος καὶ ὕδωρ καὶ ὁ προέστως εὐχὰς ὁμοίως καὶ εὐχαριστίας ὁσὴ δύναμις αὐτῷ ἀναπέμπει, καὶ ὁ λαὸς éπevonμeî λéywv Tò, auηv. The "KOĽVη "Távтes," as Whitgift observes, Def. 502, seems to favour the received practice.] 66 14 [The same rule at the review after the Restoration was extended to the Lord's Prayer, wheresoever it is used in divine service.] |