Ch. xxv. 3. BOOK V is a Court beautified with the presence of celestial powers; that there we stand, we pray, we sound forth hymns unto God, having his Angels intermingled as our associates*; and that with reference hereunto the Apostle doth require so great care to be had of decency for the Angels' saket; how can we come to the house of prayer, and not be moved with the very glory of the place itself, so to frame our affections praying, as doth best beseem them, whose suits the Almighty doth there sit to hear, and his Angels attend to further! When this was ingrafted in the minds of men, there needed no penal statutes to draw them unto public prayer. The warning sound was no sooner heard, but the churches were presently filled, the pavements covered with bodies prostrate. and washed with their tears of devout joy. [3] And as the place of public prayer is a circumstance in the outward form thereof, which hath moment to help devotion; so the person much more with whom the people of God do join themselves in this action, as with him that standeth and speaketh in the presence of God for them. The authority of his place, the fervour of his zeal, the piety and gravity of his whole behaviour must needs exceedingly both grace and set forward the service he doth. The authority of his calling is a furtherance, because if God have so far received him into favour, as to impose upon him by the hands of men that office of blessing the people in his name, and making intercession to him in theirs; which office he hath sanctified with his own most gracious promise }}, and ratified that promise by manifest actual performance thereof, when¶ others before in like place have done the same; is not his very ordination a seal as it were to us, that the selfsame divine love, which hath chosen the instrument to work with, will by that instrument effect the thing whereto he ordained it, in blessing his people and accepting the Ch. xxv. 4. prayers which his servant offereth up unto God for them? It BOOK V. was in this respect a comfortable title which the ancients used to give unto God's ministers, terming them usually God's most beloved, which were ordained to procure by their prayers his love and favour towards all. Again, if there be not zeal and fervency in him which pro-!{' poseth for the rest those suits and supplications which they by their joyful acclamations must ratify; if he praise not God with all his might; if he pour not out his soul in prayer; if he take not their causes to heart, or speak not as Moses, Daniel, and Ezra did for their people: how should there be but in them frozen coldness, when his affections seem benumbed from whom theirs should take fire? Virtue and godliness of life are required at the hands of the minister of God, not only in that he is to teach and to instruct the people, who for the most part are rather led away by the ill example, than directed aright by the wholesome instruction of them, whose life swerveth from the rule of their own doctrine; but also much more in regard of this other part of his function; whether we respect the weakness of the people, apt to loathe and abhor the sanctuary when they which perform the service thereof are such as the sons of Eli were; or else consider the inclination of God himself, who requireth the lifting up of pure hands in prayer †, and hath given the world plainly to understand that the wicked although they cry shall not be heard ‡. They are no fit supplicants to seek his mercy in behalf of others, whose own unrepented sins provoke his just indignation. Let thy Priests therefore, O Lord, be evermore clothed with righteousness, that thy saints may thereby with more devotion rejoice and sing §. [4] But of all helps for due performance of this service the greatest is that very set and standing order itself, which framed with common advice, hath both for matter and form prescribed whatsoever is herein publicly done. No doubt from God it hath proceeded, and by us it must be acknowledged a work of his singular care and providence, that the [Oeopleorárovs. Justin.] Cod. lib. i. tit. 3. de Episc. et Cler. 43 et 44, sæpe. t1 Tim. ii. 8. John ix. 31; Jer. xi. 11; § Psalm cxxxii. 9. Ch. xxv. 5. xxvi. 1, 2. 516 Precedents in Scripture for a set Form of Prayer. BOOK V. Church hath evermore held a prescript form of common prayer, although not in all things every where the same, yet for the most part retaining still the same analogy. So that if the liturgies of all ancient churches throughout the world be compared amongst themselves, it may be easily perceived they had all one original mould, and that the public prayers of the people of God in churches thoroughly settled did never use to be voluntary dictates proceeding from any man's extemporal wit*. Of them which like not to have any set Form of Common Prayer. [5] To him which considereth the grievous and scandalous inconveniences whereunto they make themselves daily subject, with whom any blind and secret corner is judged a fit house of common prayer; the manifold confusions which they fall into where every man's private spirit and gift (as they term it) is the only Bishop that ordaineth him to this ministry; the irksome deformities whereby through endless and senseless effusions of indigested prayers they oftentimes disgrace in most unsufferable manner the worthiest part of Christian duty towards God, who herein are subject to no certain order, but pray both what and how they list: to him I say which weigheth duly all these things the reasons cannot be obscure, why God doth in public prayer so much respect the solemnity of places where†, the authority and calling of persons by whom‡, and the precise appointment even with what words or sentences his name should be called on amongst his people §. XXVI. No man hath hitherto been so impious as plainly and directly to condemn prayer. The best stratagem that Satan hath, who knoweth his kingdom to be no one way more shaken than by the public devout prayers of God's Church, is by traducing the form and manner of them to bring them into contempt, and so to shake the force of all men's devotion towards them. From this and from no other forge hath proceeded a strange conceit, that to serve God with any set form of common prayer is superstitious. [2.] As though God himself did not frame to his Priests the very speech wherewith they were charged to bless the [See Palmer's Orig. Lit.] † 2 Chron. vi. 20. ↑ Joel ii. 17. Ch. xxvi. 2. people; or as if our Lord, even of purpose to prevent this BOOK V. fancy of extemporal and voluntary prayers, had not left us of his own framing one, which might both remain as a part of the church liturgy, and serve as a pattern whereby to frame all other prayers with efficacy, yet without superfluity of words. If prayers were no otherwise accepted of God" than being conceived always new, according to the exigence of present occasions; if it be right to judge him by our own bellies, and to imagine that he doth loathe to have the selfsame supplications often iterated, even as we do to be every day fed without alteration or change of diet; if prayers be actions which ought to waste away themselves in the making; if being made to remain that they may be resumed and used again as prayers, they be but instruments of superstition : surely we cannot excuse Moses, who gave such occasion of scandal to the world, by not being contented to praise the name of Almighty God according to the usual naked simplicity of God's Spirit for that admirable victory given them against Pharaoh, unless so dangerous a precedent were left for the casting of prayers into certain poetical moulds, and for the framing of prayers which might be repeated often, although they never had again the same occasions which brought them forth at the first. For that very hymn of Moses grew afterwards to be a part of the ordinary Jewish liturgy; nor only that, but sundry other sithence invented. Their books of common prayer contained partly hymns taken out of the holy Scripture, partly benedictions, thanksgivings, supplications, penned by such as have been from time to time the governors of that synagogue. These they sorted into their several times and places, some to begin the service of God with, and some to end, some to go before, and some to follow, and some to be interlaced between the divine readings of the Law and Prophets. Unto their custom of finishing the Passover with certain Psalms, there is not any thing more probable, than that the Holy Evangelist doth evidently allude saying, That after the cup delivered by our Saviour unto his apostles, "they sung t," and went forth to the mount of Olives. *Num. vi. 23. † Matt. xxvi. 30. 'Yμvnoavres, having sung the Psalms which were usual at that Feast, those Psalms BOOK V. Ch. xxvi. 3. xxvii. 1. Of them who allowing a Prayer, yet allow not ours. 518 A Liturgy proposed by the Puritans. [3] As the Jews had their songs of Moses and David and the rest, so the Church of Christ from the very beginning hath both used the same, and besides them other of like nature, the song of the Virgin Mary, the song of Zachary, the song of Simeon, such hymns as the Apostle doth often speak of saying, "I will pray and sing with the Spirit*:" again, "in psalms, hymns, and songs, making melody unto the Lord, and that heartily +." Hymns and psalms are such kinds of prayer as are not wont to be conceived upon a sudden, but are framed by meditation beforehand, or else by prophetical illumination are inspired, as at that time it appeareth they were when God by extraordinary gifts of the Spirit enabled men to all parts of service necessary for the edifying of his Church. XXVII. Now albeit the Admonitioners did seem at the set Form of first to allow no prescript form of prayer at all, but thought it the best that their minister should always be left at liberty to pray as his own discretion did serve; yet because this opinion upon better advice they afterwards retracted, their defender and his associates have sithence proposed to the world a form such as themselves like, and to shew their dislike of ours, have taken against it those exceptions, which whosoever doth measure by number, must needs be greatly out of love with a thing that hath so many faults; whosoever by weight, cannot choose but esteem very highly of that, wherein the wit of so scrupulous adversaries hath not hitherto observed any defect which themselves can seriously think to be of moment. "Gross errors and manifest impiety" they grant we have "taken away." Yet many things in it they say are amiss; many § instances they give of things in our common prayer not agreeable as they pretend with the word of God. It hath in their eye too great affinity with the form continuing to the end of the 118th. [T. C. i. 102. al. 131.] |