More Work for Priests, Arguments
9 Other Arguments to prove that all set formes of prayer to be used for prayer are unlawfull.
1. WE finde that all the holy men of God according to their present need & occasion used to pray in the spirit, through the helpe of the Holy Ghost, which God hath shed in the hearts of all his Children, without reading or saying by rote any nūber of words; and for this we have plentifull Examples in Abraham, Isaak, Iacob, &c.
2. Not any prescript Leiturgy can possibly be an ordinance of Christ, because the Church without it may perfectly and entirely worship God, I say performe all the parts of holy and spirituall worship, & this appeares by the constant and generall practice of all the primitive Churches, who truly worshipped the Lord many yeares, before any such read stinted service was devised or imposed.
3. This external meanes and manner of worshipping God in prayer, is no where found in the written word (by the prescript whereof he is to be worshipped) whatsoever the Iewes Fable of Ezra, or the Papists of S. Iames or S. Peter: Yea I doe to the contrarie affirme, that it did not seem good to the Apostles the last penmen of the Holy Ghost, that any certaine formes should be repeated or read out of a prayer booke. For if it had, they would have given commandment to the Churches for the practice thereof:
4. Reading of prayer in the act of prayer, is directly contrary to that act and nature of prayer; For in prayer we doe poure out matter: to weet, the holy conceptions of our minde, from within to without: that is from the heart to God. On the contrarie in reading we doe receive and admitt matter from without to within; that is from the booke into our heart; Ergo, &c.
5. The stinted and devised formes doe quench the spirit of prayer, and this appeares in that men are so strictly tyed unto them as till they stint be out the spirit which the Lord gives his children, may not suggest one thought or word otherwise; Neither when that is out any more, then what next followes, in the prescribed prayers; and this is contrary to 1 Cor. 12, 7.
6. We finde it promised, that under the Gospell the spirit should be plentifully poured out, which he dayly graciously performeth in furnishing his children with spiritual gifts, who accordinglie pray (or at least all may) not with prescript words, but with such as the spirit gives them utterance, God preparing their heart, and bending his eare.
7. The truth brings forth no absurditie; but this doth;Rom. 8.26. For Example, the spirit sayth the Apostle (speaking of all Christians) helpeth our infirmities, for we know not what to pray as we ought: Yes Paul with your leave right well, for we have in our Leiturgie what wee ought to pray word for word; and these things we can aske whether the spirit be present or no.
8. As it were a ridiculous thing for a Child, when he should aske of his Father bread, fish, or any other thing, to read it to him out of a paper; So is it, for the Children of God, to read unto God their Requests, even a most foolish and riduculous thing.
9. As the reasons published to the world, against the reading of the Apocrypha bookes in Churches, will serve as much and as well to condemne all devised and imposed formes of prayer; So likewise the arguments brought against kneeling before the bread and wine in the act of receiving, will prove that to fall downe before the common prayer booke, is every way as superstitious & sinfull a thing. And so much the reader shall finde certaine, if he will indifferently compare the things together.
FINIS.
End of the text · John Greenwood, More Work for Priests (1640)