to the Will of God to have Granted or Denied to us as shall seem most agreeable to His infinite Wisdom the Good things of this present Life and hungering and thirsting desires after Righteousness after those Divine Dispositions and Qualifications which are necessary to our being made meet for the Kingdom of Heaven In such things as these doth consist the Soul and Spirit of Prayer These are the Absolutely necessary and Essential ingredients thereof But Fourthly As for Words they are but a circumstantial part of Prayer and no farther necessary than as they tend to the more quickening our Affections exciting our Desires inlivening our Sense of the forementioned Objects and keeping our Minds fixed and intent And in publick Prayer or Prayer with others they are necessary to enable others to joyn with us But the Omniscient God understands the sense of our Souls the temper of our Spirits and the desires of our Hearts though no words be used for the expressing of them And always measures our Prayers by those not at all by these I say not at all by Words because if they flow from an honest Heart and a good disposition of Mind they cannot be so faulty as to make a Prayer unacceptable And therefore it is the same thing to God whether a good Sense and good Desires be from time to time expressed by the same or by variety of Words and Phrases And he who is affected as he ought to be in the use of a Form who hath such Desires and such a Sense as he ought to have as thousands of good Christians have hath as much the true Spirit of Prayer and as much of it too as he can have who hath the most notable Faculty at varying his Expressions And he who hath this Faculty but wants that Sense and those good Dispositions is notwithstanding utterly destitute of the Spirit of Prayer But it is incomparably most fit that there should be a Liturgy or Forms prescribed for the publick Worship of God for Prayer and Praising of God in the Church and for the celebration of the Holy Sacraments with the other Offices because the publick Worship of God ought always to be performed with the greatest Gravity and Solemnity possible But such a performance of Divine Worship can never be secured where Ministers are wholly left to their own Liberty and permitted to put up all the Confessions Petitions and Thanksgivings of the Congregation and to perform all the Offices in their own Arbitrary and Extemporary Expressions For though some Ministers who take this Liberty may pray excellently well when their heads are clear and they are in a good Temper yet I doubt there are very few who have always that Presence of Mind that Composedness of Thoughts and Constancy of Temper as not to be forced sometimes to use many Tautologies and indecent expressions But however the Church is never like to be provided with such Ministers as shall be able for the most part of them to keep themselves from great confusion in their conceived Prayers from bald and absurd phrases and from Nauseating their Auditory with repetitions of the same things fulâ—om sayings or lamentable misapplications of Texts of Scripture through over-much modesty or other infelicities of Temper in some and in others through ignorance or weakness of Natural parts either slowness of Invention or want of Judgment And besides there is this necessity of having a Liturgy that without one there is no rational way of perswading strangers to hold Communion with us Except we can shew them something which is acknowledged by common Agreement for a Form and Method of Divine Worship we cannot satisfie them what publick Service we perform to God it will then be so various that is as not alike in all places so neither at all times in the same places But to complete my Answer to the Question in hand Fifthly The affecting us with a profound Sense of the Majesty and Glorious perfections of the God we pray to and of our own Vileness and Unworthiness And a Submissive frame of Mind to the Divine Will Ardent Breathings after more of the Divine Image and Likeness And a lively Faith in the Power Wisdom and Goodness of God which are as I said the Substantial and Essential parts of Prayer all these we heartily and thankfully acknowledge to be the Gifts of the Spirit We own them to be so otherwise than all other good things which are every of them expressions of the Divine Bounty and consequently Gifts of the Spirit as He is one of the Persons of the Blessed Trinity But we profess to owe them to the more special operations and influences of the Holy Ghost And for the working and encrease of these all good Christians do daily crave the Spirits assistance Now I need not say that to endeavour to put a restraint upon the exercise of such Gifts as these is a most wicked invasion and violation of our Christian Liberty according to our own Notion of it But what we have discoursed concerning Prayer gives me occasion to add something of Preaching too and to shew also how far an ability for that performance is to be ascribed to the Holy Spirit or called one of his Gifts And consequently we may from hence be satisfied whether a Preacher of the Gospel is inâ—â—tled to such a Liberty in reference to Preaching as may not be limited by Auâ—hority or upon no accounts taken wholâ— from him without putting an affront upon the Holy Spirit First It is out of doubt that no man 〈◊〉 hath the Gift of Preaching in the demonstration of the Spirit and of Power in the sence that S. Paul and his fellow-Apostles had it For by the demonstration of the Spirit and of Power is meant those extraordinary Gifts of Speaking with Tongues Prophecy and Miracles accompanying their Preaching whereby they demonstrated the truth of the Doctrine preached by them And so Origen understands it in his Book against Celâ—us Secondly There is not the least ground to believe that any man hath now the Gift of Preaching by Inspiration or from the immediate Revelation of the Spirit Nor do any seriously pretend to it but wild Enthusiasts Brain-sick Melancholy and Hot-headed people who take their own Fancies and Whims and the products of an ungoverned imagination for Inspirations I say none but those who plainly discover themselves to be such do seriously pretend to this Gift because there have been and still are a company of Knaves in the World as is manifest by their actings who for the carrying on their corrupt and naughty designs pretend to that which they are conscious to themselves they have nothing of But sober and honest Preachers of the Gospel do profess to deliver nothing to their people but what they conceive to be long ago revealed But what they acknowledge they have with study and pains gathered from the Holy Scriptures either immediately or by plain consequence wherein are contained all things necessary
Persons who have been most zealous for the contrary opinion being forced to contradict it in their practice And for Orders sake to determine such things in their several Church-Administrations as are left perfectly undetermined in Scripture of which might be given very many instances notwithstanding their clamors against the Church of England upon this account as modest as she is in her Impositions Secondly This Notion of Christian Liberty is so great an infringment of the Liberty Christ hath left to Ecclesiastical Governours as not to leave them so much as it is certain the Governours of the Iewish Church was invested with who yet were bound up and determined in a very great number of Particulars Over and above the Multitude of Rites and Ceremonies which God himself did annex to the Substance of his Worship we read of not a few others that were added by Men. We have a large account of such in Maimonides in his Book De Cultu Divino and the Holy Scriptures themselves present us with diverse such without the least intimation of God's dislike of them a Summary of which is to be seen in several late Treatises I will onely instance in some few of the chief of them viz. King Solomon's Hallowing the middle part of the Temple for Sacrifices 1 Kings 8. 64. The celebrating of the Passover for fourteen days by King Hezekiahs order although God had commanded no more than half that number 2 Chron. 30. 23. The Yearly Feast of Purim Esther 9. 27. The set Hours of Prayer in the Temple Acts 3. 1. The Feast of Dedication ordained by the Iews 1 Maccab. 4. 29. in commemoration of the new Consecrating the Altar after Antiochus had prophaned it This Feast though God did not prescribe it was Honoured by Christ's own presence at it Iohn 10. 22 23. Several Alterations and particularly that of the Gesture in Eating the Passover The which Christ declared his Approbation of by his Conformity to them Matth. 26. 20. To these I shall only add those two known Rites of the Iews not commanded in the Law viz. That of joyning Baptism with Circumcision in admitting Proselytes and that of the Post-coenium or Feast after the Passover And these two our Saviour was so far from condemning upon the score of their being of Humane Institution that his two Great Sacraments received their rise from them The Texts which are chiefly urged to prove the Unlawfulness of bringing any thing into the Worship of God but what He hath himself prescribed are those in the Old Testament wherein God declareth his displeasure against some of the Israelites for doing those things which he commanded them not And one in the New but cited out of the Old where our Saviour reprehendeth the Pharisees for Teaching for Doctrines the Commandments of men Those Texts in the Old Testament are Lev. 10. 1. Deut. 17. 3. Ier. 7. 31. Chap. 19. 5. Chap. 32. 35. But I wonder that those who produce these Texts for such a purpose could not see without our shewing it to them that they all speak of such things as God did not onely not Command but had strictly forbid In Lev. 10. 1. The thing which God saith He Commanded them not was Nadab and Abihu's offering strange fire before the Lord. Which was an Act of Disobedience to a most express Law Chap. 6. 12 13. That in Deut. 17. 3. not commanded by God was a most hainous Sin and a flat Transgression of the First Commandment viz. Serving other Gods and Worshipping of them the Sun the Moon and the Host of Heaven That not Commanded Ier. 7. 31. was not onely contrary to the Law of God but a horrible wickedness condemned by the Light of Nature viz. The burning of their Sons and their Daughters in the Fire in the Valley of Hinnom That which God saith He Commanded not neither came it into his Mind Jer. 19. 5. was the same Vnnatural wickedness viz. The burning their Sons with Fire for Burnt-offerings to Baal And that in Ier. 32. 35. was the causing of their Sons and Daughters to pass through the Fire unte Molech But what doth Gods condemning such Abominable practices as these signifie towards the proving it unlawful to use or impose certain innocent Rites and Circumstances in Divine worship which are not expresly and particularly required by God But may be truly said to be in the general required by him as such are necessary to the decorous management of his Worship and agreeable to the forementioned Rule of Doing all things decently and in order And whereas the Urgers of these Texts for the foresaid purpose do reply to us that though they cannot deny but the instances of the things not Commanded mentioned in each of them are things also Prohibited yet they are pertinently insisted upon by them because it is tacitly implied in God's expressing them as things onely not Commanded that things not Commanded in His Worship offend him as well as things Prohibited To this I briefly Answer that this is subtil Arguing indeed except it can be shewed that God doth any where condemn the doing in his Worship what is lawful in its own Nature and no where forbidden by him under the notion of a thing not Commanded Which I dare affirm cannot be shewed And I add that nothing is more absurd than to build Doctrines upon Idioms of the Sacred Language but this is too commonly done by the men we are now dealing with as I am able to shew in too many Instances And if we should turn the Scales and argue thus such and such things are not Forbidden by God therefore they are Commanded we should not be guilty of a grosser absurdity than they are in inferring from God's not having Commanded them that he hath therefore Forbidden them If it be said as it is by these men that there is a general Precept Deut. 4. 2. that makes it as evident that things not commanded in Divine Worship may not be done though they ben't forbidden as if there were particular instances of that nature condemned viz. Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you neither shall you diminish ought from it that ye may keep the Commandments of the Lord your God which I command you I Reply that if they be not mistaken in the sence of these words they will prove more than is intended to be proved or than they would have true Namely that nothing is to be done out of as well as in the Worship of God but what is expresly and particularly Commanded But Episcopius who may be listened to in this matter because no Episcopalian hath shewed that these words Ye shall 〈◊〉 add unto the word which I command you neither shall you diminish ought from it are no new Precept but onely signifie Ye shall not transgress the Commandments of God by doing any thing contrary to them which is to Add or by omitting any thing Required by them which is to Diminish And as to that
all tending to entertain the several Humours of all men and to work what kind of Effects soever they shall desire c. So that where is mad Licentiousness more countenanced in the whole World than it is by this Church And where are poor Mortals made such miserable Slaves as She makes them And consequently how can there be a greater Enemy than the Romish Church is to that which we have proved to be the true and most Excellent Liberty And now is it possible that after the reading of the foregoing Account of the unsupportably Tyranny the intolerably Corrupt Principles and most Abominable Practices of the Church of Rome we should not be very greatly affected with the Priviledges we enjoy in the Church of England And with the infinite Goodness of God to us in giving us our Birth and Education in a Church which affords us all the Advantages of which that Church like a cruel Step-Mother robs her Children We live in a Church which lays before us the Scripture Arguments for our Confirmatiâ—n in the Christian Faith which obligeth us to receive the Faith of Christ upon the self-same Grounds and Motives that are proposed by our Saviour and his Apostles and upon no other We live in a Church which not onely gives us free leave but likewise enjoyns us to read the Holy Scriptures and deprives us of no part of them We live in a Church which requires us to receive nothing as an Article of Faith upon her bare Authority that assumes nothing of Inâ—allibility to her self but freely gives us the Liberty of trying all things That imposeth nothing upon our Belief or Practice as necessary to Salvation but what is in the plainest and most express terms to be found in the Bible That makes the Scriptures a complete Rule of Faith and adds not one syllable of her own to supply their defect That takes no Liberty in her Constitutions but such as she believes to be agreeable to the General Apostolical Rules of doing all things decently and in order and to Edification and imposeth these not as of Divine Institution or as necessary in their own nature but onely as Expedient for the more solemn grave and decorous Management of the Publick Worship of God This being left by Christ and his Apostles to the Prudence of the Governours of each particular Church We live in a Church which Abominates the Worship of God by Images allows no Prayers to Saints or Angels but onely to the true God by the alone Mediation of our Lord Iesus Christ. We live in a Church which renounceth all Merit of good Works and teacheth us to expect Salvation onely for the sake of Iesus Christ and through his Righteousness but gives not the least countenance to Licentious practices or Remissness in good Works and teacheth the absolute necessity of purging our selves by the Assistance of the Divine Grace from all Filthiness both of Flesh and Spirit in order to our being made capable of God's Complacential love here and Glory hereafter Lastly whereas I might be exceedingly large upon this subject we live in a Church wherein we want no necessary help for the building us up in our most holy Faith or our having the Design of our Saviour's Religion happily effected in us namely the Reformation of our Lives and our being Renewed after the Image of God which consisteth in Righteousness and true Holiness O that at length we could become more eflectually sensible of the blessed priviledges the Divine Goodness vouchsafeth to us of the Church of England lest we be made to Prize them by the Loss of them Lest our general monstrous Ingratitude and lamentable Unprofitableness under them and the Wantonness Peevishness and Causless Separation of Multitudes from the Communion of this Church provoke the Divine Majesty to put our Necks once more under the Iron Yoke of those Tyrants which made such Vassals of our Fore-fathers If that dismal day should again come as God grant it may not with what Sorrow and Grief of Soul shall we reflect upon our neglecting and despising such happy Opportunities as we now enjoy What would we not then gladly part with to regain them when we are deprived of them And O that our several divided Parties were capable of being perswaded to consider Sedately and Seriously before it be too late what their Gain will be by the Fall of our Chuch when themselves and their Religion lie buried together in her Ruines CHAP. XIX The Fourth Inference That he onely is a true Christian that looks upon himself as obliged to be no less Watchful over his Heart and the frame and temper of his Mind than over his Life and Conversation I Shall now return to more immediately practical discourse for what remains of this Treatise which is far more pleasing to my self than that I have been employed in for several of the past Chapters as necessary and seasonable as that is also Fourthly From our Notion of Christian Liberty this is another manifest Inference viz. That a true Christian is one that looks upon himself as obliged to be no less watchful over his Heart than over his Life and Conversation to take as great care to cleanse the inside of the Cup and Platter to use our Saviour's expression as the outside to be as vigilant over his Affections as over his outward Behaviour to be as Solicitous about purging himself from all immoderate Love of the things of this World as about procuring them by warrantable and lawful means The true Christian makes as much Conscience of Lusting after a Woman and cherishing impure thoughts as he doth of Lascivious and Wanton Practices Of harbouring Revenge in his Breast and bearing ill will to any as of repaying Injury with injury He needs not to be made sensible that 't is no less his duty to forgive and love his Enemies than to forbear reviling them or doing evil to them that 't is as indispensably necessary to be low in his own Eyes and to think meanly of himself as to beware of a haughty and supercilious carriage towards others that he cannot more safely Covet than he can Steal his Neighbours goods that he is as much bound to bring his Will into subjection to the Will of God under the severest Providences as to forbear Murmuring Repining and Charging of God foolishly He who is a Christian in deed as well as in name placeth Religion in Governing his own Spirit no less than in any External performances or forbearances of what nature soever in putting away from himself all Wrath Bitterness and Sourness no less than in abstaining from uncivil deportment towards his Brethren This man doth not think it more necessary to do good works than to do them from a good principle And he is as much concerned about Loving of God as about Doing what he hath commanded him and Forbearing what he hath forbidden him He no less endeavours to Hate sin than not to Commit it and to be in love