A SERMON Preached in His Majesties Chappel AT WHITEHALL ON The Eighth of February 1684 5. Being the Sunday after the Death of His late Sacred Majesty King CHARLES the Second of Blessed Memory By Thomas Horne Fellow of Eaton Colledge And Chaplain to His Late Majesty LONDON Printed for Robert Horne at the South Entrance of the Royal Exchange in Cornhill MDCLXXXV 1 Thess 5.19 Quench not the Spirit IT is well known with what vehemence this Text has been urged against the use of Liturgies and it has been made as manifest by Learned men with how little justice it has been objected So that it would seem frivolous to meddle with it any more but that the Objections rise again after one would think they were defeated And the Principles are as active as if their Arguments were invincible Wherefore since there is no end of objecting it is allowable I hope for us at least to consider the Question over again if it be but to shew that we are neither ashamed of Our Reasons nor afraid of Theirs And this I intend to do fairly without any heat of Controversie endeavouring rather to lay than raise the dust that in the heat of Skirmishes blinds the eyes of men and following the native force and evidence of truth Though it be hard to forbear speaking warmly to a Cavil which reproaches all our Worship of God and blasts all those Intercessions you put up this last Week in behalf of our dying Soveraign the fervency of which I know not where to parallel For if this Objection be true in all those strong Cries and Supplications you took more than ordinary pains to Quench the Spirit The Question I intend to examine is Whether Forms of Prayer quench or stint the Spirit as they use to speak Which Question I will first state plainly and then propose the method of searching into it The Question will be clearly stated by shewing first what is meant by Forms of Prayer Secondly What it is to stint the Spirit 1. By Forms of Prayer is meant either the determining before we pray what things shall be the matter of our Prayer leaving the words to be moulded ex tempore or else the determining beforehand both what things to pray for and also in what expressions The former of these we may call a Form of Matter onely the latter a Form of Matter and Words too and both these may be either mutable or fixt as a constant Rule of Worship 2. By stinting the Spirit must be meant either the hindering or quenching of the blessed Influence of the Holy Spirit of God upon our Souls in prayer or else the infeebling the vigour of Devotion in the spirit of man the depressing our affections in their flight to the throne of Grace the smothering the pious zeal of the Heart the extinguishing that holy fire of the Altar in which the Sacrifice of Prayer should ascend The state of the Question therefore is this Whether a Form of Matter onely or a Form of Matter and Words too hinder either the Influence of the Spirit of God or the Soul of man in prayer Now because when we look upon things in gross we see them confusedly and are apt to shuffle Truth and Falshood together therefore I will resolve Prayer into its simplest Principles that we may judge more distinctly of the Question before us according to this following method First All publick Prayer in the Church is made up of the Prayers of single persons therefore we may consider of Prayer in one man and see what quenches the Spirit in him Secondly The Prayers of the Church are made up of variety of matter as Confessions of sins Praises and Thanksgivings and of many Spplications for Spiritual and Temporal good things wherefore we may select one out of one of these sorts and consider that distinctly Suppose any man would request of our heavenly Father some one signal blessing as that God would save the King which was your mournful Request and must still be your dutiful Prayer But because that would provoke a passionate sorrow which bleeds yet and I would rather speak to your Judgment I will suppose rather that a man intends to beg of God that gift of the Holy Spirit which is promised in the 11th of St. Luke v. 13. which we do pray for in the Lords Prayer and frequently in the rest of our Prayers Thirdly as in other Prayer so in this particular supplication for Gods Spirit we may consider the outward prayer of Words and the inward prayer of the Heart from whence the outward ought to flow The business is now drawn into a narrow compass and the careful considering of it thus will be I hope a clue to lead us into a true judgment of the whole Question First then this inward Prayer of the Heart is the Soul and Life of all Prayer which God especially requires and therefore chiefly regards and favourably accepts Without this the outward pouring forth of words is a noisome carkass whether we use a form of words or new conceived fluency Words were made for man not to help God to understand our meaning who looks into a desire and searches thought who takes notice of the first springs of the motion of our mind towards him This inward desire must be in all whether publick or private Prayer or nothing is done Prayer may be without words and words may be without prayer for that is the very essence these are not And from hence it follows first that words conceived extempore cannot be an ingredient necessary to make our Prayers accepted of God Secondly that the useful and necessary help or gift of the Spirit in Prayer is to be placed in the inward Prayer of the Heart and not in expresons of words where the life of Prayer is not And this one consideration might be enough to end all dispute about extempore words of Prayer Secondly If a man address himself to request of God this blessing of his Spirit though he supplicate without uttering one word yet here is a form a form of matter and that as narrow as can be for his Spirit cannot be more stinted than when it petitions for one thing If therefore this so narrow a form does not quench the Spirit of God nor hinder the flight of his Prayer to the Throne of Grace nor obstruct its entrance nor make the mercy of God turn away his ear from attending to his suit what larger form can do it And to satisfie us that this does in no wise hinder his Prayer we may consider further That in the third place every sober Christian and man of sense will readily grant that he will pray more heartily and acceptably to God when he begs this grace of the Holy Spirit if he go beforehand into his Closet and meditate on his own manifold frailties and consequently his great need of this grace No man can deny that he should fix and prepare his heart by the consideration of Gods fatherly goodness and bounty especially of his promise of giving the Holy Spirit to
them that ask it and all in order to the strengthning his Faith and dependance on God and for the increasing his humility and the setling his good purposes and attention Certainly this should be the work of our retirement before we pray without which our thoughts will be apt to play and wander at the time of Prayer and the pantings of the heart will be more languid But all this preparation bounds the Spirit of a man to that particular matter which he is to sue for and this binding is the very thing which makes it a form so that the more a man premeditates the more is his Spirit bounded or stinted to his particular form of matter which he prays for and so the more he is stinted the better he prays For this meditation restrains the operations of his Understanding and by that means quickens his desire that is it puts a stop to wandring thought and fixes it upon that one blessing he would request and gathers together the scattered motions of the Affection and determines all his earnest desire to that one point which restraint inflames Religious Zeal and gives it a greater force As winds are strongest in their narrowest passages as a vast Ocean when it rolls all one way and beats with its whole weight upon a streight Channel that very stinting of it makes the Waves rage and multiplies the swiftness and vehemence of their motion beyond imagination that it forces its way with irresistible violence but when once it has passed from thence into a wide space and gained the room it struggled for there where the way is open and free all its vigour is lost in it self and becomes a pacifick Sea We may take notice by the way that it is advantageous which some complain of for the Liturgy to be divided into several distinct Prayers that we may request more earnestly while we determine our Souls to single petitions whereas if all the Prayers were made into one long Oration we could not so easily discern where one Request ends and another begins so that the intention of our minds would be lost and the undetermined vigour of desire be becalmed as in a wide Sea The sum of this is that Premeditation on one single form does not hinder but help the Spirit of man It is hard to conceive how that which is so useful so necessary a preparative to serious Devotion should any wise hinder the Spirit of God on the heart of man in supplication yet lest I should seem to shift away from the business I will consider this particularly If a man pray for the conduct of Gods gracious Spirit what operations of the Spirit are needful in this Supplication what are necessary to attain the end Prayer i. e. acceptance with God I conceive that if he have a love of God and Goodness a belief of that Promise made by Christ Luke 11.13 a fervent desire of the grace of God humility and a serious purpose of obeying its direction his Prayer will be accepted Now serious premeditation such as I have described is the very exercise of all these Consideration of the fatherly goodness and promise of God made by Christ is the very exercise of Faith in him and a proper incitement to a greater love of him The weighing with himself the great and manifold imperfections of his corrupt nature and therefore his great want of the continual aids of the Holy Spirit kindles ardent desire and increases humility which is also furthered by reflecting on his own unworthiness compared with the unlimited bounty and unmerited goodness of God and all together are strong motives to better purposes and stronger resolutions Is it possible that the exercise of Faith Love Zeal Humility and Resolution should hinder the Spirits working these very things when they are the preparations of the heart which as Solomon says Prov. 16.1 are from the Lord. One might as well say that Pride neglect of God or Infidelity further the operations of the Holy Spirit Again if after this preparation of heart a man address himself to the same Prayer in that very devout posture of mind in which his meditation left him assuredly the Spirit of God will perfect what it self began and assist him more yet in that Prayer to which it prepared him The Royal Prophet says Psal 10.17 that the Lord hears the desire of the humble he will prepare their heart and will cause his ear to hear Wherefore since both the first thoughts in the preparing meditation and the following desires in act of Prayer are from God it follows that he who considers beforehand has a portion of the Spirits help double to what the extempore man has who knows not beforehand what he shall pray but invents his petition in the moment when he presents it So far is a prepared form of matter from hindring the good effects of Gods Spirit on the mind of man that it is a great furtherance And from hence we gain also a new Argument for the former Conclusion i. e. that it does not hinder the fervency of mans Spirit For that which furthers the effects of Gods Spirit cannot hinder ours in the least 4. Let us go on with our single Form and suppose that this Man resolves with himself never to cease from begging the promised Spirit of God but to wrestle daily for this great blessing here it becomes a stated or praescribed Form to him as much as if it were appointed by Authority and he were resolved to obey it and this is our case in praying by a Liturgie And in this case neither is the Spirit of God quenched nor the mans own Spirit hindred Not the Spirit of God because he obeys that command of our Saviour in the 18 St. Luke v. 1. to pray always and not to faint i. e. not to give over the same request as Christ explains himself in the words immediately following by that Parable of the importunate Widow who continued to sollicite the unjust judge with the same suit till she had obtained her desire and therefore if he should not repeat that Prayer it would be a neglect of a plain duty which sinful neglect must really hinder and quench the Spirit Nor can the mans own Spirit be said to be hindred unless we will blasphemously affirm that our Saviour has given such a command about our Prayer as hinders our Soul from praying aâ— we should Now if we apply what has been said hitherto of one mans single petition to all the Prayers of a Congregation it is manifest that since the most limited Form does not any wise quench the Spirit of God or the Soul of Man since if it does stint our mind it does it to advantage by stopping only the loose roving of invention whetting thereby the serious desire of the Soul our large and comprehensive Forms cannot be a hindrance to Prayer by any narrowness that
is in them The truth is we continually offend our good God frequently in the commission of the same sins and in the omission of the same duties and they must be confessed most mercies we receive every day and every moment and they deserve incessant thanks the infinite and peerless perfections of God are the same yesterday to day and for ever and therefore the same praise endureth for ever our needs are for the most part the same especially our Spiritual wants which require the most intensive fervency therefore the chief matter of Prayer is such as must not be changed There is no such place in the substance of Prayer for the new invention of men as some are apt to conceive Shall we invent sins extempore to confess before God we commit too many and it will take up time enough to consider well of them Can we invent Attributes in God to magnifie they are immutable Can we invent mercies to thank him for besides what we have received that imagination is vain and unworthy of God let us offer our thanks with gratitude for what we have received Or should we invent new Topicks of Blessings to ask of him let us first consider what we do need and request those things seriously There is one thing necessary which we are every day to seek we always want the grace of God and must always pray for it we need the heavenly food and must daily pray that God would give us ever more this bread I acknowledge that if a man should pray daily for one particular matter onely so as to exclude others that are necessary or if our publick Prayers omitted some important request and we were hindred from compleating our necessary Petitions then the Spirit would be streightned But what is wanting in the Liturgie that it is fit to beg of God what would any of us want if God should grant us all that is contained in the Lords Prayer in the full extent of it or what want is there which we cannot address our selves to God for in a short Ejaculation in the time of publick Prayer or else in private and so compleat the supposed defect of the Liturgie This we can do if we are in earnest and therefore nothing can hinder us but onely our selves When there is a prepared Heart there is nothing without can put a stop to the inward operations of mans Spirit nothing can obstruct the course of the thoughts or block up the Will from desiring no power on earth can stop the freedom of its course no obstacle in Nature can reach it I have spoken as fully as is fit to the form of Matter not wholly omitting to speak of Words and much more need not be said of them but that the people of our Nation have an unaccountable fondness for the extempore effusion of the words of Prayer though they love not that phrase extempore Prayer but choose to call it conceived Prayer Their opinion of it is strange because all men must acknowledge that the Life of Prayer is in the desire of the inward man and that words are but the outward dress of Prayer and that the Spirit and Life of Prayer cannot be in that which is but the outward part yet when the Ministers of the Church of England use the Forms prescribed suppose in the Visitation of the Sick many of the common people think that they have little or nothing of the Spirit of Prayer in them because they do not invent a new Prayer and no good is done unless some private person comes and prays for some time with a multitude of ready utterance then they think there is the Spirit of Prayer which shews that they are verily perswaded that that there is more of the Spirit in Words than really there is And the name they give to this extempore utterance is as strange for no reason can be given why that which is not thought of before but invented in the moment of utterance should be called conceived Prayer to distinguish it from other Prayer for certainly that which is premeditated and thought of frequently before and also in the time of Prayer is conceived too and the more it is thought of the more conceived However let us consider whether a Form of Words hinders either the Work of the Spirit of God or the Spirit of man in Prayer That they do not hinder the Spirit of God I argue first from hence That it cannot be proved that the Spirit of God does always give new expressions of Prayer Suppose in the first place that the Spirit did once give a man the very Words of Prayer and he should constantly use those Words he would pray as the Spirit gave him utterance and yet this would be a Form of Words And such a Spiritual Form of Words is the Lord's Prayer Now there is no just reason to think the Spirit should continually change those first Words for new for as the Apostle reasons Heb. 8.7 concerning the Covenants If the first Covenant had been faultless there had been no need of the second so there is no need of new Words unless the first had been faulty And besides this the rules which are given in Holy Writ for the manner of framing our Words argue that the Spirit did not intend alway to indite the Words but leave them to man as that Rule which Solomon gave Eccles 5.2 Be not rash with thy mouth and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God for God is in heaven and thou upon earth therefore let thy words be few And our Saviours rule 6 Matth. 7. Not to use vain repetitions as the Heathen or to think we shall be heard for much speaking and v. 8 9. it is manifest that he purposely gave his prayer in few words to prevent the using many words in prayer Be not ye therefore like unto them i. e. in multiplying words for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask him After this manner therefore pray ye Our Father c. That is in this short way therefore that ye may avoid much speaking Another rule the example of Solomon affords in 2 Chron. 6. throughout whose prayer is made up chiefly of the words of Gods promises to his Father What need of giving us rules for our Words if the Spirit gives the Words or of what use are the Rules when given if we are not to do it Secondly I argue from the general opinion of those who love extempore prayer concerning the Spirit of God for they generally say that the work of the Spirit is after an irresistable manner upon the Elect and therefore it cannot be hindred there and as for the Reprobate if any work of the Spirit be hindred in them it can do no hurt Let us see in the next place whether Forms of Words hinder the Spirit of man There are but these three uses of Words that I can think of in Prayer First to express the