- I come to answer a question or two concerning public prayer.
(1.) The first question is, Whether it be lawful that the public prayers of the church be performed in a language not understood by the people?
Answer. All the offices of the church, and duties performed in its worship, are to be done unto edifica-tion. This is an apostolical canon. Now, none can be edified by what he understands not, and therefore it must needs be, as Beza calls the popish Latin service, ludibrium Dei at hominis—a mocking of God and man, for to babble such prayers in the church which the people know not what they mean. ‘If I pray,’ saith the apostle, ‘in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful,’ I Cor. 14:14. He means, the congregation are not the wiser for his understanding the prayer he puts up, except he could make them understand it also. We can no more be edified by another’s intellect than be saved by another’s faith. When God intended to defeat that bold attempt of those sons of pride who would needs build a tower that should vie with the heavens for height, he did no more but confound their languages that they might not understand one another’s speech, and it was done. Presently their work ceased. And as they could not build, so neither can he edify the people that understands not his speech in prayer. A dumb minister may serve the people’s turn as well as he who by his speech is a barbarian to them. For the minister’s voice is necessary in his public administrations, as Augustine saith, significandæ mentis suæ causâ, non ut Deus sed ut homines audiant, &c., —to signify his meaning, not that God may hear, for he hears those prayers which the tongue is not employed to express, but that the people may hear, and so join their votes with his to God. As the minister is to pray for them, so they to pray with him; which they are to testify by their hearty amen at the close. But this they cannot do, if we believe St. Paul, ‘How shall he that occupieth the room of the unlearned say amen at thy giving of thanks, seeing he understandeth not what thou sayest?’ I Cor. 14:16. ‘The heart of the wise teacheth his mouth,’ saith Solomon, Prov. 16:23; that is, he will not, as we say, suffer his tongue to run before his wit, but know what he shall speak before he sends his tongue on his errand. And surely, above all this, wisdom is to be shown in our prayers, wherein we speak not to man but God. To say amen to that prayer which we understand not—what is it but to offer the sacrifice of fools? Holy matter in prayer is the incense to be offered, the tongue is the censer; but the affections of the devout soul bring the fire to the incense before it can ascend as a sweet perfume into the nostrils of God. Now, if the intellect want light to understand what the matter of the prayer is, the affections must either be cold or wild; and wild fire is unfit to offer up the incense of prayer with. It is not enough that the praying soul be touched with some devout affections, but that these affections be suitable to the matter of the prayer, yea, arise from the sense it hath thereof.
(2.) The second question is, Whether a set form of prayer be lawful to be used in the church?
If it be unlawful, it is because, by the use of a set form in prayer, some command of God is transgres¬sed; for where there is no law there is no transgression.
Now, it will trouble those who decry all set forms —how holy soever the matter of them be—to show any command upon Scripture record that forbids the praying by a set form, or that disallows its use either in express terms or by necessary consequence. It will be granted, yea must, that the Scripture is a perfect rule in this particular duty of God’s worship, as well as in other. But among all the precepts and rules in the book of God, we find none that commands we should pray by a conceived form, and not by a set form. We are commanded who to pray to, to God, and none other, Ps. 44:20; in whose name we are to pray, I Tim. 2:5; Eph. 5:20; we are bound up to the matter of our prayer, what we are to ask, I John 5:14; and lastly, in what manner we are to pray—we must pray ‘with understanding,’ John 4:22; I Cor. 14:16; Heb. 11:6; ‘in faith,’ James 1:6; Heb. 11:4, with sincere fervency, Jer. 29:12; in a word, which comprehends all in one, we are to pray ‘in the Spirit,’ Eph. 6:18; in the Holy Ghost,’ Jude 20. Now he that can do all this need not fear but he prays lawfully, and consequently accept-ably. And we confess this may be done by one that prayeth with a set form, or else we must very boldly charge many eminent saints in scripture for praying unlawfully. Who dares say that Solomon praised God unlawfully when he used the very form which David his father had penned? or, that Moses did not pray in the Spirit, because he prayed in a constant form at the setting forward of the ark, and at its being set down again? Thus you have seen what God hath prescribed to our praying acceptably; and if it had been of such dangerous consequence to have prayed by a set form, as to make our prayers abominable, would God have omitted to warn his people of it, especially when he foresaw that his churches generally in their assemblies would make use of them, as they have done for thirteen or fourteen hundred years? But may we not rather, yea undoubtedly we ought to conclude, that seeing the Lord in his word descends not to prescribe what the outward frame and order of our words in prayer should be, whether conceived ex tempore, or cast into a form beforehand—only gives general rules that all things should be done decently, that we be not rash with our mouth, or our heart hasty to utter anything before God, and such like that are applicable to both—I say we should conclude both are lawful and warrantable, the Scripture having determined neither the one way nor the other. And therefore to put religion in one, so as to condemn the other as unlawful, looks—as a learned holy pen hath it—too like superstition, seeing God himself hath laid no bond upon the conscience either way.
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