10. Argument 9. That which is inconsistent with the Spirit in prayer is unlawful.
Argument 9. That which is inconsistent with the Spirit in prayer is unlawful.
A rgument 9 Owen:
Argument 9: That worship which is unsuited to the spiritual relish of the new creature, which is inconsistent with the conduct of the Spirit of God in prayer, is unlawful: For the nature, use and benefit of prayer is overthrown hereby in a great measure. Now let anyone consider what are the promises, aids of the Holy Spirit, with respect to the prayers of the Church, whether as to the matter of them or as unto ability for their performance, or as unto the manner of it, and he shall find that they are all rejected and excluded by this form of worship, as is pretended comprising the whole matter, limiting the whole manner and giving all the abilities of prayer that are needful or required: This has been proved at large.
Baxter:
§25. To your ninth argument I answer:
1. O! confine not the new creature to those of your opinion. Do you think none of the old nonconformists or conformists, none of the reformed
Churches and no Church on earth for a thousand years had any of the new creature? When you have affrighted people with telling them it is heinous sin and a returning to Babylon, and also by long disuse made a liturgy uncouth to them, do not ascribe all their averseness to the new creature which is from prejudice and disuse. For my part, when God taught me first to pray, I had no averseness to a form. When I heard it charged with sin, I began to be averse to it. When I had studied the case I was cured of that averseness, but never reconciled to the forbidding of all other prayer, nor to the faults of any forms.
And who knows not that man's culpable nature loves novelties and are hardly kept in lively affections under anything that is very often said? A book or sermon, though never so good, affects us not so much after many times reading and hearing as at the first. We must not lay this weakness on the new creature, though it should teach imposers to suit the remedy to the disease and give children such food as is not too displeasing to their appetites.
And yet I find not that the generality of appetites even in your flocks is against the forms of psalms, being not prejudiced against them.
It is not true that liturgies are inconsistent with the conduct of the Spirit in prayer. It is a mistake also that this form of worship rejects and excludes the matter of prayer, whenas the visible book tells all the contrary. Do all those words express none of the matter of prayer? It is untrue that it rejects and excludes the manner, as to the chief part: For the Lord's Prayer is a perfect form for matter, order and method: and the psalms read and sung are for matter and manner neither evil nor excluded. And sure there is much of the rest laudable. If all matter and manner be rejected and excluded, then the martyrs that used it and all the Churches on earth almost have no Church-
prayers. But again I tell the use of forms and the forbidding all other prayers are two different things which you ill confound.