I do acknowledge, also, that the general prevalency of the use of set forms of prayer of human invention in Christian assemblies for many ages (more than any other argument that is urged for their necessity) requires a tenderness in judg- ment as unto the whole nature of them, and the acceptance of their persons in the duty of prayer by whom they are used. Yet no consideration of this usage, seeing it is not warranted by the Scriptures, nor is of apostolical example, nor is counte- nanced by the practice of the primitive churches, ought to hinder us from discern- ing and judging of the evils and inconveniences that have ensued thereon, nor from discovering how far they are unwarrantable as unto their imposition. And these evils may be here a little considered.
The beginnings of the introduction of the use of set forms of prayer of human composition into the worship of the church are altogether uncertain, but that the reception of them was progressive, by new additions from time to time, is known to all; for neither Rome nor the present Roman Missal was built in a day. In that and the Breviaries did the whole worship of the church issue, at least in these parts of the world. No man is so fond as to suppose that they were of one entire composition, the work of one age, of one man, or any assembly of men at the same time, unless they be so brutishly devout as to suppose that the Mass- book was brought from heaven unto the pope by an angel, as the Alcoran was to Mohammed. It is evident, indeed, that common people, at least of the commu- nion of the papal church, do believe it to be as much of a divine original as the Scripture, and that on the same grounds of the proposal of it unto them, as the only means of divine worship, by their church. Hence is it unto them an idol. But it is well enough known how from small beginnings, by various accessions, it increased unto its present form and station. And this progress, in the reception of devised forms of prayer in the worship of the church carried along with it sundry pernicious concomitants, which we may briefly consider: —
First, in and by the additions made unto the first received forms, the supersti- tious and corrupt doctrines of the apostasy in several ages were insinuated into the worship of the church. That such superstitious and corrupt doctrines were gradually introduced into the church is acknowledged by all Protestants, and is sufficiently known; the supposition of it is the sole foundation of the Reforma- tion. And by this artifice of new additions to received forms, they were from time VOL. IV. 16
242 PREFACE TO THE READER.
to time admitted into and stated in the worship of the church ; by which princi- pally to this very day they preserve their station in the minds of men. Were that foundation of them taken away, they would quickly fall to the ground. By this means did those abominations of transubstantiation and the sacrifice of the mass both leaven and poison the whole worship of the public assemblies, and imposed themselves on the credulity of the people. The disputes of speculative men, super- stitious and subtile, about these things, had never infected the minds of the com- mon people of Christians, nor ever been the means of that idolatry which at length spread itself over the whole visible church of these parts of the world, had not this device of prescribed forms of prayer, wherein those abominations were not only expressed but graphically represented and acted (so violently affecting the carnal minds of men superstitious and ignorant), imposed them on their practice, which gradually hardened them with an obdurate credulity; for although they saw no ground or reason doctrinally to believe what was proposed unto them about tran- substantiation and the sacrifice of the mass, and might easily have seen that they were contradictory unto all the conductive principles of men and Christians, — namely, faith, reason, and sense, — yet they deceived themselves into an obstinate pre- tence of believing in the notion of [the] truth of what they had admitted in practice. Men, I say, of corrupt minds might have disputed long enough about vagrant forms, accidents without subjects, transmutation of substances without accidents, sacrifices bloody and unbloody, before they had vitiated the whole worship of the church with gross idolatry, had not this engine been made use of for its introduc- tion, and the minds of men by this means been inveigled with the practice of it; but when the whole matter and means of it was gradually insinuated into, and at length comprised in, those forms of prayer which they were obliged continually to use in divine service, their whole souls became leavened and tainted with a confi- dence in and love unto these abominations.
Hence it was that the doctrines concerning the sacraments, and the whole worship of God in the church, as they became gradually corrupted, were not at once objectively and doctrinally proposed to the minds and considerations of men, to be received or rejected, according to the evidence they had of their truth or error (a method due to the constitution of our nature), but gradually insinuated into their practice by additional forms of prayer, which they esteemed themselves obliged to use and observe. This was the gilding of the poisonous pill, whose operation, when it was swallowed, was to bereave men of their sense, reason, and faith, and make them madly avow that to be true which was contrary unto them all.