Besides, as was before intimated, the things themselves that were the ground- work of idolatry, — namely, transubstantiation and the sacrifice of the mass, — were so acted and represented in those forms of worship as to take great impression on the minds of carnal men, until they were mad on their idols; for when all religion and devotion is let into the soul by fancy and imagination, excited by outward spectacles, they will make mad work in the world, as they have done, and yet con- tinue to do. But hereof I shall speak in the next place.
It had, therefore, been utterly impossible that an idolatrous worship should have been introduced into the church in general, had not the opinion of the necessity of devised forms of prayer been first universally received; at least, it had not been so introduced and so established as to procure and cause the shedding of the blood of thousands of holy persons for not complying with it. By this means alone was brought in that fatal engine of the church's ruin, from whose murder- ous efficacy few escaped with their lives or souls. Had all churches continued in the liberty wherein they were placed and left by our Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles, it is possible that many irregularities might have prevailed in some of
PREFACE TO THE READER. 243
them, and many mistakes been admitted in their practice; yet this monster of the mass, devouring the souls of the most, and drinking the blood of many, had never been conceived nor brought forth, at least not nourished into that terrible form and power wherein it appeared and acted for many ages in the world. And upon the account thereof it is not without cause that the Jews say that the Christians received their Tephilloth, or Prayer-books, from Armillus, — that is, Antichrist.
It is true, that when the doctrine of religion is determined and established by civil laws, the laws of the nation where it is professed, as the rule of all outward advantages, liturgies composed in compliance therewithal are not so subject to this mischief; but this ariseth from that external cause alone. Otherwise, wherever those who have the ordering of these things do deviate from the truth once received, as it is common for the most so to do, forms of prayers answerable unto those deviations would quickly be insinuated; and the present various liturgies that are amongst the several sorts of Christians in the world are of little other use than to establish their minds in their peculiar errors, which by this means they adhere unto as articles of their faith.
And hereby did God suffer contempt to be cast upon the supposed wisdom of men about his worship and the ways of it. They would not trust unto his insti- tutions and his care of them, but did first put the ark into a cart, and then, like Uzzah, put forth a hand of force to hold it when it seemed to shake; for it is cer- tain that, if not the first invention, yet the first public recommendation and pre- scription, of devised forms of prayer unto the practice of the churches, were de- signed to prevent the insinuation of false opinions and corrupt modes of worship into the public administrations. This was feared from persons infected with heresy that might creep into the ministry. So the orthodox and the Arians composed prayers, hymns, and doxologies, the one against the other, inserting in them passages confirming their own profession and condemning that of their ad- versaries. Now, however this invention might be approved whilst it kept within bounds, yet it proved the Trojan horse that brought in all evils into the city of God in its belly; for he who was then at work in the mystery of iniquity laid hold on the engine and occasion to corrupt those prayers which, by the constitu- tion of them who had obtained power in them, the churches were obliged and confined unto. And this took place effectually in the constitution of the worship of the second race of Christians, or the nations that were converted unto the Chris- tian faith after they had destroyed the western Roman empire. To speak briefly and plainly, it was by this means alone, — namely, of the necessary use of devised forms of prayer in the assemblies of the church, and of them, alone, — that the mass, with its transubstantiation and sacrifice, and all the idolatrous worship wherewith they are accompanied, were introduced, until the world, inflamed with those idols, drenched itself in the blood of the saints and martyrs of Christ, for their testi- mony against these abominations. And if it had been sooner discovered that no church was intrusted with power from Christ to frame and impose such de- vised form9 of worship as are not warranted by the Scripture, innumerable evils might have been prevented: for, that there were no liturgies composed, no imposed use of them, in the primitive churches for some ages, is demonstratively proved with the very same arguments whereby we prove that they had neither the mass nor the use of images in their worship ; for besides the utter silence of them in the apostolical writings, and those of the next ensuing ages, — which is sufficient to dis- card their pretence unto any such antiquity, — there are such descriptions given of the practice of the churches in their worship as are inconsistent with them and exclusive of them; besides, they give such a new face to divine worship, so differ- ent from the portraiture of it delivered in the Scripture, as is hardly reconcilable thereunto, and so not quickly embraced in the church.