But why speak I of _David_? When JESUS of _Nazareth_, _David_’s LORD, and _David_’s King, had for his reputed father a carpenter, and in all probability, as it was a common proverb among the _Jews_, that “he who did not teach his son a trade, taught him to be a thief;” he worked at the trade of a carpenter himself? For this, indeed, he was reproached and maligned; “Is not this, said they, the carpenter’s son? Nay, is not this the carpenter?” But who were those maligners? The greatest enemies to the power of godliness which the world ever saw, the Scribes and Pharisees; that “generation of vipers,” as _John the Baptist_ calls them, who upon every occasion were spitting out their venom, and shooting forth their arrows, even bitter words, against that Son of man, even that Son of GOD, who, to display his sovereignty, and confound the wisdom of the worldly wise, chose poor fishermen to be his Apostles; and whose chief of the Apostles, though bred up at the feet of _Gamaliel_, both before and after his call to the apostleship, laboured with his own hands, and worked at the trade of a tent-maker.
If from such exalted and more distant, we descend to more modern and inferior characters, we shall find, that very late, not to say our present times, furnish us with instances of some, even of our _dignitaries_, who have been called from trades that tended to help and feed the body, not only to higher employs of a spiritual nature, but even to preside over those that are entrusted with the cure of souls. And who knows but some of these young students, though originally mechanics, if they had been suffered to have pursued their studies, might have either climbed after them to some preferment in the church, or been advanced to some office in that university from which they are now expelled? One of the present reverend and worthy Proctors, we are told, was formerly a Lieutenant in the army; and as such a military employ was no impediment to his being a minister or Proctor, it may be presumed, that being formerly of trades could have been no just impediment to these young men becoming, in process of time, true gospel ministers and good soldiers of JESUS CHRIST.
Their being accustomed to prayer, whether with or without a form, I humbly apprehend, would by no means disqualify them for the private or public discharge of any part of their ministerial function. “In that day, that gospel-day, (these last days wherein we live) saith the great GOD, I will pour out a Spirit of grace and a Spirit of supplication upon the house of _David_, and upon the inhabitants of _Jerusalem_.” And the Apostle _Paul_ speaks of it as the common privilege of all believers, that “the Holy Spirit helps their infirmities, and maketh intercession for them with groanings which cannot be uttered.” Forms of prayer, certainly, have their use; and take it altogether, our _English_ liturgy is, without doubt, one of the most excellent established forms of public prayer in the world: but then, as no form, in the very nature of the thing, can possibly suit every particular case, it is to be feared that many must never pray, at least for the particular things they most stand in need of, if they are so to be tied up to their forms, that they cannot vary from them, or use free prayer at all.
The great Bishop _Wilkins_ therefore wisely wrote an excellent treatise on the benefit and importance of this kind of prayer: and could our university-youth be trained up to use proper extempore prayer, both before and after sermon; in the opinion of all good judges, it would be as commendable, as that strange custom of putting off our auditories with what is called the _bidding prayer_; in which there is not one petition for a blessing upon the following sermon, and scarce any thing mentioned, but what hath been prayed for over and over again, in the preceding common service of our church.
But supposing such liberty should be denied in public, as, blessed be GOD it is not, surely we may be allowed, at least it cannot be deemed sinful, to use free prayer in our secret, or private social exercises of devotion. If so, what sinners, what great sinners must they have been, who prayed, and that too out of necessity, in an extempore way, before any forms of prayer were or could be printed or heard of? The prayers we read of in scripture, the prayers which opened and shut heaven, the effectual, fervent, energetic prayers of those righteous and holy men of old, which availed so much with GOD, were all of an extempore nature. And I am apt to believe, if not only our students and ministers, but private christians, were born from above, and taught of GOD, as those wrestlers with GOD were, they would not want forms of prayer, though we have such a variety of them, any more than they did.