_Answ._ Yea; or else it would be unlawful for a child or scholar to use a form prescribed by his parents or master. And to think that a thing lawful doth presently become unlawful, because a parent, master, pastor, or prince doth prescribe it or command it, is a conceit that I will not wrong my reader so far as to suppose him guilty of. Indeed if an usurper, that hath no authority over us in such matters, do prescribe it, we are not bound to formal obedience, that is, to do it therefore because he commandeth it; but yet I may be bound to it on some other accounts; and though his command do not bind me, yet it maketh not the thing itself unlawful.
_Quest._ V. But is it lawful to pray extempore without a premeditated form of words?
_Answ._ No christian of competent understanding doubteth of it. We must premeditate on our wants, and sins, and the graces and mercies we desire, and the God we speak to; and we must be able to express these things without any loathsome and unfit expressions. But whether the words are fore-contrived or not, is a thing that God hath no more bound you to by any law, than whether the speaker or hearers shall use sermon-notes, or whether your Bibles shall be written or in print.
_Quest._ VI. If both ways be lawful, which is better?
_Answ._ If you are to join with others in the church, that is better to you which the pastor then useth: for it is his office and not yours to word the prayers which he puts up to God. And if he choose a form, (whether it be as most agreeable to his parts, or to his people, or for concord with other churches, or for obedience to governors, or to avoid some greater inconvenience,) you must join with him, or not join there at all.[59] But if it be in private, where you are the speaker yourself, you must take that way that is most to your own edification (and to others, if you have auditors joining with you). One man is so unused to prayer, (being ignorantly bred,) or of such unready memory or expression, that he cannot remember the tenth part so much of his particular wants, without the help of a form, as with it; nor can he express it so affectingly for himself or others; nay, perhaps not in tolerable words. And a form to such a man may be a duty; as to a dim-sighted man to read by spectacles, or to an unready preacher to use prepared words and notes. And another man may have need of no such helps; nay, when he is habituated in the understanding and feeling of his sins and wants, and hath a tongue that is used to express his mind even in these matters, with readiness and facility, it will greatly hinder the fervour of such a man's affections, to tie himself to premeditated words: to say the contrary, is to speak against the common sense and experience of such speakers and their hearers. And let them that yet deride this as uncertain and inconsiderate praying, but mark themselves, whether they cannot if they be hungry beg for bread, or ask help of their physician, or lawyer, or landlord, or any other, as well without a learned or studied form as with it? Who knoweth not that it is true which the new philosopher saith: Cartes. de Passion. part i. art. 44. _Et cum inter loquendum solum cogitamus de sensu illius rei, quam dicere volumus, id facit ut moveamus linguam et labra celerius et melius, quam si cogitaremus ea movere omnibus modis requisitis ad proferenda eadem verba; quia habitus quem acquisivimus cum disceremus loqui, &c._ Turning the thoughts too solicitously from the matter to the words, doth not only mortify the prayers of many, and turn them into a dead form, but also maketh them more dry and barren even as to the words themselves. The heavy charge, and bitter, scornful words which have been too common in this age, against praying without a set form by some, and against praying with a book or form by others, is so dishonourable a symptom or diagnostic of the church's sickness, as must needs be matter of shame and sorrow to the sounder, understanding part. For it cannot be denied, but it proves men's understandings and charity to be both exceedingly low.
_Quest._ VII. Must we always pray according to the method of the Lord's prayer, and is it a sin to do otherwise?