_Answ._ They were prayers, though more. They are called prayers, and for the matter many of them were no more than prayers, but only for the measures of words: nor was their singing like ours now, but liker to our saying. And there are many other prayers recorded in the Scripture.
3. And all the churches of Christ at least these thirteen or fourteen hundred years have taken public forms for lawful; which is not to be gainsayed without proof.
[320] God gave forms of preaching to Moses and the prophets: see a large form of prayer for all true people, Deut. xxvi. 13-15. And so elsewhere there are many.
Quest. LXXIII. _Are public forms of man's devising or composing lawful?_
_Answ._ Yes: 1. The ministers afore-mentioned throughout the christian world, do devise and compose the form of their own sermons and prayers: and that maketh them not unlawful. 2. And whoever speaketh _ex tempore_, his words are a form when he speaketh them, though not a premeditated form. 3. And when Scripture so vehemently commandeth us to search, meditate, study the Scriptures, and take heed unto ourselves and unto doctrine, &c. what a person is that who will condemn prayer or preaching, only because we beforehand studied or considered what to say! as if God abhorred diligence and the use of reason. Men are not tied (now) from thinking beforehand what to say to the judge at the bar for estate or life, or what to say on an embassage, or to a king, or any man that we converse with. And where are we forbidden to forethink what to say to God? Must the people take heed how they hear, and look to their foot when they go into the house of God? and must not we take heed what we speak, and look to our words that they be fit and decent?
_Object._ Forms are images of prayer and preaching, forbidden in the second commandment?
_Answ._ Prove it, and add not to the word of God. 1. The Scripture and God's servants, even Christ himself, had broken the second commandment, when they used or prescribed forms. 2. Forms are no more images than extemporate words are, as they signify our minds. Are all the catechisms, printed and written sermons and prayers, images or idols? all forms that parents teach their children? O charge not such untruths on God; and invent not falsehoods of his word, while you cry down man's inventions.
Quest. LXXIV. _Is it lawful to impose forms on the congregation or the people in public worship?_
Yes, and more than lawful; it is the pastor's duty so to do. For whether he forethink what to pray or not, his prayer is to them a form of words; and they are bound in all the lawful parts, to concur with him in spirit or desire, and to say Amen. So that every minister by office is daily to impose a form of prayer on all the people in the congregation. Only some men impose the same form many times over, or every day, and others impose every day a new one.
Quest. LXXV. _Is it lawful to use forms composed by man, and imposed not only on the people, but on the pastors of the churches?_
_Answ._ The question concerneth not the lawfulness of imposing, but of using forms imposed. And, 1. It is not lawful to use them merely on that account because they are imposed or commanded, without some greater reason of the unlawfulness. For else it would be unlawful for any other to use imposed forms; as for a scholar or child, if the master or parent impose them, or for the congregation when the pastor imposeth them, which is not true.
2. The using of imposed forms may by other accidents be sometimes good and sometimes evil, as the accidents are that make it so.
1. These accidents may make it evil: (1.) When the form is bad for matter or manner, and we voluntarily prefer it before that which is better, being willing of the imposition. (2.) When we do it to gratify our slothfulness, or to cover our wilful ignorance and disability. (3.) When we voluntarily obey and strengthen any unlawful, usurping pastors or powers that impose it without authority, and so encourage church tyranny. (4.) When we choose a singular form, imposed by some singular pastor, and avoid that which the rest of the churches agree in, at a time when it may tend to division and offence. (5.) When the weakness and offence of the congregation is such, that they will not join with us in the imposed form, and so by using it, we drive them from all public worship or divide them.