7. Those that would have private men pray and prophesy in public, as warranted by 1 Cor. xiv. "Ye may all speak," &c. do much contradict themselves, if they say also that a layman may say nothing but Amen.
8. The people were all to say Amen in Deut. xxvii. 15, 16, 18-20, &c. And yet they oftentimes said more. As Exod. xix. 8, in as solemn an assembly as any of ours, when God himself gave Moses a sermon (in a form of words) to preach to the people, and Moses had repeated it as from the Lord, (it being the narrative of his mercies, the command of obedience, and the promises of his great blessings upon that condition,) "all the people answered together and said, All that the Lord hath spoken we will do." The like was done again, Exod. xxiv. 3, and Deut. v. 27. And lest you should think either that the assembly was not as solemn as ours, or that it was not well done of the people to say more than Amen, God himself who was present declared his approbation, even of the words, when the speakers' hearts were not so sincere in speaking them as they ought: ver. 28, 29, "And the Lord heard the voice of your words when you spake unto me, and the Lord said unto me, I have heard the voice of the words of this people--They have well said all that they have spoken. O that there were such a heart in them--."
_Object._ But this is but a speech to Moses, and not to God.
_Answ._ I will recite to you a form of prayer which the people themselves were to make publicly to God: Deut. xxvi. 13-15, "Then shalt thou say before the Lord thy God, I have brought away the hallowed things out of my house, and also have given them unto the Levite and unto the stranger, to the fatherless, and to the widow, according to all thy commandments which thou hast commanded me: I have not transgressed thy commandments, neither have I forgotten them. I have not eaten thereof in my mourning, neither have I taken away ought thereof for any unclean use, nor given ought thereof for the dead; but I have hearkened to the voice of the Lord my God, and have done according to all that thou hast commanded me. Look down from thy holy habitation, from heaven, and bless thy people Israel, and the land which thou hast given us, as thou swarest unto our fathers, a land that floweth with milk and honey." Is not here a full form of prayer to be used by all the people? And remember that Joseph and Mary, and Christ himself, were under this law, and that you never read that Christ found fault with the people's speech, nor spake a word to restrain it in his churches.
In Lev. ix. 24, "When all the people saw the glory of the Lord, and the fire that came out from it, and consumed the burnt offering, they shouted and fell on their faces;" which was an acclamation more than bare amen.
2 Kings xxiii. 2, 3, "King Josiah went up into the house of the Lord, and all the men of Judah, &c. and the priests and the prophets, and all the people, both small and great: and he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant. And the king stood by a pillar, and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord, and to keep his commandments, &c. with all their heart, and all their soul, &c. And all the people stood to the covenant." Where, as a king is the speaker, it is like that the people used some words to express their consent.
1 Chron. xvi. 35, 36, when David delivered a psalm for a form of praise: in which it is said to the people, ver. 35, "And say ye, Save us, O God of our salvation, and gather us together, and deliver us from the heathen, that we may give thanks to thy holy name, and glory in thy praise. Blessed be the Lord God of Israel for ever and ever. All the people said, Amen, and praised the Lord." Where it is like that their praising the Lord was more than their amen.
And it is a command, Psal. lxvii. 3, 5, "Let all the people praise thee, O God, let all the people praise thee." And he that will limit this to single persons, or say that it must not be vocally in the church, or it must be only in metre and never in prose, or only in tunes and not without, must prove it, lest he be proved an adder to God's word.