A02990:203
A friendly trial of the grounds tending to separation in a plain and modest…A friendly triall of the grounds tending to separation in a plain and modest…
A friendly trial of the grounds tending to separation in a plain and modest dispute touching the lawfulness of a stinted liturgy and set form of prayer, Communion in mixed assemblies, and the primitive subject and first receptacle of the power of the Keys: tending to satisfy the doubtful, recall the wandering, and to strengthen the weak: by John Ball.A friendly triall of the grounds tending to separation in a plain and modest dispute touching the lawfulnesse of a stinted liturgie and set form of prayer, Communion in mixed assemblies, and the primitive subject and first receptacle of the power of the Keyes: tending to satisfie the doubtfull, recall the wandering, and to strengthen the weak: by John Ball.
Cambridge: printed by Roger Daniel printer to the University of Cambridge for Edward Brewster, 1640Cambridge: printed by Roger Daniel printer to the Universitie of Cambridge for Edward Brewster, 1640
Chapter 8: The people may lawfully be present at those prayers which are put up unto God in a stin…
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
The worship of God by that stinted form whereof our question is,1 is the devise of Antichrist,2 it being never prescribed or used in the primitive churches planted by the apostles and recorded in scripture:3 But as the mystery wrought to a greater height in declining times of the church it was received by little and little, till at last it came to be completely framed, strictly enjoined, and every where used in the papacy, as serving to maintain superstition and a dumb idol-reading ministry,4 and to nourish people in ignorance of the nature and right use of prayer. The Mass-book is in Latin, this Liturgy-book is in English; the Mass-book hath all the prayers this Liturgy hath, and some more: other differences I know not between them. Therefore king Edward the sixth in his letter to the Devonshire-men, to convince them that their Liturgy was our service, telleth them that it was no other but the old and the self-same words in English which were in Latin, save a few things taken out, which were so fond that it ⟨p. 149⟩was a shame to hear them in English. And king James in a speech of his in Scotland said, that their English Liturgy was an ill-said Mass.5 Pope Pius the fourth sending Vincentio Parpatia Abbot of S. Saviour to Qu. Elisabeth,6 offered to confirm the English Liturgy by his authority, if she would yield to him in some other things. Indeed this Liturgy pleased them so well, that for the first eleven years of Qu. Elizabeth Papists came to the English churches and service, as the Lord Cook showeth. And when the Popes intelligencers had seen service solemnly sung and said in Canterbury and London with all their pomp and procession, they wondered that their master would be so unadvised, 7as to interdict a Prince or State whose service and ceremonies so symbolized with his own. The whole form then of the church-service (a few gross things taken out) is borrowed from the Papists, culled and picked out of that popish dung-hill, the Portuis and vile Mass-book. But that form of prayer by which God is worshipped after the manner that idolaters worship their Gods, swerveth from a rule of prayer prescribed in scripture,