A02990:47
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
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.
Means of worship (not to contend about words) are of two sorts.1 Some substantial; which are so means of worship, as they be worship it self; as the word is used, when we speak of worship taught in the 2. commandment: So the sacraments are means of worship, & branches of positive worship taught in that precept. And in this sense all means of worship allowable are necessary by Divine precept, and we are bound in conscience to apply our selves to them as Gods ordinance, and not we only, but all the churches throughout the world. For such ordinances of God pertain to the substance of worship, whereof nothing can be changed or taken away but the worship is changed, and another made. Others are mere accidents to the substantial means,2 and deserve not to be called means of worship, and if so called, it is very improperly, concerning which God hath given no particular commandment in his word, whereunto the conscience ⟨p. 27⟩is not bound either to apply it self unto them, or to witness against them: and of this sort are the circumstances of time, place, order, method, phrase and stinted form of words in the administration of the holy things of God; which are no parts of the worship, but honest circumstances of the celebration; consonant to the general rules given in scripture for the right administration of Divine ordinances, but not commanded or disallowed in particular. For general rules are not commandments of this or that in particular, but approbations of any particular, this or another, agreeable to those rules. The apostle in commanding that all things be done in order, doth not command this or that particular order, nor forbid this or that in particular because it is not ordained of God.3 For if all such means or worship shall be properly worship, then not only preaching, but the church, pulpit, bells, bell-man, the phrase and method of sermons, then each particular form of prayer, the hour and order shall be worship, because they are furtherances thereof. If all such means of worship must be ordained of God, or they shall be unlawful, God must have no worship at all from us, in the means which he himself hath ordained: because it is impossible to use the means he hath ordained, and not to do many things which he hath not instituted.