A02990:78
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.
CHAP. IIII. It is as lawful to pray unto God in a form of words devised by others, as to sing psalms to the praise of God in a stinted form of words prescribed by others.
CHAP. IIII. It is as lawfull to pray unto God in a form of words devised by others, as to sing psalmes to the praise of God in a stinted form of words prescribed by others.
IF it be lawful to sing psalms to the praise of God in a stinted form of words prescribed by others and devised by man,1 then likewise to pray unto God in a stinted form devised by others. For as prayer is an ordinance of God and a branch of his worship, so is singing of psalms to the praise of God: As God hath left no stinted form of prayer for his church whereunto he hath tied all men and all churches, no more hath he prescribed any stinted form of singing as necessary for all times and churches in the new Testament: As the one must be done with the heart and spirit, so the other: As in the one the words are devised by men and prescribed by others, so in singing of psalms: If the one be the invention of man, a strange prayer, the similitude of a prayer; the other is an invention of man, a strange psalm, the similitude of a psalm. And if a man be disposed to reason against singing of psalms in a form of words devised by others, he might more plausibly argue, That in the infancy of the church, when God saw a set form of psalms to be necessary, he inspired holy men to pen holy and divine psalms, which might be of use for that time, when such ⟨p. 55⟩worship was required: but in the times of the new Testament no set form of singing is prescribed of God; no authority is given to the church or ordinary officers to prescribe any set form which might be of use to all churches; there is neither precept for nor precedent of any prescript form of singing in the scripture since Christs time; all essential parts of Gods worship may be performed without it, as appeareth by the examples of the primitive churches: and seeing God never commanded nor promised to accept any such stinted forms, it is a manifest breach of the second commandment. These and such like arguments do make as strongly in every point against a stinted form of psalms as against a prescript form of prayer. But I have not read, that the singing of psalms in a prescript form devised by others is unlawful.