A defence of the principles of love, which are necessary to the unity and…

2. I have after distinguished of false Worship, and told you, that if by false, you mean forbidden, or not commanded, or sinful, we all worship God falsely in the Manner every day, and in some part of the matter very oft. Our disorders, confusion, tautologies, unfit expressions, are all forbidden, and so false worship: And if God prohibit any disorder which is in the Liturgy, he prohibits the same in extemporate prayers (in which some good Christians are as failing as the Liturgy) And as the words of the Liturgy are not commanded in the Scripture, so neither are the words of our extemporate or studied Sermons or Prayers.

2. I have after distinguished of false Worship, and told you, that if by false, you mean forbidden, or not commanded, or sinful, we all worship God falsly in the Manner every day, and in some part of the matter very oft. Our disorders, confusion, tautologies, unfit expressions, are all forbidden, and so false worship: And if God prohibit any disorder which is in the Liturgie, he prohibits the same in extemporate prayers (in which some good Christians are as failing as the Liturgie) And as the words of the Liturgie are not commanded in the Scripture, so neither are the words of our extemporate or studied Sermons or Prayers.

3. God hateth every sin in every prayer; but he hateth the avoiding of prayer, and of due communion much more. He hateth every disorder in extemporate prayer; And yet he more hateth that Censoriousness and Curiosity, which would draw men to forsake the substantials of Worship, or Christian Love and Communion on that pretence.

Gods Jealousy in his Worship is most about the heart, and next about the substantials of his own institutions, and of Natural Worship, and least about the phrase of Speech and order, while it is not such, as is grossly dishonourable to the Nature of God, and to the greater things. And though God under the Law expressed his jealousy much about Ceremonies, yet that was not for the Ceremonies sake, but to control gross irreverence and contempt of holy things (as in the Case of Uzzah, the Bethshemites, Uzziah, Aaron's Sons) and to keep up an esteem of the Holiness of God, and to restrain sacrilegious presumption. And under the Gospel, it is neither this place of Worship, nor that, neither this Mountain, nor Jerusalem, but Spirit and Truth that God most looks at. It is not whether you pray by a Book, or without, by words fore-studied or not, by words of your own contriving, or of another's, that God is now jealous of. For even when you want words, he accepteth the groans excited by his Spirit,