Mr. Richard Baxter's last legacy in select admonitions and directions to all sober dissenters

Of the Responses.

Q. 83. May the People bare a Vocal part in Worship, ¹and do any more than say Amen? Answ. The People bare an equal part in singing the Psalms, which are Prayer, and Praise, and Instruction: if they may do so in the Psalms in Metre, there can be no reason given, but they may lawfully do so in Psalms in Prose; for saying them, and singing them, are but modes of Utterance, and the ancient Singing was liker our Saying, than our Tunes. The Primitive Christians were so full of zeal and love to Christ, that they would have taken it for an Injury, and a quenching of the Spirit, to have been wholly restrained from bearing their part in the Praises of the Church. The use of the Tongue keepeth awake the Mind, and stirreth up God's Graces in his Servants. It was the decay of Zeal in the People, that first shut out the Responses: while they ⟨p. 23⟩kept up the Ancient Zeal, they were inclined to take their part vocally in the Worship. And this was seconded by the Pride and Usurpation of the Priests thereupon; who thought the People of God too profane to speak in the Assemblies, and meddle so much with Holy things. Yet the very remembrance of former zeal caused most Churches to retain many of the words of their predecessors, even when they lost the Life and Spirit which should animate them; and so the same words came into the Liturgies, and were used by too many, customarily, and in formality, which their Ancestors had used in the fervour of their Souls. And if it were not, that a dead-hearted, formal People, by speaking the Responses carelessly and hypocritically, do bring them into disgrace with many, that see the necessity of Seriousness, I think, few good People would be against them now.—It is here the duty of every Christian, to labour to restore the life and spirit to the Words, that they may again be used in a serious and holy manner, as heretofore, Exod. 19. 8. In as solemn an Assembly as any of ours, when God gave Moses a form of words to preach to the People, all the People answered together, and said, All that the Lord hath spoken, we will do. So