An answer to two treatises of Mr. John Can, the leader of the English…An answer to two treatises of Mr. Iohn Can, the leader of the English…

We read not of any such Liturgy in the Church of Christ in the days of the ^aApostles, and therefore no such Liturgy is any part of Gods worship or substantial means thereof, to be used without addition or alteration of all or any Church, with opinion of necessity, holiness, or merit. But a set Liturgy might be in use in their times, though we read not of it, for the Apostles set not down a Catalogue of all and every particular order that was in the Church, but give us a perfect rule or canon of faith and manners in all things necessary to salvation, and all things unchangeably concerning the government of the Church unto the end of the world. And if there was no stinted Liturgy in their days, yet for order a set form of prayer to be used in public meeting is not unlawful, because it is of the number of things which God hath not determined in his Word, and ^bwhere God hath not prescribed any form, there no form must be esteemed any part of worship, or condemned as simply unlawful. For as to call that holy which God hath not sanctified is superstition; so it is erroneous to condemn that as unholy or profane, which God alloweth or is consonant to his Word, though it be not precisely commanded. But that there was no such ^cLiturgy in many ages following, till blindness, ignorance and laziness occasioned a prescript form to be made for idle and dumb Priests, is your addition to the Nonconformists reasons, and not their saying; and more then can be proved by good Authority. Of the precise antiquity of stinted Liturgies, it is hard to determine, but that they have been in use in ⟨p. 18⟩the Christian Church for the space of this fourteen hundred years, if not above, no man can deny. It is more than probable that stinted forms were in use in the Greek Churches, before they came to the ^dLatin, at least many things were translated out of the Greek Liturgies into the Latin. But in the Latin Church we find a stinted form was in use in Cyprian's time, in the administration of the Supper; not to insist upon that which some mention of the Lords prayer used in the celebration, from the very times of the Apostles. And some the chief promoters of a stinted Liturgy are renowned for their constant and unwearied pains, in preaching every day in the week, and sometimes twice. So that there is no probability;