A discourse concerning liturgies

Augustin Answers, Si non sanctificatur aqua, cum aliqua erroris verba per imperitiam precator effundit, multi non solum mali, set etiam boni fratres in ecclesia ⟨p. 113⟩non sanctificant aquam. If the Water be not Sanctified when he that Prays, through unskilfulness, utters some erroneous words; then, not only many evil, but good Brethren, in the Church do not sanctify the Water. Multorum enim preces emendantur quotidie, si doctioribus fuerint recitatae, & multa in iis reperiuntur contra Catholicam fidem. For the Prayers of many are daily amended, if they be recited to the more Learned, and many things are found in them contrary to the Catholic Faith; (they were vitiosae preces, & in quibus aliquid perversum, as he afterwards.) Now such prayers cannot be supposed to have been any common Forms, commanded, or used, much less prescribed by the Church. The course taken to redress this, was not a total prohibition of the Prayers they had chosen; nor the tying of such Ministers to the use of any common Form; no nor the commending of any such to their use: But (what divers Synods (of which before) had decreed) the Prayers, which such indiscreet persons made choice of, being recited to the more learned, were by them amended, and the errors being left out, they are left to use them still, (for the amending of them cannot be otherwise interpreted, than in order to future use:) And this course, as it is inconsistent with the imposition of any set Forms, so it argues forcibly, the Churches then had not in the administration of Baptism, so much as any common Form in free use; otherwise, instead of daily trouble to others and themselves, about correcting their very faulty Prayers; Why are not persons so intolerably indiscreet (who could not discern when a Prayer was Heretical) so much as advised to make use of the common Form? And finally, under what restraint ⟨p. 114⟩can any fancy the more discreet and learned to have been in Baptizing; when the weakest and most imprudent had so much liberty therein? Nothing needs be more manifest, than that neither the prudent nor indiscreet, were then confined to prescribed Forms in the Ministration of Baptism.

Augustin Answers, Si non sanctificatur aqua, cum aliqua erroris verba per imperitiam precator effundit, multi non solum mali, set etiam boni fratres in ecclesia ⟨p. 113⟩