A discourse of the work of the Holy Spirit in prayer with a brief…

1. In and by the Additions made unto the first ⟨image 10⟩received Forms, the superstitious and corrupt Doctrines of the Apostasy in several Ages, were insinuated into the worship of the Church. That such superstitious and corrupt Doctrines were gradually introduced into the Church, is acknowledged by all Protestants, and is sufficiently known; the supposition of it is the sole foundation of the Reformation. And by this Artifice of new Additions to received Forms, they were from time to time admitted into, and stated in the Worship of the Church, by which principally to this very day, they preserve their station in the minds of men. Were that foundation of them taken away, they would quickly fall to the ground. By this means did those Abominations of Transubstantiation and the Sacrifice of the Mass, both leaven and poison the whole Worship of the public Assemblies, and imposed themselves on the credulity of the People. The Disputes of Speculative men, superstitious and subtle, about these things, had never infected the minds of the common People of Christians nor ever been the means of that Idolatry, which at length spread it self over the whole visible Church of these parts of the World, had not this Device of prescribed Forms of Prayer wherein those Abominations were not only expressed, but graphically represented and acted ⟨image 11⟩(so violently affecting the carnal Minds of men superstitious and ignorant) imposed them on their practice; which gradually hardened them with an obdurate credulity. For although they saw no ground or reason Doctrinally to believe what was proposed unto them about Transubstantiation and the Sacrifice of the Mass, and might easily have seen that they were contradictory unto all the conductive Principles of men and Christians, namely Faith, Reason and Sense; yet they deceived themselves into an obstinate pretence of believing in the notion of Truth, of what they had admitted in practice. Men I say of corrupt minds, might have disputed long enough about vagrant Forms, Accidents without subjects, Transmutation of substances without Accidents, Sacrifices bloody and unbloody, before they had vitiated the whole Worship of the Church with gross Idolatry; had not this engine been made use of for its introduction; and the minds of men by this means inveigled with the practice of it.

1. In and by the Additions made unto the first ⟨image 10⟩