The grand debate between the most reverend bishops and the Presbyterian divines appointed by…

Reply. What is most for edification, is best known by experience, and by the reason of the thing; For the former, you are ⟨p. 67⟩not the Masters of all mens experience, but of your own, and others that have acquainted you with the same, as theirs: We also may warrantably profess in the name of our selves, and many thousands of sober pious persons, that we experience that these things are against our edification, and we beseech you do not by us, what you would not do by the poor labouring servants of your family, to measure them all their diet for quality or quantity, according to your own appetites, which they think are diseased, and would be better, if you worked as hard as they; And we gave you some of the reasons of our judgment. 1. Though we have not said that the people may not in psalms to God concur in voice, (we speak of prayer which you should have observed) and though we only concluded it agreeable to the Scripture practice, for the people in prayer to say but their Amen, yet knowing not from whom to understand the will of God, and what is pleasing to him, better than from himself, we considered what the Scripture saith of the ordinary way of public worship; and finding ordinarily that the people spoke no more in prayer (as distinct from Psalms and praise) than their Amen, or mere consent, we desired to imitate the surest pattern. 2. As we find that the Minister is the mouth of the people to God in public (which Scripture, and the necessity of order, do require) so we were loath to countenance the peoples invading of that Sacred Office, so far as they seem to us to do; 1. By reading half the Psalms and Hymns; 2. By saying half the Prayers, as the Minister doth the other half; 3. By being one of them the mouth of all the rest in the Confession at the Lords Supper; 4. By being the only Petitioners, in the far greatest part of all the Litany, by their [good Lord deliver us] and [we beseech thee to hear us good Lord] while the Minister only reciteth the matter of the prayer, and maketh none of the Request at all, we fear lest by parity of reason, the people will claim the work of preaching, and other parts of the Ministerial Office; 3. And we mentioned that which all our ears are witnesses of, that while half the Psalms, and Hymns, &c.