A93091:210
A treatise of liturgies, power of the keys, and of matter of the visible…A treatise of liturgies, power of the keyes, and of matter of the visible…
A treatise of liturgies, power of the keys, and of matter of the visible church. In answer to the reverend servant of Christ, Mr. John Ball. By Thomas Shepherd, sometimes fellow of Emanuel-College in Cambridge, and late pastor of Cambridge in New-England.A treatise of liturgies, power of the keyes, and of matter of the visible church. In answer to the reverend servant of Christ, Mr. John Ball. By Thomas Shephard, sometimes fellow of Emanuel-Colledge in Cambridge, and late pastour of Cambridge in New-England.
London: printed by E. Cotes for Andrew Crooke, 1652
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
2. In the first 300. years after Christ, we read of few forms, that the Churches used, and those rather short ejaculations, then set forms, but contrarily we read frequently of the exercise of their gifts in prayer. They prayed sine monitore, quia de pectore, 1saith Tertullian, i. e. They prayed without a Prompter, because from the heart, which as Zephirus observes was in opposition to the prompted forms then in use amongst the Pagans. We read also what they prayed for, viz. pro inimicis, pro imperatoribus, pro statu seculi, pro morâ finis, &c. but of any set forms we read not. Their persecutions and days of afflictions preserved them from formality in prayer, and taught them how to find their hearts and knees, and tongues, to pour out their souls to God, while under the Altar they were pouring out their blood.
2. In the first 300. yeeres after Christ, wee read of few formes, that the Churches used, and those rather short ejaculations, then set formes, but contrarily wee read frequently of the exercise of their gifts in prayer. They prayed sine monitore, quia de pectore, 1saith Tertullian, i. e. They prayed without a Promptour, because from the heart, which as Zephirus observes was in opposition to the prompted formes then in use amongst the Pagans. Wee read also what they prayed for, viz. pro inimicis, pro imperatoribus, pro statu seculi, pro morâ finis, &c. but of any set formes we read not. Their persecutions and dayes of afflictions preserved them from formalitie in prayer, and taught them how to finde their hearts and knees, and tongues, to poure out their soules to God, while under the Altar they were pouring out their blood.
- 1Tertull. Apol. cap. 30.
3. But after the Churches had enjoyed peace for some space of time, (wherein security usually makes insensible, and insensibleness formal) then indeed we read offset and imposed forms, which the rather prevailed in regard of the gross and palpable ignorance of a blind ministry, under a more learned Prelacy, and therefore it is well observed by Chemnitius that the third Council of Carthage decreed this; ut nemo in precibus, &c. viz. that no Minister in his prayers either names the Father for the Son or the Son for the Father, but when he comes to the Altar, to direct his prayers always to God the Father, and that no man use his own forms, till he have conferred and showed his forms to men more able, which we find sometime to be the Synod.