Answ. Prove it, and add not to the word of God. 1. The Scripture and God's servants, even Christ himself, had broken the second commandment, when they used or prescribed forms. 2. Forms are no more images than extemporate words are, as they signify our minds. Are all the catechisms, printed and written sermons and prayers, images or idols? all forms that parents teach their children? O charge not such untruths on God; and invent not falsehoods of his word, while you cry down man's inventions.
Quest. LXXIV. Is it lawful to impose forms on the congregation or the people in public worship?
Yes, and more than lawful; it is the pastor's duty so to do. For whether he forethink what to pray or not, his prayer is to them a form of words; and they are bound in all the lawful parts, to concur with him in spirit or desire, and to say Amen. So that every minister by office is daily to impose a form of prayer on all the people in the congregation. Only some men impose the same form many times over, or every day, and others impose every day a new one.
Quest. LXXV. Is it lawful to use forms composed by man, and imposed not only on the people, but on the pastors of the churches?
Answ. The question concerneth not the lawfulness of imposing, but of using forms imposed. And, 1. It is not lawful to use them merely on that account because they are imposed or commanded, without some greater reason of the unlawfulness. For else it would be unlawful for any other to use imposed forms; as for a scholar or child, if the master or parent impose them, or for the congregation when the pastor imposeth them, which is not true.
2. The using of imposed forms may by other accidents be sometimes good and sometimes evil, as the accidents are that make it so.
1. These accidents may make it evil: (1.) When the form is bad for matter or manner, and we voluntarily prefer it before that which is better, being willing of the imposition. (2.) When we do it to gratify our slothfulness, or to cover our wilful ignorance and disability. (3.) When we voluntarily obey and strengthen any unlawful, usurping pastors or powers that impose it without authority, and so encourage church tyranny. (4.) When we choose a singular form, imposed by some singular pastor, and avoid that which the rest of the churches agree in, at a time when it may tend to division and offence. (5.) When the weakness and offence of the congregation is such, that they will not join with us in the imposed form, and so by using it, we drive them from all public worship or divide them.
2. And in the following circumstances the using of an imposed form is lawful and a duty: (1.) When the minister is so weak that he cannot pray well without one, nor compose so good a one himself. (2.) Or when the errors or great weakness of the generality of ministers is such, as that they usually corrupt or spoil God's worship by their own manner of praying, and no better are to be had; and thereupon the wise and faithful pastors and magistrates shall impose one sound and apt liturgy to avoid error and division in such a distempered time; and the ablest cannot be left at liberty without the relaxing of the rest. (3.) When it is a means of the concord of the churches, and no hinderance to our other prayers. (4.) When our hearers will not join with us if we use them not (for error and weakness must be borne with on one side, as well as on the other). (5.) When obedience to just authority requireth it, and no command of Christ is crossed by it. (6.) When the imposition is so severe that we must so worship God publicly, or not at all; and so all God's public worship will be shut out of that congregation, country, or nation, unless we will use imposed prayers. (7.) In a word, when the good consequences of obedience, union, avoiding offence, liberty for God's public worship and preaching the gospel, &c. are greater than the bad consequences which are like to follow the using of such forms: the preponderating accidents must prevail. (8.) And if a man's own judgment and conscience cannot be satisfied, to do God's work comfortably and quietly any other way, it may go far in the determination. And the common good of many churches must still be preferred before a less.
Quest. LXXVI. Doth not the calling of a minister so consist in the exercise of his own ministerial gifts, that he may not officiate without them, nor make use of other men's gifts instead of them?
Answ. 1. The office of the ministry is an obligation and authority to do the ministerial work, by those personal, competent abilities which God hath given us.