1. It becometh an advantage to some proud men who think themselves wiser than all the rest, to obtrude their compositions, that none may be thought wise enough, or fit to speak to God, but in their words; and so introduce church tyranny.
2. It may become a hinderance to able, worthy ministers that can do better.
3. It may become a dividing snare to the churches, that cannot all agree and consent in such human impositions.
4. It may become an advantage to heretics when they can but get into power (as the Arians of old) to corrupt all the churches and public worship; and thus the papists have corrupted the churches by the mass.
5. It may become an engine or occasion of persecution, and silencing all those ministers that cannot consent to such impositions.
6. It may become a means of depraving the ministry, and bringing them to a common idleness and ignorance (if other things alike concur). For when men perceive that no greater abilities are used and required, they will commonly labour for and get no greater, and so will be unable to pray without their forms of words.
7. And by this means christian religion may decay and grow into contempt; for though it be desirable that its own worth should keep up its reputation and success, yet it never hitherto was so kept up without the assistance of God's eminent gifts and graces in his ministers; but wherever there hath been a learned, able, holy, zealous, diligent ministry, religion usually hath flourished; and wherever there hath been an ignorant, vicious, cold, idle, negligent, and reproached ministry, religion usually hath died and been reproached. And we have now no reason to look for that which never was, and that God should take a new course in the world.
And the opinion of imposing forms of prayer, may draw on the opinion of imposing forms of preaching as much, and of restraining free preaching as much as free praying, as we see in Muscovy. And then when nothing but bare reading is required, nothing more will be ordinarily sought; and so the ministry will be the scorn of the people.
9. And it will be a shameful and uncomfortable failing, when a minister is not able on variety of occasions, to vary his prayers accordingly; and when he cannot go any further than his book or lesson; it being as impossible to make prayers just fitted to all occasions which will fall out, as to make sermons fit for all, or, as they say, to make a coat for the moon; and the people will contemn the ministers when they perceive this great deficiency.
10. And it is a great difficulty to many ministers to learn and say a form without book; so that they that can all day speak what they know, can scarce recite a form of words one quarter of an hour, the memory more depending upon the body and its temper, than the exercise of the understanding doth. He that is tied just to these words and no other, is put upon double difficulties (like him that on height must walk on a narrow plank, where the fear of falling will make him fall); but he that may express the just desires of his soul in what words occur that are apt and decent, is like one that hath a field to walk in: for my own part, it is easier to me to pray or preach six hours in freedom, about things which I understand, than to pray or preach the tenth part of an hour in the fetters of a form of words which I must not vary. And so the necessity of a book coming in, doth bring down the reputation of the minister's abilities in the people's eyes.