A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

The difference between the form given in the sermon on the mount and on that second occasion is, that to the latter he does not affix the doxology, which many indeed suppose to be an interpolation; leaving this perhaps to be added according to the occasion and to the zeal of the worshipper. It cannot be imagined that either the disciples of our Lord, or of John, had hitherto neglected the duty of prayer, or that they performed it in an uncertain or disorderly manner, as they had set forms and hours of prayer, which all the devout Jews observed; it seems therefore obvious that a particular form is alluded to in the case of both, and the request to our Lord was made in pursuance of his encouraging direction, “Ask, and ye shall have,” and was gratified by him in compliance with the reasonable and well-known existing custom. “Thus,” as the learned Mede says on this subject, (see his discourse on Matt. vi. 9,) “their inadvertency” (in not understanding it the first time as a form) “becomes our confirmation. For, as Joseph said to Pharaoh, ‘the dream is doubled unto Pharaoh, because the thing is established by God,’ (Gen. xli. 32,) so may we say here, the delivery of this prayer was doubled unto the disciples, that they and we might thereby know the more certainly that our Saviour, intended and commended it unto his Church for a set form of prayer.”

Our blessed Lord appears afterwards to refer to the custom now adopted by his disciples, and the well-known forms used, when he says, “And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have aught against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses” (Mark xi. 25); thus pointedly referring to two of its principal features, couched too in the same words. The apostle St. Peter seems to make the same allusion when he says, “If ye call on the Father,” &c. (1 Pet. i. 17.)

Some have argued that this prayer is to be considered as temporary only, and not of perpetual obligation, because we do not in it ask in the name of Christ, according to his direction; but a transaction may be opposed to this, recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, (iv. 24,) in which it is seen, unless the apostles and disciples had so quickly forgotten the direction of their Lord, that prayers may be considered as offered up in the name of Christ, though addressed to God; for there the disciples, on the liberation of Peter and John by the Jewish council, lift up their voice and say, “Lord, thou art God, which hast made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is;” and they mention Christ as his holy child Jesus. In our addresses to God, our heavenly Father, we cannot forget him through whom we have access as to a father, being “joint-heirs with him.”

Another objection is made, that it does not appear in Scripture that the apostles used this prayer; but to this it may be remarked, that neither does it appear they used any other form, and yet some form of words must have been generally known and used by them, or how could “they lift up their voice with one accord.” (Acts iv. 24; i. 14.)

Bishop Jeremy Taylor justly says, “That the apostles did use the prayer their Lord taught them, I think need not much to be questioned; they could have no other end of their desire; and it had been a strange boldness to ask for a form which they intended not to use, or a strange levity not to do what they intended.”

The learned Bingham observes, that if there were no other argument to prove the lawfulness of set forms of prayer in the judgment of the ancients, the opinion which they had of the Lord’s Prayer, and their practice pursuant to this opinion, would sufficiently do it; and he remarks that they unequivocally looked upon it as a settled form: for Tertullian says expressly that “our Lord prescribed a new form of prayer for the new disciples of the New Testament, and that though John had taught his disciples a form, yet that he did this only as a forerunner of Christ, so that when Christ was increased, (‘he must increase, but I must decrease,’) then the work of the servant passed over to the Lord. Thus the prayer of John is lost, while that of our Lord remains, that earthly things may give way to heavenly.”

In similar terms speaks Irenæus, (who had himself heard Polycarp, the disciple of St. John,) Origen, Tertullian, St. Cyprian, St. Cyril, St. Jerome, St. Chrysostom, and St. Augustine. The last says expressly, that as the Church always used this prayer, she did it at the commandment of Christ. “He said to his disciples—he said to his apostles and to us, pray thus.” St. Chrysostom refers continually to the Lord’s Prayer, as in common use among them by the express commandment of Christ, and observes, “that the Father well knows the words and meaning of his Son.” St. Cyprian says, “Let the Father recognise in your prayers the words of the Son;” and he considers it as a peculiar instance of mercy, “that he who made us taught us how to pray; that whilst we speak unto the Father in that prayer and address which the Son taught us, we may the more easily be heard.” He adds, “Since we have an Advocate with the Father for our sins, we should, whenever we pray for pardon, allege unto God the very words which our Advocate has taught us. We have his promise, that whatever we shall ask in his name we shall receive: and must we not more readily obtain our desires, when we not only use his name in asking, but in his very words, present our request unto God. Our Advocate in heaven has taught us to say this prayer upon earth, that between his intercession and our supplications the most perfect harmony may subsist.” The judicious Hooker observes, that “should men speak with the tongues of angels, yet words so pleasing to the ears of God, as those which the Son of God himself has composed, it were not possible for man to frame.”

There was, indeed, hardly any office in the primitive Church in which the celebration of this prayer did not make a solemn part; so that at length it was called the Oratio quotidiana, the daily, the common prayer; the Oratio legitima the established prayer, or the prayer of the Christian law; the “epitome of the gospel:” and St. Augustine even terms it, “the daily baptism,” and a “daily purification,” “for,” says he, “we are absolved once by baptism, but by this prayer daily.” When in succeeding ages some of the clergy in Spain occasionally omitted it in the daily service, they were censured by a council, as “proud contemners of the Lord’s injunction; and it was enacted, that every clergyman omitting it either in private or public prayer should be degraded from the dignity of his office.” It is worthy of remark, that the heathen writer Lucian, nearly contemporary with the apostles, makes a Christian, in one of his dialogues, speak of the prayer which began, “Our Father.”

The early Fathers were even of opinion, that the making use of this prayer was of vast efficacy to incline God to pardon sins of infirmity, especially those committed through want of fervour and sufficient attention in our other prayers. “As for our daily and slight sins,” says St. Augustine, “without which no one can live, the daily prayer will be accepted by God for pardon of them;” and the fourth Council of Toledo enjoins it for this among other reasons. This doctrine the Papists afterwards perverted, by their distinction of sins into venial and mortal, and by the pure opus operatum of repeating the Lord’s Prayer. Of this abuse there is happily no shadow in the present service of our Church, our reformers having wholly rejected and abolished the technical repetition of it (the Paternoster) with chaplets and rosaries, to which truly “vain repetitions” the Church of Rome had annexed indulgences.

In conclusion, in whatever else the various liturgies differ, they all agree in the constant and frequent use of this prayer. Dr. Featly says, “the reformed Churches generally conclude their prayers before sermon with the Lord’s Prayer, partly in opposition to the Papists, who close up their devotions with an Ave Maria, partly to supply all the defects and imperfections of their own.” And the learned Bingham pointedly declares, “I dare undertake to prove, that for 1500 years together, none ever disliked the use of the Lord’s Prayer, but only the Pelagians; and they did not wholly reject the use of it neither, nor dislike it because it was a form, but for another reason, because it contradicted one of their principal tenets, which was, that some men were so perfect in this world, that they needed not to pray to God for the forgiveness of their own sins, but only for those of others.”