Selected quad for the lemma: duty_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
duty_n	pray_v	prayer_n	use_v	2,592	5	5.6421	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A80626	A modest and cleer ansvver to Mr. Ball's discourse of set formes of prayer. Written by the reverend and learned John Cotton, B.D. and teacher of the Church of Christ at Boston in New-England. Published for the benefit of those who desire satisfaction in that point	Cotton, John, 1584-1652.	1642 (1642)	Wing C6444; ESTC R212884	45,765	95

the Crutch from the lame and bread from the hungry Answ In case a distressed soul do meet with a prayer penned by a godly and well experienced Christian and do find his own case pithily and amply deciphered and anatomized therein we deny not but his heart and affections may go along with it and say Amen to it And thus far may find it a lawfull help to him but if you set a part such a prayer to support him as a crutch in his prayers as without which he cannot walk straight and upright in that duty or if he that penned that prayer or others that have read it do injoyn it upon him and forbid him to pray especially with others unlesse he use that form this instead of a crutch will prove a cudgell to break the bones of the Spirit in prayer and force him to halt in worshipping God after the precepts of men as it hath been said before so it may be again remembred here a man may help his spirit in meditation of his mortallity by beholding a dead mans scalp cast in his way by Gods providence but if he should set a part a deaths head or take it up as injoyned to him by others never to meditate or conserre with others about his mortality and estate of another life but in the sight and use of the deaths head such a soul shall find but a dead heart and a dead devotion from such a means of mortification if some forms of Prayer especially such as gave occasion to this Dispute do now seem to be as bread to the hungry we say no more but this then hungry souls will never be starved that never want store of such like bread as this is Disc The ample and particular laying out of our necessities doth ease the heart and move affections and when this may be better done by the help of a Book in prayer then of our selves it is senselesse to accuse the use hereof as a lip-labour and a quenching of the spirit he stinteth not the Spirit that labours to blow the coals of grace c. Answ It is true he stinteth not the Spirit nor quencheth him that useth any means sanctified by the Spirit to blow the coals of grace but this we deny that a stinted form of prayer upon a book devised by men and enjoyned to be used as the prayers of a Christian soul is a means sanctified by the Spirit to blow the coals of his grace or that the repeating of such a set form of Prayer though ample and particular in laying out his necessities will ease his heart or move his affections according to God God doth not delight ordinarily to breath in the Masterly injunctions of brethren upon brethren or of one Congregation upon another especially in such things whereof we have neither precept nor president in the Word Disc He doth not substitute his Christian friend in the place of the word and Spirit who not able to lift up his soul to God by reason of straightnesse of heart and grievous pressure doth crave his help and assistance in prayer and may not a godly Book supply the want of a Christian companion Answ It is an ordinance of God to crave the help of the Prayers of our brethren and to joyn with them shew the like warrant for Prayer upon a book prescribed to us and then we will grant a godly book may supply even in this case the lacke of a Christian companion If a Minister be not able to preach by reason of the straightnesse of his heart and grievous pressure he may get his Christian friend to preach for him but he may not make use of a godly homily enjoyned to him by others to supply the lack of a Christian friend Disc Why should it be a sin to read or pronounce a godly form of Prayer is it for that it is read and pronounced or because a man cannot lift up his heart in faith unto God when he uttereth his requests in a stinted form of words to assigne the former is superstition To say the latter is to offend against common experience Answ We do not say it is a sin to read or pronounce a godly form of Prayer but to read a form of Prayer devised by others and to set it a part to read being devised by others enjoyned to me as my Prayer This is sin not because it is pronounced for all publique Prayer is pronounced nor alwayes in private because it is read for as hath been said a man may go along in his spirit and be affected with some Prayer which occasionally he readeth and may lift up his own heart in it to the Lord but a sin it is as it is set apart by himselfe for his Prayer or as it is so enjoyned to him by others and in publique it is of sin both because it is read as the Prayer of the Church and so another book brought into the Church besides Gods Book And because it is devised not by the gift of Gods Spirit in themselves but in others and also because by other it is prescribed or enjoyned to be read as the service and worship of God in another Church For we do not find that ever God gave warrant either for the offering up of read Prayers to God as the ordinary prayers of the Church and least of all for Prayers prescribed and enjoyned by one Church unto another It is so far off from superstition to affirm this that we look at it as a superstition to deny it for to speak of superstition according to the true nature of it and not according to the old Etymologie If superstition be cultus supra statutum there is none of all these kinds whether as read upon a book in the Congregation for their ordinary Prayers or devised by men of other Congregations for that end or as imposed upon us by them but they are all of them and each one of them cultus supra statutum worships and helps and forms of worship which never came into Gods heart to allow for his statute and worship Disc Will any man object that read prayer is not Gods Ordinance It hath been answered already that prayer is the ordinance of God but whether our prayers be onely conceived in heart or uttered by words whether in our own or other words whether by pronouncing or reading that is not appointed when spake he one word of prayer within Book or without in this or that form of words Answ Reply hath been made hereto before as Prayer is an Ordinance of God so are all the lawfull helps and means and forms of Prayer God hath plainly expressed his allowance of Prayer conceived in the heart and of prayer uttered and pronounced by words both in our own words and in the words of others whom God calleth to be our mouths in the present assembly but of set forms of read prayer devised by men of another Congregation and prescribed and imposed upon others it may