Private prayer is generally more devout and earnest than the share we are capable of taking in joint acts of worship; because it affords leisure and opportunity for the circumstantial recollection of those personal wants, by the remembrance and ideas of which the warmth and earnestness of prayer are chiefly excited.

general diffusion of religious knowledge amongst all orders of Christians, which will appear a great thing when compared with the intellectual condition of barbarous nations, can fairly, I think, be ascribed to no other cause than the regular establishment of assemblies for divine worship; in which, either portions of Scripture are recited and explained, or the principles of Christian erudition are so constantly taught in sermons, incorporated with liturgies, or expressed in extempore prayer, as to imprint, by the very repetition, some knowledge and memory of these subjects upon the most unqualified and careless hearer.

Private prayer, in proportion as it is usually accompanied with more actual thought and reflection of the petitioner's own, has a greater tendency than other modes of devotion to revive and fasten upon the mind the general impressions of religion. Solitude powerfully assists this effect. When a man finds himself alone in communication with his The two reasons above stated, bind all the memCreator, his imagination becomes filled with a bers of a community to uphold public worship, by conflux of awful ideas concerning the universal their presence and example, although the helps and agency, and invisible presence, of that Being; opportunities which it affords may not be necessary concerning what is likely to become of himself: to the devotion or edification of all; and to some and of the superlative importance of providing for may be useless: for it is easily foreseen, how soon the happiness of his future existence by endea- religious assemblies would fall into contempt and vours to please him who is the arbiter of his des-disuse, if that class of mankind who are above tiny reflections which, whenever they gain ad-seeking instruction in them, and want not that mittance, for a season overwhelm all others; and leave, when they depart, a solemnity upon the thoughts, that will seldom fail, in some degree, to affect the conduct of life.

Private prayer, thus recommended by its own propriety and by advantages not attainable in any form of religious communion, receives a superior sanction from the authority and example of Christ: "When thou prayest, enter into thy closet; and when thou hast shut the door, pray to thy Father, which is in secret; and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly."—" And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray." Matt. vi. 6; xiv. 23.

II. Family Prayer.

their own piety should be assisted by either forms or society in devotion, were to withdraw their attendance; especially when it is considered, that all who please, are at liberty to rank themselves of this class. This argument meets the only serious apology that can be made for the absenting of ourselves from public worship.—“Surely (some will say) I may be excused from going to church, so long as I pray at home: and have no reason to doubt that my prayers are as acceptable and efficacious in my closet, as in a cathedral; still less can I think myself obliged to sit out a tedious sermon, in order to hear what is known already, what is better learnt from books, or suggested by meditation."-They, whose qualifications and habits best supply to themselves all the effect of public ordinances, will be the last to prefer this excuse, when they advert to the general consequence of setting up such an exemption, as well as when they consider the turn which is sure to be given in the neighbourhood to their absence from public worship. You stay from church, to employ the Sabbath at home in exercises and studies suited to its proper business: your next neighbour stays from church to spend the seventh day less reli

The peculiar use of family piety consists in its influence upon servants, and the young members of a family, who want sufficient seriousness and reflection to retire of their own accord to the exercise of private devotion, and whose attention you cannot easily command in public worship. The example also and authority of a father and master act in this way with the greatest force; for his private prayers, to which his children and servants are not witnesses, act not at all upon them as ex-giously than he passed any of the six, in a sleepy, amples; and his attendance upon public worship they will readily impute to fashion, to a care to preserve appearances, to a concern for decency and character, and to many motives besides a sense of duty to God. Add to this, that forms of public worship, in proportion as they are more comprehensive, are always less interesting, than family prayers; and that the ardour of devotion is better supported, and the sympathy more easily propagated, through a small assembly, connected by the affections of domestic society, than in the presence of a mixed congregation.

III. Public Worship.

If the worship of God be a duty of religion, public worship is a necessary institution; forasmuch as without it, the greater part of mankind would exercise no religious worship at all.

These assemblies afford also, at the same time, opportunities for moral and religious instruction to those who otherwise would receive none. In all protestant, and in most Christian countries, the elements of natural religion, and the important parts of the Evangelic history, are familiar to the lowest of the people. This competent degree and

stupid rest, or at some rendezvous of drunkenness and debauchery, and yet thinks that he is only imitating you, because you both agree in not going to church. The same consideration should overrule many small scruples concerning the rigorous propriety of some things, which may be contained in the forms, or admitted into the administration, of the public worship of our communion: for it seems impossible that even "two or three should be gathered together" in any act of social worship, if each one require from the rest an implicit submission to his objections, and if no man will attend upon a religious service which in any point contradicts his opinion of truth, or falls short of his ideas of perfection.

Beside the direct necessity of public worship to the greater part of every Christian community, (supposing worship at all to be a Christian duty,) there are other valuable advantages growing out of the use of religious assemblies, without being designed in the institution or thought of by the individuals who compose them.

1. Joining in prayer and praises to their common Creator and Governor, has a sensible ten

dency to unite mankind together, and to cherish | from which it proceeds. Again, in the Epistle to and enlarge the generous affections.

the Hebrews; "not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is;"* which reproof seems as applicable to the desertion of our public worship at this day, as to the forsaking the religious assemblies of Christians in the age of the apostle. Independently of these passages of Scripture, a disciple of Christianity will hardly think himself at liberty to dispute a practice set on foot by the inspired preachers of his religion, coeval with its institution, and retained by every sect into which it has been since divided."

CHAPTER V.

Of Forms of Prayer in Public Worship. LITURGIES, or preconcerted forms of public devotion, being neither enjoined in Scripture, nor forbidden, there can be no good reason for either receiving or rejecting them, but that of expediency; which expediency is to be gathered from a comparison of the advantages and disadvantages attending upon this mode of worship, with those which usually accompany extemporary prayer.

The advantages of a liturgy are these:

I. That it prevents absurd, extravagant, or impious addresses to God, which, in an order of men so numerous as the sacerdotal, the folly and enthusiasm of many must always be in danger of producing, where the conduct of the public worship is entrusted, without restraint or assistance, to the discretion and abilities of the officiating minister.

So many pathetic reflections are awakened by every exercise of social devotion, that most men, I believe, carry away from public worship a better temper towards the rest of mankind, than they brought with them. Sprung from the same extraction, preparing together for the period of all worldly distinctions, reminded of their mutual infirmities and common dependency, imploring and receiving support and supplies from the same great source of power and bounty, having all one interest to secure, one Lord to serve, one judgment, the supreme object to all of their hopes and fears, to look towards; it is hardly possible, in this position, to behold mankind as strangers, competitors, or enemies; or not to regard them as children of the same family, assembled before their common parent, and with some portion of the tenderness which belongs to the most endearing of our domestic relations. It is not to be expected, that any single effect of this kind should be considerable or lasting; but the frequent return of such sentiments as the presence of a devout congregation naturally suggests, will gradually melt down the ruggedness of many unkind passions, and may generate, in time, a permanent and productive benevolence. 2. Assemblies for the purpose of divine worship, placing men under impressions by which they are taught to consider their relation to the Deity, and to contemplate those around them with a view to that relation, force upon their thoughts the natural equality of the human species, and thereby promote humility and condescension in the highest orders of the community, and inspire the lowest with a sense of their rights. The distinctions of civil life are almost always insisted II. That it prevents the confusion of extemupon too much, and urged too far. Whatever, porary prayer, in which the congregation, being therefore, conduces to restore the level, by quali- ignorant of each petition before they hear it, and fying the dispositions which grow out of great having little or no time to join in it after they have elevation or depression of rank, improves the cha- heard it, are confounded between their attention racter on both sides. Now things are made to to the minister, and to their own devotion. The appear little, by being placed beside what is great. devotion of the hearer is necessarily suspended, In which manner, superiorities, that occupy the until a petition be concluded; and before he can whole field of imagination, will vanish or shrink assent to it, or properly adopt it, that is, before he to their proper diminutiveness, when compared can address the same request to God for himself, with the distance by which even the highest of and from himself, his attention is called off to keep men are removed from the Supreme Being; and pace with what succeeds. Add to this, that the this comparison is naturally introduced by all acts mind of the hearer is held in continual expectaof joint worship. If ever the poor man holds up tion, and detained from its proper business, by the his head, it is at church: if ever the rich man very novelty with which it is gratified. A conviews him with respect, it is there: and both will gregation may be pleased and affected with the be the better, and the public profited, the oftener prayers and devotion of their minister, without they meet in a situation, in which the conscious- joining in them; in like manner as an audience ness of dignity in the one is tempered and miti- oftentimes are with the representation of devotion gated, and the spirit of the other erected and con- upon the stage, who, nevertheless, come away firmed. We recommend nothing adverse to sub-without being conscious of having exercised any ordinations which are established and necessary: but then it should be remembered, that subordination itself is an evil, being an evil to the subordinate, who are the majority, and therefore ought not to be carried a tittle beyond what the greater good, the peaceable government of the community, requires.

The public worship of Christians is a duty of Divine appointment. "Where two or three," says Christ, "are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." This invitation will want nothing of the force of a command with those who respect the person and authority

* Matt. xviii. 20.

act of devotion themselves. Joint prayer, which amongst all denominations of Christians is the declared design of "coming together," is prayer in which all join; and not that which one alone in the congregation conceives and delivers, and of which the rest are merely hearers. This objection seems fundamental, and holds even where the minister's office is discharged with every possible advantage and accomplishment. The labouring recollection, and embarrassed or tumultuous delivery, of many extempore speakers, form an additional objection to this mode of public worship: for these imperfections are very general, and give

*Heb. x. 25.

great pain to the serious part of a congregation, as well as afford a profane diversion to the levity of the other part.

fect is in general to be looked for, but that indolence will find in it an excuse, and piety be disconcerted by impatience.

These advantages of a liturgy are connected The length and repetitions complained of in with two principal inconveniences: first, that our liturgy, are not so much the fault of the comforms of prayer composed in one age become unfit pilers, as the effect of uniting into one service for another, by the unavoidable change of lan-what was originally, but with very little regard to guage, circumstances, and opinions: secondly, that the perpetual repetition of the same form of words produces weariness and inattentiveness in the congregation. However, both these inconveniences are in their nature vincible. Occasional revisions of a liturgy may obviate the first, and devotion will supply a reinedy for the second: or they may both subsist in a considerable degree, and yet be out-weighed by the objections which are inseparable from extemporary prayer.

The Lord's Prayer is a precedent, as well as a pattern, for forms of prayer. Our Lord appears, if not to have prescribed, at least to have authorized, the use of fixed forms, when he complied with the request of the disciple, who said unto him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples." Luke xi. 1.

The properties required in a public liturgy are, that it be compendious; that it express just conceptions of the Divine Attributes; that it recite such wants as a congregation are likely to feel, and no other; and that it contain as few controverted propositions as possible.

I. That it be compendious.

the conveniency of the people, distributed into three. Notwithstanding that dread of innovations in religion, which seems to have become the panic of the age, few, I should suppose, would be displeased with such omissions, abridgements, or change in the arrangement, as the combination of separate services must necessarily require, even supposing each to have been faultless in itself. If, together with these alterations, the Epistles and Gospels, and Collects which precede them, were composed and selected with more regard to unity of subject and design; and the Psalms and Lessons either left to the choice of the minister, or better accommodated to the capacity of the audience, and the edification of modern life; the church of England would be in possession of a liturgy, in which those who assent to her doctrines would have little to blame, and the most dissatisfied must acknowledge many beauties. The style throughout is excellent; calm, without coldness; and, though every where sedate, oftentimes affecting. The pauses in the service are disposed at proper intervals. The transitions from one office of devotion to another, from confession to prayer, from prayer to thanksgiving, from thanksgiving to "hearing of the word," are contrived like scenes in the drama, to supply the mind with a succession of diversified engagements. As much variety is introduced also in the form of praying, as this kind of composition seems capable of admitting. The prayer at one time is continued; at another, broken by responses, or cast into short articulate ejaculations: and sometimes the congregation is called upon to take its share in the service, by being left to complete a sentence which the minister had begun. The enumeration of human wants and sufferings in the Litany, is almost complete. A Christian petitioner can have few things to ask of God, or to deprecate, which he will not find there expressed, and for the most part with inimitable tenderness and simplicity.

II. That it express just conceptions of the Divine Attributes.

It were no difficult task to contract the liturgies of most churches into half their present compass, and yet retain every distinct petition, as well as the substance of every sentiment which can be found in them. But brevity may be studied too much. The composer of a liturgy must not sit down to his work with the hope, that the devotion of the congregation will be uniformly sustained throughout, or that every part will be attended to by every hearer. If this could be depended upon, a very short service would be sufficient for every purpose that can be answered or designed by social worship: but seeing the attention of most men is apt to wander and return at intervals, and by starts, he will admit a certain degree of amplification and repetition, of diversity of expression upon the same subject, and variety of phrase and form with little addition to the sense, to the end that the attention, which has been slumbering or absent during one part of the service, may be ex- This is an article in which no care can be too cited and recalled by another; and the assembly great. The popular notions of God are formed, kept together until it may reasonably be presumed, in a great measure, from the accounts which the that the most heedless and inadvertent have per-people receive of his nature and character in their formed some act of devotion, and the most de-religious assemblies. An error here becomes the sultory attention been caught by some part or other of the public service. On the other hand, the too great length of church-services is more unfavourable to piety, than almost any fault of composition can be. It begets, in many, an early and unconquerable dislike to the public worship of their country or communion. They come to church seldom, and enter the doors, when they do come, under the apprehension of a tedious attendance, which they prepare for at first, or soon after relieve, by composing themselves to a drowsy forgetfulness of the place and duty, or by sending abroad their thoughts in search of more amusing occupation. Although there may be some few of a disposition not to be wearied with religious exercises; yet, where a ritual is prolix, and the celebration of divine service long, no ef

error of multitudes: and as it is a subject in which almost every opinion leads the way to some practical consequence, the purity or depravation of public manners will be affected, amongst other causes, by the truth or corruption of the public forms of worship.

III. That it recite such wants as the congregation are likely to feel, and no other.

Of forms of prayer which offend not egregiously against truth and decency, that has the most merit, which is best calculated to keep alive the devotion of the assembly. It were to be wished, therefore, that every part of a liturgy were personally applicable to every individual in the congregation; and that nothing were introduced to interrupt the passion, or damp the flame, which it is not easy to rekindle. Upon this principle, the

state prayers in our liturgy should be fewer and | mere rest from the ordinary occupations of civil shorter-Whatever may be pretended, the con- life: and he who would defend the institution, as gregation do not feel that concern in the subject it is required by law to be observed in Christian of these prayers, which must be felt, ere ever countries, unless he can produce a command for prayers be made to God with earnestness. The a Christian Sabbath, must point out the uses of state style likewise seems unseasonably introduced it in that view. into these prayers, as ill according with that annihilation of human greatness, of which every act that carries the mind to God, presents the idea. IV. That it contain as few controverted propositions as possible.

First, then, that interval of relaxation which Sunday affords to the laborious part of mankind, contributes greatly to the comfort and satisfaction of their lives, both as it refreshes them for the time, and as it relieves their six days' labour by We allow to each church the truth of its pe- the prospect of a day of rest always approaching; culiar tenets, and all the importance which zeal which could not be said of casual indulgences of can ascribe to them. We dispute not here the leisure and rest, even were they more frequent right or the expediency of framing creeds, or of than there is reason to expect they would be if imposing subscriptions. But why should every left to the discretion or humanity of interested position which a church maintains, be woven task-masters. To this difference it may be added, with so much industry into her forms of public that holy-days which come seldom and unexpected, worship? Some are offended, and some are ex- are unprovided, when they do come, with any cluded; this is an evil of itself, at least to them: duty or employment; and the manner of spending and what advantage or satisfaction can be derived them being regulated by no public decency or esto the rest, from the separation of their brethren, tablished usage, they are commonly consumed in it is difficult to imagine; unless it were a duty to rude, if not criminal pastimes, in stupid sloth, or publish our system of polemic divinity, under the brutish intemperance. Whoever considers how name of making confession of our faith, every much sabbatical institutions conduce, in this retime we worship God; or a sin to agree in respect, to the happiness and civilization of the laligious exercises with those from whom we differ bouring classes of mankind, and reflects how great in some religious opinions. Indeed, where one a majority of the human species these classes comman thinks it his duty constantly to worship a pose, will acknowledge the utility, whatever he being, whom another cannot, with the assent of may believe of the origin, of this distinction; and his conscience, permit himself to worship at all, will consequently perceive it to be every man's there seems to be no place for comprehension, or duty to uphold the observation of Sunday when eny expedient left but a quiet secession. All other once established, let the establishment have prodifferences may be compromised by silence. If ceeded from whom or from what authority it will. sects and schisms be an evil, they are as much to be avoided by one side as the other. If sectaries are blamed for taking unnecessary offence, established churches are no less culpable for unnecessarily giving it; they are bound at least to produce a command, or a reason of equivalent utility, for shutting out any from their communion, by mixing with divine worship doctrines, which, whether true or false, are unconnected in their nature with devotion.

CHAPTER VI.

Nor is there any thing lost to the community by the intermission of public industry one day in the week. For, in countries tolerably advanced in population and the arts of civil life, there is always enough of human labour, and to spare. The difficulty is not so much to procure, as to employ it. The addition of the seventh day's labour to that of the other six, would have no other effect than to reduce the price. The labourer himself, who deserved and suffered most by the change, would gain nothing.

many do not convert their leisure to this purpose; but it is of moment, and is all which a public constitution can effect, that to every one be allowed the opportunity.

2. Sunday, by suspending many public diversions, and the ordinary rotation of employment, leaves to men of all ranks and professions sufficient leisure, and not more than what is sufOf the Use of Sabbatical Institutions. ficient, both for the external offices of Christianity, AN assembly cannot be collected, unless the and the retired, but equally necessary duties of time of assembling be fixed and known before-religious meditation and inquiry. It is true, that hand: and if the design of the assembly require that it be holden frequently, it is easiest that it should return at stated intervals. This produces a necessity of appropriating set seasons to the social offices of religion. It is also highly convenient that the same seasons be observed throughout the country, that all may be employed, or all at leisure, together; for if the recess from worldly occupation be not general, one man's business will perpetually interfere with another man's devotion; the buyer will be calling at the shop when the seller is gone to church. This part, therefore, of the religious We admit, that none of these reasons show distinction of seasons, namely, a general inter- why Sunday should be preferred to any other day mssion of labour and business during times pre- in the week, or one day in seven to one day in six, viously set apart for the exercise of public wor- or eight: but these points, which in their nature ship, is founded in the reasons which make public are of arbitrary determination, being established to Worship itself a duty. But the celebration of di- our hands, our obligation applies to the subsisting vine service never occupies the whole day. What establishment, so long as we confess that some such remains, therefore, of Sunday, beside the part of institution is necessary, and are neither able nor it employed at church, must be considered as a | attempt to substitute any other in its place.

3. They, whose humanity embraces the whole sensitive creation, will esteem it no inconsiderable recommendation of a weekly return of public rest, that it affords a respite to the toil of brutes. Nor can we omit to recount this among the uses which the Divine Founder of the Jewish Sabbath expressly appointed a law of the institution.

Of the Scripture Account of Sabbatical Institu- port; and if it had been observed all along from