Puritans and the Daily Office

[Chas Brewer]

I’ve been praying the daily office from the Book of Common Prayer for morning and evening prayer for a little over a year now and it’s helped me a lot with my prayer life. I was wondering if anyone knew if the Puritan’s used the daily office or not. I know the Puritans did not like the Book of Common Prayer for services in the Church but did the Puritans also take issue with this devotion. I also wonder how they would justify not praying the offices since Clergy were required to pray the office.

 

[MW]

What kind of help has the form of prayer given you? Has it made you dependent on it so that now you will have to go back over it and pray it again? Or has it helped to such a degree that now you feel that you can confidently pray on your own with the assistance of the Spirit? The Puritans would likely have seen the first kind of help as really being a hinderance. However, the second kind of help might be useful. But that could be no argument why it should be recommended to others except to help them in the second sense. Laying it down as a pattern to be followed year in and year out is not very helpful at all.

 

[Deleted member 11804]

Wait? Wouldn't this be considered vain? Both morning and evening? It really gives new meaning to "God knows what you pray before you pray"

I'll use the vision of valley sometimes, but I always normally pray afterwards or durring, adding my own in with it or after it.

 

[John Nyberg]

I’ve been praying the daily office from the Book of Common Prayer for morning and evening prayer for a little over a year now and it’s helped me a lot with my prayer life. I was wondering if anyone knew if the Puritan’s used the daily office or not. I know the Puritans did not like the Book of Common Prayer for services in the Church but did the Puritans also take issue with this devotion. I also wonder how they would justify not praying the offices since Clergy were required to pray the office.

Brother, I am thankful that the Lord has impressed you with the desire for daily prayer and devotion. With humility, I would leave you with this quote from John Newton. It is found in the Banner of Truth volume titled "Select Letters if John Newton" under the letter written on Family Worship. In it, Mr. Newton is encouraging a young man to implement family prayer frequently, should the Lord bless him with a wife and children.

"I have written upon a supposition that you use extempore prayer; but as there are many heads of families who fear the Lord, and have not yet attained the liberty to pray extempore before others, I would add, that their inability in this respect, whether real, or whether only proceeding from fear, and an undue regard to self, will not justify them in the omission of family prayer. Helps may be procured... If they begin with a form, not with a design to confine themselves always to one, but to make it a part of their secret pleading at the throne of grace, that they be favoured with the gift and spirit of prayer; and accustom themselves, while they use a form, to intersperse some petitions of their own; there is little doubt but that they will in time find a growth in liberty and ability, and at length lay their book entirely aside. For it being every believer's duty to worship God in his family, his promise may be depended upon to give them a sufficiency in all things, for those services which he requires of them." (Select Letters of John Newton, pages 100-101)

 

[Chas Brewer]

The daily office is primarily scripture it isn’t vain repetition 80% of it is different every day some of the prayers are the same but to call it vain is to say that reading the same scripture every day is vain.

Wait? Wouldn't this be considered vain? Both morning and evening? It really gives new meaning to "God knows what you pray before you pray"

I'll use the vision of valley sometimes, but I always normally pray afterwards or durring, adding my own in with it or after it.

 

[Deleted member 11804]

The daily office is primarily scripture it isn’t vain repetition 80% of it is different every day some of the prayers are the same but to call it vain is to say that reading the same scripture every day is vain.

I'm not calling it vain, I was asking a question. I don't know the book, thought it was like the valley of vision.

I have a book like that called "handbook for reading scripture" by William Varner.

Found here

It's all scripture prayers. Sometimes I use it, I like it. I'll have to check out that book that's being referred here as well than.

Thank you.

 

[LadyCalvinist]

I have used the Book of Common Prayer as a devotional once in a while. I normally use Matthew Henry's A Way to Pray. I find using something written helps to focus my attention as otherwise when I try to pray my thoughts are often jumbled. I also do some extempore prayers as well.

 

[Ed Walsh]

I was wondering if anyone knew if the Puritan’s used the daily office or not.

This is slightly off the subject but to me it was a very interesting story.

I read somewhere in my past that John Owen would not allow a guest preacher to read his sermon from the pulpit. But I haven't been able to lay my finger on the quote that I'm thinking of.