Reciting Prayers

[WrittenFromUtopia]

Would you consider it more or less Biblical and prudent according to the Reformed tradition to pray by recitation or by "spontaneity(sp?)"? Why?

 

[Contra_Mundum]

YES! spontaneity is spelled correctly.

 

[Contra_Mundum]

Much of the Psalter is prayer (beside proclamation & prayer). So I don't think that there is anything per se that makes recited prayer inappropriate.

The Reformed Church did not generally abandon use of, say, the Lord's Prayer. Calvin included a pre-prepared common confession of sin and credal recitation. I don't think that prudence (or the Bible) demands the exclusion of all set forms, read or recited. But it is a violation of prudence to prevent a preacher from praying according to the need of the hour.

I do think that literally a full "prayer-book-service" from start to finish--especially where preaching is minimized or non-existent--is usually unwise and stifling. It implies the situation that obtained back in the day when the people were ignorant and ignorantly led by a clergy unfit and unprepared in knowedge of the Scriptures.

I think the Unbiblical/Imprudent direction is at/toward either extreme. And the situation of that church on that date will play a role in finding the proper balance for that church.

 

[VirginiaHuguenot]

John Bunyan and John Owen on Written Prayers

JOHN BUNYAN: A SOURCE FOR A BAPTIST SPIRITUALITY OF PRAYER

My Baptist heritage has generally affirmed that when it comes to praying, written prayers are really not acceptable. Prayer has to be extemporaneous. One key source for this conviction is John Bunyan (1628-1688) and his influential treatise I will pray with the Spirit (1662).

Rejecting written prayers

Bunyan had been arrested in 1660 for illegal preaching and at his trial in January, 1661, John Bunyan was asked by Sir John Kelynge, one of the judges, to justify his absence from worship in the local parish church. Bunyan, true to his Puritan heritage, stated that “he did not find it commanded in the word of God.” [A Relation of the Imprisonment of Mr. John Bunyan in W. R. Owens, ed. John Bunyan: Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1987), 95].

Kelynge pointed out that prayer was a duty. Bunyan agreed, but he insisted that it was a duty to be performed with the Spirit’s aid, not by means of the Book of Common Prayer, which set out the structure for the worship services of the Church of England. Bunyan proceeded to argue:

“Those prayers in the Common Prayer-book, was such as was made by other men, and not by the motions of the Holy Ghost, within our hearts. … The scripture saith, that it is the Spirit as helpeth our infirmities; for we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us, with sighs and groanings which cannot be uttered. Mark, … it doth not say the Common prayer-book teacheth us how to pray, but the Spirit.” [A Relation of the Imprisonment of Mr. John Bunyan in Owens, ed. John Bunyan: Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, 95, 96].

The background to Bunyan’s convictions

Bunyan’s outright rejection of the use of written prayers cannot be understood apart from the view of his Puritan contemporaries and forebears. John Calvin (1509-1563), the spiritual father of Anglophone Puritanism, had defined prayer as essentially an “emotion of the heart …, which is poured out and laid open before God.” At the same time Calvin was tolerant of written prayers. Some of his spiritual children among the English Puritans, like Richard Baxter (1615-1691), preserved both of these emphases.

Many of the Puritans, however, took Calvin’s view of prayer to its logical conclusion and saw little need for written prayers. Walter Cradock (c.1610-1659), a Welsh Congregationalist preacher and author, stated forthrightly: “When it may be the (poor Minister) … would have rejoyced to have poured out his soule to the Lord, he was tied to an old Service Booke, and must read that till he grieved the Spirit of God, and dried up his own spirit as a chip, that he could not pray.”

John Owen (1616-1683), Bunyan’s friend and admirer, similarly maintained that “constant and unvaried use of set forms of prayer may become a great occasion of quenching the Spirit.” Owen conceded that the use of written prayers is not intrinsically evil. But since the Spirit whom God had given to the believer is “the Spirit of grace and supplication” (Zechariah 12:10), the believer has all the resources that he needs for prayer. Moreover, Owen affirmed that the “Holy Ghost, as a Spirit of grace and supplication, is nowhere, that I know of, promised unto any to help or assist them in composing prayers for others; and therefore we have no ground to pray for him or his assistance unto that end in particular.”

These criticisms of the Book of Common Prayer accurately reflect Puritan dissatisfaction with both the type and content of the prayers in this book. Moreover, undergirding the approach of both Cradock and Owen to prayer was an intense interest in the work of the Spirit in general and the accompanying recognition that only with his empowering could God be rightly served and worshipped. Bunyan shares these perspectives on prayer and the Spirit, but states them in his own expressive way.

The impact of Bunyan’s view detailed

Bunyan’s interest in extemporaneous prayer, quickened by his debate with Kelynge, found written form not long after his trial in I will pray with the Spirit. There are no surviving copies of the first edition. The second edition, dated 1663, appears without a bookseller’s or publisher’s name on the title page. The title page simply states “Printed for the author”. The book was probably too hot for any publisher to handle! And no wonder when Bunyan declared near the end of the book: “Look into the Gaols in England, and into the Alehouses of the same: and I believe, you will find those that plead for the Spirit of Prayer in the Gaol, and them that look after the Form of men’s Inventions only, in the Alehouse.” [Richard L. Greaves, ed., John Bunyan: The Doctrine of the Law and Grace unfolded and I will pray with the Spirit (Clarendon Press, 1976), 294].

Bunyan’s treatise on prayer helped to secure what has become a leading attitude to written and read prayers: an attitude of extreme wariness.

Bunyan’s treatise can also be seen as a declaration that without the Spirit not only our prayer-life, but also our entire Christian walk is hollow, stale and lifeless. It is often forgotten that Bunyan and his fellow English Baptists were vital participants in what Ronald Reeve has described as the Puritan “rediscovery of the Holy Spirit as the mainspring of all Christian activity.” [“John Wesley, Charles Simeon, and the Evangelical Revival”, Canadian Journal of Theology, 2 (1956), 205]. The claim by some contemporary authors and theologians that no post-Reformation movement until this past century has really given the Spirit his due is shown to be quite false by the interest that the Puritans had in the person and work of the Spirit.

Bunyan, like most of his fellow Puritans, had an intense desire for the experience of the Spirit, for he knew that the Spirit of Christ alone could lead him to God. Thus, at the conclusion of the treatise, Bunyan expresses the hope that: “Christians…pray for the Spirit, that is, for more of it, though God hath endued them with it already …The Lord in mercy turn the hearts of the people to seek more after the Spirit of Prayer, and in the strength of that, pour out their souls before the Lord.” [Greaves, ed., John Bunyan: The Doctrine of the Law and Grace unfolded and I will pray with the Spirit, 271, 285].

Brian Schwertley, Are Liturgies Authorized By Scripture?:

Thus, in this article we will be contrasting the use of biblically informed, intelligent ex tempore prayer as the scriptural ideal in public worship versus the use of a set form of prayer in which the right of ministers to form their own prayers is taken away.

Second, we will not be advocating the position taken by some radical Puritans and Separatists that all written out prayers, including even the Lord’s prayer, are not ever to be allowed in public worship. (“The Brownists, the Barrowists, and the earliest Independents were decidedly against the repetition of the Lord’s prayer.”[1] They regarded it solely as a model for prayer which is never to be used as a prescribed prayer.) This position was never held by Calvin, Knox, the majority of Puritans, the early Presbyterians or the Westminster Assembly. This issue is not no written prayers at all versus written prayers but rather the imposed, required, every Sabbath use of prescribed prayers versus the biblical ideal of ex tempore prayer from the heart. For Presbyterians, written prayers were viewed as crutches or guides for those people who were deficient in their understanding of how to pray. Samuel Miller writes:

It is certain, that, as early as 1564, the Book of Common Order of Geneva, was in extensive use in the Church of Scotland, under the sanction of the General Assembly. But it is equally certain, that the prayers and other forms prescribed in that book were not intended to be throughout rigorously imposed on the conductors of public worship. It was, in fact, rather a “Directory” for the worship of God, than a liturgy to be verbally and servilely repeated. In the Scottish Church, during the period in which this book was in use, the officiating minister was left at liberty to vary from it as he pleased, and to substitute prayers of his own in the room of those furnished in the book. The following quotations from the book will at once exemplify and confirm this statement: “When the congregation is assembled at the hours appointed, the minister useth one of these two confessions, or like in effect.” Again: “The minister after the sermon, useth this prayer following, or such like.” Similar declarations are prefixed to the prayers to be used at the celebration of Baptism, and the Lord’s supper. And at the end of the account of the public service of the Sabbath, this intimation is subjoined: “It shall not be necessary for the minister daily to repeat all these things before mentioned; but beginning with some manner or confession, to proceed to the sermon, which, ended, he either useth the prayer for all estates before mentioned, or else prayeth as the Spirit of God shall move his heart, framing the same according to the time and matter he hath entreated of.” And at the end of the form of excommunication, it is signified: “This order may be enlarged or contracted, as the wisdom of the discreet minister shall think expedient. But we rather show the way to the ignorant, than prescribe order to the learned that cannot be amended.” The Scottish liturgy, then, was intended as a help to the ignorant, not as a restraint upon those who could pray without a set form. The “readers” and “exhorters” commonly used it; but even they were encouraged to perform the service in a different manner, that is, to acquire the habit of praying extemporaneously to edification.

This Directory, as it seems never to have been servilely recited by the most intelligent of the clergy, so it was soon laid aside. How long it was used in uncertain. As the clergy became more learned and more pious, it gradually fell into disuse.[2]

 

[VirginiaHuguenot]

Archibald Hall, Gospel Worship, Vol. I, pp. 204-208:

V. I shall, in the next place, enquire, Whether it is proper to use stated forms of prayer, when we call upon God?

It is generally allowed, that if set forms are found, or agreeable to the will of God, they may be used by children, or such as are weak in knowledge. All are agreed in commending the prudence of our first reformers in England, who, by composing homilies and forms of prayer, endeavoured, as much as might be, to provide an help for the doleful ignorance of the clergy. But it is humbly submitted to the impartial consideration of the intelligent and serious, whether the advantages of praying freely, without being tied to a form, are not manifest and great? A perpetual confinement to the best forms, will be attended with such inconveniences as these:[7]

1. It much hinders the free exercise of out own thoughts and desires, which is the chief work and business of prayer, to wit, to express our desires unto God: and whereas our thoughts and affections should direct our words, a set form of words direct our thoughts and affections: and while we bind ourselves to these words only, we damp our inward devotion, and prevent the holy fire from kindling within us; we discourage our active powers and passions from running out on divine subjects, and check the breathings of our souls heavenward. There are secret joys, and unknown bitternesses, which the holy soul longs to spread before God, and for which it cannot find any exact and correspondent expressions in the best of prayer-books: now, must a Christian suppress all those thoughts, and forbid himself all that sweet conversation with his God, because it is not written down in the appointed form?

2. The thoughts and affections of the heart, that are truly devout, are wrought by the Spirit of God; and if we deny them utterance, because they are not found in prayer-books, do we not run the danger of resisting the Holy Ghost, quenching the Holy Spirit, and fighting against the kind designs of God towards us? A sin which we are expressly cautioned against, 1 Thess 5:19, "Quench not the Spirit;" and which an humble Christian trembles to think of.

3. A confinement to forms cramps and imprisons those powers that God hath given us for improvement and use. It silences our natural abilities, and forbids them to act; and it puts a bar upon our spiritual faculties, and prevents their growth. To satisfy ourselves with mere forms, to confine ourselves wholly to them, and neglect to stir up and improve our own gifts, is one kind of spiritual sloth, and highly to be disapproved. It is hiding a talent in the earth, which God hath given on purpose to carry on a trade with Heaven. It is an abuse of our knowledge of divine things, to neglect the use of it in our converse with God. It is as if a man that had once used crutches to support him when he was feeble, would always use them: or, because he has sometimes found his own thoughts happily expressed in conversation by another person, therefore he will assent to what that other person shall always speak, and never speak his own thoughts himself again.

4. It leads us into the danger of hypocrisy, and mere lip-service. Sometimes we shall be tempted to express those things which are not the thoughts of our own souls, and so use words that are not suited to our present wants, or sorrows, or requests; because those words are put together, and made ready beforehand.

5. The confinement of ourselves to a form, though it is not always attended with formality and indifference, yet it is very apt to make our spirits cold and flat, formal and indifferent in our devotion. The frequent repetition of the same words doth not always awaken the same affections in our hearts, which perhaps they were well suited to do when we first heard or made use of them. When we continually use one constant road of sentences, or track of expressions, they become like an old beaten path in which we daily travel, and we are ready to walk on without particular notice of the several parts of the way; so in our daily repetition of a form, we are apt to neglect due attention to the full sense of the words. But there is certainly something more suited to awaken the attention of them in a conceived prayer, when a Christian is making his own way toward God, according to the present inclination of his soul, and urgency of his present wants.

6. The duty of prayer is very useful to discover to us the frame of our own spirits: but a constant use of forms will much hinder our knowledge of ourselves, and prevent our acquaintance with our own hearts, which is one great mean of maintaining religion in the power of it. Daily observation of our own spirits, would teach us what our wants are, and how to frame our prayers before God; but if we confine ourselves to the same words always, our own observation of our hearts will be of little use, since we must speak the same expressions, let our hearts be how they will.

7. The confinement of ourselves to a form in prayer renders our converse with God very imperfect: for it is not possible that forms of prayer should be composed, that are perfectly suited to all our frames of spirit, and fitted to all our occasions in the things of this life, and the life to come. Our circumstances are always altering in this frail and mutable state. We have daily new sins to be confessed, new temptations and sorrows to be represented, new wants to be supplied. Every change of providence in the affairs of a nation, a family, or a person, requires suitable petitions and acknowledgments. And all these can never be provided for in any prescribed composition. I confess all our concerns of soul and body may be included in some large and general words of a form, which is no more suited to one time, or place, or condition, than to another: but generals are cold, and do not affect us, nor affect persons that join with us, and whose case he that speaks in prayer should particularly represent before God. It is much sweeter to our own souls, and to our fellow worshippers, to have our fears, and doubts, and complaints, and temptations, and sorrows, and mercies, represented in such language as the soul itself feels when the words are spoken: Now, though we should often meet with prayers precomposed, that are fitted to express our present case; yet the gift of prayer is as much better than any form, as a perfect knowledge in the art of physic is better than any number of receipts. That man that deals only in receipts shall never become a skilful physician; nor can the gift of prayer be attained by confinement to forms.

That our blessed Lord: taught his disciples to pray, by giving them a general directory, is allowed; but that he ever tied them up to a form in praying cannot be proved. When he gave them a direction to pray, he said, "After this manner pray ye," etc. Matt 6:9; and again, "When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven," etc. Luke 11:2. It is probable enough our Lord gave these directions at different times, though the substance of them is the same. But the alteration of the words is enough to satisfy any unprejudiced mind, that he could not intend them to be used as a stated form. And the church of England has thought fit to differ in the words of the fifth petition from both. It is pretty clear, that the phrases when ye pray, say, Luke 11:2, and after this manner pray, ye, Matt 6:9, are precisely of the same import, and explain one another: and neither of them import, that the very words, which our Lord then expressed, were to be constantly used; but only that the scope of them should direct us in performing this duty. "Because the prayer which Christ taught his disciples is not only a pattern of prayer, but itself a most comprehensive prayer, we recommend it also to be used in the prayers of the church." Assembly's Directory for the public worship of God; on the article of praying after sermon. [DPW POSTPRAYER]

 

[MrMerlin777]

I think the Unbiblical/Imprudent direction is at/toward either extreme. And the situation of that church on that date will play a role in finding the proper balance for that church.

I do like the Anglican prayer book though.

 

[VirginiaHuguenot]

John Brown of Haddington, Questions and Answers on the Shorter Catechism, pp. 342-343:

Q. What special rule of direction in prayer hath God given us? -- A. That form of prayer which Christ taught his disciples, which is commonly called the Lord's prayer, because the Lord Jesus prescribed it.

Q. Did Christ prescribe it as a form, the express words of which we are bound to use? -- A. No; but as a pattern of prayer, directing us what we should pray for, and in what order we should offer our requests.

Q. How prove you that Christ did not prescribe it an express form of prayer? -- A. Because in Matthew, who relates this form most exactly, Christ only says, After this manner pray ye; Matthew and Luke relate it differently; and Christ, and his prophets and apostles, used different expressions in prayer, Matth. xi. and xxvi. Acts i. and v. Eph. iii. John xvii, &c.

Q. May none use set forms of prayer? -- A. Yes; young children, and such as through weakness are incapable to conceive prayer, may use them.

Q. Why may not others confine themselves to set forms of prayer? -- A. Because to do so checks the teaching of God's Spirit, inverts the order of prayer, encourageth to sloth, and is most absurd and unreasonable.

Q. How doth confining ourselves to set forms of prayer check the teaching of the Spirit? -- A. As the form teacheth use what to pray for, which is the work ascribed to the Holy Ghost, Rom. viii.26.

Q. How doth it invert the order of prayer? -- A. As by this means, instead of our hearts regulating our words, the words of the form must regulate our heart.

Q. How doth it encourage sloth? -- A. As it makes us careless of self-examination, and of study of the scriptures for instruction of prayer, and stirring up of our heart to seek after the gift or grace of prayer.

Q. How is it most absurd and unreasonable? -- A. It is as if a hungry beggar could not ask alms, or a drowning man cry for relief, without an express form.