Our experience unresistibly convinceth us that a continued prayer doth
more to help most of the people, and carry on their desires, than
turning almost every petition into a distinct prayer; and making
prefaces and conclusions to be near half the prayers.
This now is the very point I most admire in our excellent Liturgy. To
any particular petition offered to the Omniscient, there may be a
sinking of faith, a sense of its superfluity; but to the lifting up of
the soul to the Invisible and there fixing it on his attributes, there
can be no scruple.
Ib. p. 257.
The not abating of the impositions is the carting off of many hundreds
of your brethren out of the ministry, and of many thousand Christians
out of your communion; but the abating of the impositions will so
offend you as to silence or excommunicate none of you at all. For
example, we think it a sin to subscribe, or swear canonical obedience,
or use the transient image of the Cross in Baptism, and therefore
these must cast us out, &c.
As long as independent single Churches, or voluntarily synodical were
forbidden and punishable by penal law, this argument remained
irrefragable. The imposition of such trifles under such fearful threats
was the very bitterness of spiritual pride and vindictiveness;--after
the law passed by which things became as they now are, it was a mere
question of expediency for the National Church to determine in relation
to its own comparative interests.
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