f God which is
offered up in your name. The like I may say of stupid forms of prayer, and
tying yourselves to a platform, written in a book, or to some certain
words gotten by the heart? Who hath commanded this? Sure, not the Lord,
who hath promised his Spirit to teach them to pray, and help their
infirmities, who know not how, nor what to pray. It is a device of your
own, invented by Satan to quench the spirit of supplication, which should
be the very natural breathing of a Christian. But there are some so
grossly ignorant of what prayer is, that they make use of the ten
commandments, and creed, as a prayer. So void are they of the knowledge
and Spirit of God that they cannot discern betwixt God's commands to
themselves and their own requests to God; betwixt his speaking to men, and
their speaking to him; between their professing of him before men, and
praying and confessing to him. All this is but forged, imaginary
worship,--worship falsely so called, which the Father seeks not, and
receives not.

But what if I should say, that the most part of your worship, even that
which is commanded of God, as prayer, hearing, reading, &c., hath no truth
in it, I should say nothing amiss. For though you do those things that are
commanded, yet not as commanded, without any respect to divine
appointment; and only because you have received them as traditions from
your fathers, and because you are taught so by the precepts of men, and
are accustomed so to do: therefore the stamp of God's will and pleasure is
not engraven on them, but of your own will, or of the will of men. Let me
pose(138) your consciences, many of you, what difference is there between
your praying and your plowing; between your hearing, and your harrowing;
between your reading in the Scriptures, and your reaping in the harvest;
between your religious service and your common ordinary actions; I say,
what difference is there in the rise of these? You do many civil things
out of custom, or because of the precepts of men; and is there any other
principle at the bottom of your religious performances? Do you at all
consider these are divine appointments,--these have a stamp of his
authority on them? And from the conscience of such an immediate command of
God, and the desire to please him and obey him, do you go about these? I
fear many cannot say it. O, I am sure all cannot, though it may be all
will say it. Therefore your religious worship can come in no other account
th