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occasion ally adorn your pages , are , I believe , Salurrs' Hall Lecturers ; to them I commit these suggestions , Pegging leave further to remind them that Salten / Hall , in the beginning of the last century , set the first
example of a clerical assembly renouncing the right to prescribe terms to conscience ^ arid that it will be in character if , in the
beginning of this century , it should be signalized by the determination of its ministers to bury the hatchet of No Popery , " and to offer to the Roman Catholics the Calurmt
and the belt of IVampum ^ assurances of peace and charity . I am , Sir , I trust without inconsistency , A CATHOLIC PROTESTANT ,
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Use of the Lord s Prayer in Public Worship .
Sir , The Lord ' s Piayeris a composition reflecting highest honour upon the author of Christianity , but , in the history of its treatment , serving for the reproach of Christians .
Nothing can be plainer than that this forinulary of worship was intended for the use of the iirst disciples alone , and is adapted to the incipient dispensation of our religion under which they stood—tke use of it , therefore , cannot be binding upon Christians ; if they wse it , it must be
bv an accommodation of it to their own circumstances / but this will be wholly arbitrary ; and thus the ~ practice becomes entirely optional . Yet how absurdly has one party contended that worship is imperfect without this form , and another that the form stints the
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spirit of prayer and is the cause oi ' dulness and deadness ! . This prayer of our Lord ' s is introduced by some admirable directions concerning prayino- ; among which the disciples are ft
cautioned against vain rcpeii . tions" and '" much speaking . " The prayer itself is intended as a specimen of useful and acceptable addresses to God . Will it bo credited , notwithstanding , that
this very form , designed to guard against tautology and to exem . plify a modest conciseness , is . in the Liturgy of the Church ot England , repeated several times in one service—really , as if in defiance of our great master ' s plain commandment !
But it is not in the Church of England alone that the directions of the Christian lawgiver are disobeyed in the matter of prayer , ** Long prayers" are the badge and the opprobrium of the Dissenters . I have known all the
common-places of theology pursued through a prayer of an hour in length ; the people mean-time falling into a weary , listless
posture . This comes of extemporary praying , which 1 am far from condemning , but which I would recommend to none but such as are conscious of possessing presence of mind , ardour of spirit ,
fluency of language , a certain solemnity of manner , and an habitual perception of the passage of time : nothing can he more light , more disgusting , more inconsistent with true devotion than the familiar and pert , the languid and drawling , the broken and unconnected talk towards heaven ot a thoughtless , a valetudinary , or a stammering spokesman , who ^ erred int © a pulpit .
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543 Use of titt Lord's Prayer in Public Woriltip .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1811, page 542, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2420/page/30/
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