"O God, who has enlightened thy Church by the teaching of thy servant Richard Hooker: Enrich us evermore, we beseech thee, with thy heavenly grace, and raise up faithful witnesses who by their life and doctrine will set forth the truth of thy salvation; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."
Richard Hooker (d.1600) is best known as the Apologist for the Anglican Way of Reformed Catholicism & as the Defender of the episcopal and liturgical Church of England against the Elizabethan Puritans, who wished to make the English National Church into a Presbyterian Church, modelled on Geneva. He wrote "The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity" in eight books. Book V, with 81 short chapters, is the longest and deals primarily with the worship of the Church. After discussing the public reading of Holy Scripture and the place of sermons in worship, he turned in chapter xxiii to the subject of Prayer and then on to Public Prayer/Worship.
To appreciate what he writes we need to realize that we come out of a religious culture where it is taken for granted that prayer is first individual and then if we choose corporate. He is arguing for the superiority of corporate, public and common prayer.
I have ventured to put into a more accessible English what he wrote.
Chapter XXIV Of Public Prayer
(1) This holy and religious duty of service towards God concerns us one way in that we are human beings, and another way in that we are joined as parts to that visible, mystical Body which is his Church. As human beings we make our own choice of time, place and form for prayer, according to our own private, pressing needs (see Psalm 55:17; Daniel 9:3 & Acts 10:9); but the service, which we do as members of a public body, is public and for that cause must necessarily be judged so much worthier than the private service, even as a whole society exceeds the worth of any one of its members. Therefore, it is to be noted that most special promises are made unto Christian assemblies in the New Testament (e.g., Matthew 18:20).
Though St Paul was as likely to prevail with God in prayer as any mortal, nevertheless he thought it much more for God's glory and his own good, if prayers might be made and thanks offered on his behalf by a number of people (see 2 Corinthians 1:11). When the prince and people of Nineveh assembled themselves as a principal army of supplicants, it was not in the power of God to withstand them (see Jonah 3-4).
What I write concerning the power of public prayer in the Church of God agrees with what Tertullian (c 160- c 225) wrote [Apology c.39 ]: "We come by troops to the place of assembly, that being formed into a congregation, we may be supplicants to besiege God with our prayers. Such petitions are acceptable to him."
(2) When we pray together in public we do so with much more satisfaction than we do individually in private, because what we ask for in public is the request of all of us, approved as needful and good in the judgment of all. Further, in public prayer, if the zeal and devotion towards God of some is slack, then the alacrity and fervour of others serve as a horseman's spur. St Basil the Great (d.379) says: "For even prayer itself when it does not have the company of many voices to strengthen it, is not itself (Epistle 68)." Finally, the good which we do by public prayer is more than can be done in private. For besides the benefit which each of us gains for himself, the whole church is much edified by his good example; and, consequently, whereas secret neglect by any of us of our duty in public prayer is but only our own hurt, it is also true that one person's contempt of the common prayer of the Church of God may be and often is more hurtful unto many. It is with such thoughts that the Prophet David so often vows unto God the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving in the congregation (see Psalms 26:12 & 34:1); so earnestly urges others to sing praises unto the Lord in his courts, in his sanctuary before the memorial of his holiness (Psalms 30:4 & 96:9); and so much complains of his own uncomfortable exile, wherein, although he sustained many most grievous indignities, and endured the absence of pleasures and honours previously enjoyed, yet as if this one were his only grief and the rest not felt, his speeches are all of the heavenly benefit of public assemblies, and the happiness of such as had free access unto them (Psalms 27:4; 42:4 & 84:1).
Chapter xxv Of the Form of Common Prayer
1. One major reason why religious persons find from experience that their souls are inflamed with the love of public devotion is this. The reverend and solemn order of common prayer has such virtue, force and efficacy that it helps overcome that spiritual impotence and weakness which is naturally in us. Without the order of common prayer we are the less able to offer unto God that heavenly service, with such affection of heart and disposition of the powers of the soul, as he requires.
To this end, therefore, it has always been thought in the Church that all things concerning public worship should be done with the most solemnity and majesty that the wisest could devise. Public and private prayer are of course different. In private prayer secrecy rather than outward show is commended, whereas in public prayer, which involves a whole congregation, more care has to be taken of external appearance. Thus the assembling of people for public worship has always been regarded as a solemn matter.
2. Although the place of assembly [e.g., the parish church] serves for a variety of public uses, its primary purpose is for the saying of Common Prayer. Our Lord confirms this primary purpose of the sanctuary by his sanctifying the Temple in Jerusalem and calling it "the House of Prayer" even though he was aware that the Temple was appointed by God's favour and providence for a variety of other, special uses and services.
To develop this theme further. If, as the gravest of the ancient Fathers were persuaded and often plainly teach, it be the case that the house of prayer is a Court beautified with the presence of celestial powers, that there we stand, we pray, we sing hymns unto God, joining our voices with those of the angels; and if it be that with reference to the house of God the Apostle Paul requires (1 Cor.11:10) so great care to be taken of decency for the Angels' sake; how can we come to the house of prayer, and not be moved with the very glory of the place itself so as to frame our [thoughts and] affections in an appropriate spirit of prayer, whose petitions the Almighty sits there to hear, and his Angels are present to attend to? When this way of thinking was grafted in the minds of men centuries ago, no penal statutes were needed to draw them unto public prayer. The warning bell was no sooner heard, than the churches were immediately filled and the pavements covered with prostrate bodies and washed with their tears of devout joy.
3. Even as the place of public prayer, though belonging to the external context of worship, has the potential and power to help devotion; so much more does the Minister with whom the people of God join themselves in this action, for he is the one that stands and speaks in the presence of God for them. The authority of his place, the fervour of his zeal, the piety and gravity of his whole behaviour must of necessity exceedingly both grace and set forward the service that he leads therein.
The authority of his calling also serves to promote public prayer. If God has so far received him into favour, as to impose upon him by the hands of men that office of blessing the people in his name, and making intercession to him in theirs, is not his very ordination a seal as it were to us, that the self-same divine love, which has chosen the instrument to work with, will by that same instrument effect the thing whereunto he ordained it, in blessing his people and accepting the prayers which his servant offers up unto God for them? This office, we recall, God has sanctified with his own most gracious promise and also has ratified that promise in the ministries of those who have fulfilled this calling. In the light of their ordination and vocation, the ancient Christians usually gave God's ministers the title of "God's most beloved" [theophilestatous], since they were ordained to procure by their prayers his love and favour towards all.
Again, if there is not zeal and fervency in the Minister that offers for the rest those petitions and supplications which they, by their joyful acclamations [of Amen], must ratify; if he does not praise God with all his might; if he does not pour out his soul in prayer; if he does not take their causes to heart, or if he does not speak as Moses, Daniel and Ezra did for their people; then how should there be in them anything other than frozen coldness, since the one from whom their affections should take fire, seems himself not to be on fire?
Virtue and godliness of life are required at the hands of the minister of God, not only in that he is to teach and to instruct the people (who for the most part are rather led away by the ill example, than directed aright by the wholesome instruction of them, whose life swerves from the rule of their own doctrine), but also much more in regard of this other part of his function, to be a godly example of holy living. In this regard, whether we respect the weakness of the people, who are apt to hate and despise the sanctuary when they which minister within it are of such wickedness as the sons of Eli were (see 1 Samuel 2-3); or else whether we consider the inclination of God himself, who requires the lifting up of pure hands in prayer, and has given the world plainly to understand that the wicked, although they cry, shall not be heard (see John 9:31; Jeremiah 11:11; Ezekiel 8:18); they are no fit supplicants to seek his mercy on behalf of others, whose own unrepented sins provoke his just indignation. "Let thy Priests therefore, O Lord, be evermore clothed with righteousness, that thy saints may thereby with more devotion rejoice and sing (Psalm132:9)."
4. But of all helps for due performance of this service of public prayer the greatest is the very existence and availability of, The Book of Common Prayer, which framed with common advice, has both for matter and form prescribed whatsoever is publicly done in worship. No doubt from God it has proceeded; and by us it must be acknowledged a work of his singular care and providence, that the Church has always through the centuries held a prescribed form of common prayer, although not in all things everywhere the same, yet for the most part retaining much the same shape and content. So that if the liturgies of all ancient churches throughout the world are compared amongst themselves, it may be easily perceived that they had all one original mould, and that the public prayers of the people of God in well-established churches were never dependent on day-to-day inspiration and ex tempore prayer.
5. To him who considers (i) the grievous and scandalous inconveniences to which they make themselves daily subject, with whom any blind and secret corner is judged a fit house of common prayer; (ii) the manifold confusions which they fall into where every man's private spirit and gift (as they term it) is the only Bishop who ordains him to this ministry; (iii) the irksome deformities whereby through endless and senseless effusions of undigested prayers they often disgrace in a most insufferable manner the worthiest part of Christian duty towards God - that is, those who are subject to no certain order in public worship, but pray both what and how they please: I say to him, who duly weighs all these things, the reasons cannot be obscure, why God in public prayer so much respects the solemnity of places where, the authority and calling of persons by whom, and the precise appointment even with what words or sentences, his name should be called upon amongst his people.
Chapter xxvi Of them that do not like to have any set form of Common Prayer
1.To the present time no man has ever been so impious as plainly and directly to condemn prayer. The best strategy possessed by Satan, who knows that his kingdom is shaken more by the public devout prayers of God's Church than anything else, is to slander their form and manner so as both to bring them into contempt and to undermine the power of people's devotion towards them. From this strategy, and no other forge, a strange conceit has proceeded, that to serve God with any set form of common prayer is superstitious.
2. It is as though God himself did not provide for his Priests the very speech with which they were charged to bless the people (Numbers 6:23); or as if our Lord, in order to prevent this enthusiasm for extempore and voluntary prayers, had not left us of his own framing one prayer [The Lord's Prayer], which might both remain as a part of the Church liturgy, and also serve as a pattern by which to construct all other prayers with efficacy, yet without excess of words.
If prayers are only accepted by God if they are always newly conceived, according to the needs of present occasions; if it is right to judge God by our own bellies, and to imagine that he hates to have the selfsame supplications often repeated, even as we do to be fed every day without alteration or change of diet; if prayers are actions which ought to waste away in the making; if being retained and used again as prayers, they become but instruments of superstition: then surely we cannot excuse Moses, who gave occasion of scandal to the world, by not being content to praise the name of Almighty God according to the usual naked simplicity of God's Spirit for that admirable victory given them against Pharaoh (Exodus 15). But, in the Song of Moses unto the Lord after the deliverance, a precedent was set for forming prayers as poetry, and for a prayer which might be repeated often, in circumstances different from what caused its first appearance. For that very hymn of Moses became later a part of the ordinary Jewish liturgy; as also did other such prayers composed later.
The Jewish books of common prayer contained partly hymns taken out of the holy Scripture, partly benedictions, thanksgivings, supplications, penned by such as have been from time to time the governors of that synagogue. These they sorted into their several times and places, some to begin the service of God with, and some to end, some to go before and some to follow, and some to be placed between the divine readings of the Law and the Prophets. The Evangelist Matthew evidently alludes to their custom of finishing the Passover with certain Psalms (113-118), when he says that after the cup delivered by our Saviour unto his apostles "they sung" (Matthew 26:30) and went forth to the mount of Olives.
3.As the Jews had their songs of Moses and David and the rest, so the Church of Christ from the very beginning has both used the same and besides them other of like nature, the song of the Virgin Mary, the song of Zechariah, the song of Simeon, and such hymns as the Apostle doth often speak of saying, "I will pray and sing with the Spirit (1 Corinthians 14:15):" again "in psalms, hymns and songs making melody unto the Lord and that heartily" (Ephesians 5:19). Hymns and psalms are such kinds of prayer as are not usually conceived suddenly, but are framed by meditation beforehand, or else are inspired by prophetic illumination, as at that time it appears they were when God, by extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, enabled men to fulfil all parts of service necessary for the edifying of his Church.
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon
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