our service. These people aver, that there ought not to be any form of public prayer; but our Lord gave the prayer called after his name, as a form, at once, and the model of a form. The great preceptors amongst the Jews gave their respective disciples a form of prayer for their constant use: John the Baptist taught his disciples a form of prayer, as we gather from the text,-"Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.” Our Lord, in compliance with their request, ❝said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father, which art in heaven;" and, it is remarkable, as has been observed by those who are conversant in the ancient Jewish Liturgy, that excepting this clause," as we forgive them that trespass against us,"—all the others are taken out of Jewish forms of prayer, in all probability well known to the disciples of Jesus. This

shews that our Lord, at the same time that he gave his disciples a form of prayer, did not despise the ancient forms of his country's Church.

Nothing can be stronger than the terms of the text; the use of the Lord's Prayer is enjoined most explicitly, and that not mérely as an example of the mode in which public prayers should be conceived, but its use, directly and literally as it stands, is absolutely commanded,-" When ye pray, say, Our Father;"-I say, its use, as a public prayer, is commanded, because its form is precisely adapted to social worship: it saith not-my Father, but our Father; it saith not—give me, but give us.—Now, observe the evasion of cavillers; they cannot withstand the force and meaning of the words in the text, and therefore they betake themselves to the sixth chapter of St. Matthew, where the injunction of

our Lord is apparently conceived in another shape. It stands in our New Testaments, in the Gospel according to St. Matthew," After this manner, therefore, pray ye." Here, say they, it is evident that the Lord's Prayer was not meant as a prescribed form, but only as an example of the manner in which prayers are to be constructed. O! the perverseness of these men. O! the ignorance, which hardens their hearts. Many might think that these three words " After this manner," in English, are translated from three corresponding words in the original tongue: No such thing; there is but one word, and that is the same which in a multitude of texts in the New Testament is translated by the word " thus;" where the expression "thus saith the Lord" occurs, a case where the utmost precision of form is required, the original word, in hundreds of instances,

is the same in both cases; consequently, the simpler and the truer rendering had been-" thus, therefore, pray ye;"-and now what becomes of the tottering edifice of reasoning which some have built upon the sandy foundation of an ill-translated text? But so it ever will be when the unlearned presume to teach.

You will recollect that these Discourses are discourses on the Liturgy; and therefore it is not my province, at present, to enter into an explanation of the Lord's Prayer. All I have to do is, to shew that its use is authorized in our public service; and also that the manner of using it, which the Church orders, is proper; is agreeable to the intention of the Lord Jesus, and to the practice of the primitive Christians; and this, I trust, I have done.

The congregation having now confessed their sins unto God, and heard pardon

assured to repentant sinners and true believers; and having addressed God in the very words of Jesus Christ, are ripe for another part of divine service. Whilst with unclean lips it is not comely to praise God, no sooner have we acknowledged our unworthiness, and received promise of forgiveness, than, like one of the sincerest penitents of old time, we betake ourselves to the extolling of our God, the lauding, and magnifying of his holy name. I 'allude to David, the King, the Prophet, the Psalmist; he whose Son, after the flesh, was Jesus Christ, though in the spirit David himself called him Lord; but forasmuch as "all our sufficiency is of God," and we cannot praise him fitly, unless he enable us; before we rise from our knees, we call upon him for aid to praise him as we ought, for salvation from above, and the help of his grace and Holy Spirit. Minister and