said, to endeavour that his subjects should pass their lives devoutly and virtuously, to the honour of God, and the salvation of their souls. Prayer was the appointed and the only means by which such a life was rendered possible; but prayer of the most passionate and ravishing kind was of little profit, if it was an emotion undirected by the understanding; and to make use of words in a foreign language, merely with a sentiment of devotion, the mind taking no fruit, could be neither pleasing to God, nor beneficial to man. The party that understood not the pith or effectualness of the talk that he made with God, might be as a harp or pipe, having a sound, but not understanding the noise that itself had made; a Christian man was more than an instrument; and he had therefore provided a determinate form of supplication in the English tongue, that his subjects might be able to pray like reasonable beings in their own language.[1]
The surest testimony to wise and moderate measures is the disapproval of fanatics of all kinds. Amidst the factions which were raging round him, the King, with his rational advisers, had no desire to swell the clamour; he sought to accomplish something unquestionably genuine and good, which might bear fruit at a future time. But to the eager Protestants the prayers were tainted with Popery; falling short of their own extravagances they seemed as worthless as the Latin forms which they displaced: while the reactionaries, on the
- ↑ Wilkins, vol. iii. p. 873.
