Thoughts on public prayer - Miller - VI - Chapter 2 continued

Required reading
Thoughts on public prayer by Samuel Miller (Available from Amazon or free here) - Continue Chapter 2 by reading up to the heading 'Responses in public prayer'.

My summary
This week Miller continues to look at different corporate prayer practices.

Today he gives us his thoughts on praying in an unknown tongue - a common practice of the Roman Catholic church.

Firstly Miller suggests some motives why the Church of Rome would pray in an unknown tongue:
(i) to cast an air of antiquity over their system;
(ii) that the community may have the appearance of being one and the same all over the world;
(iii) because the Latin Vulgate was the only Bible authorised to be in common use;
(iv) because living languages are in a state of constant fluctuation;
(v) a known tongue is not necessary if we are sincere;
(vi) to keep the people dependent on the priesthood.

Second Miller demonstrates that the practice is contrary to:
(i) reason;
(ii) Scripture;
(iii) the early practice of those at Rome.

What grabbed me
This is a sad motivation if it is true: 'Finally: there is no want of charity in believing that one leading purpose in pursuing this practice, is to keep the people in ignorance, and to make them constantly more dependent on their priesthood. That "ignorance is the mother of devotion," may be considered as a leading Popish maxim ; and, truly, of the greater part of the devotion which exists in that communion, we have reason to believe it is the real and legitimate mother. No intelligent judge of their arts and habits can doubt, that one leading object of the whole, is to increase the power of a corrupt and tyrannical priesthood; to impress the mass of the people with a deep sense of their prerogatives and their power ; and to extort from them a more blind and implicit homage. The votaries of Antichrist, instead of opening the Scriptures to the people, and trying to bring them in contact with all minds within their reach, rather make it their study to lock them up from the laity, either by entirely prohibiting their perusal, or hiding them from the popular mind by the cover of a dead language. If it were their policy to prevent the common people from reading and understanding the Scriptures, it was natural that the same policy should also dictate a system of management to make them the blind and submissive repeaters of a form of words of which they understood nothing. '

A terrible practice indeed.

Next week's reading
Conclude Chapter 2.

Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.