_Object._ But if a man fail through weakness in his own performance, I know not of that beforehand; but if his faulty manner of praying be prescribed and imposed on him by a law, then I know it beforehand, and therefore am guilty of it. _Answ._ To avoid confusion, fix upon that which you think is the thing sinful. 1. Either it is because the prayers are defective and faulty. 2. Or because they are imposed. 3. Or because you know the fault beforehand. But none of all these can prove your joining with them sinful. 1. Not because they are faulty; for you may join with as faulty prayers, you confess, if not imposed.[170] 2. Not because imposed, (1.) Because that is an extenuation, and not an aggravation: for it proveth the minister less voluntary of the two than those are that do it without any command, though the error of their own judgments (as most erroneous persons will). (2.) Because (though lawful things oft become unlawful when superiors forbid them, yet) no reason can be given why a lawful thing should become unlawful, because a lawful superior doth command it. Else superiors might take away all our christian liberty, and make all things unlawful to us by commanding them. You would take it for a wild conceit in your children or servants, if they say, when you bid them learn a catechism, or use a form of prayer, It was lawful to us till you commanded us to do it; but because you bid us do it, it is unlawful. If it be a duty to obey governors in all lawful things, then it is not a sin to obey them. 3. And it is not your knowing beforehand that maketh it unlawful: for, 1. I know in general beforehand, that all imperfect men will do imperfectly; and though I know not the particular, that maketh it never the lawfuller, if foreknowledge itself did make it unlawful. 2. If you know that e. g. an antinomian or some mistaken preacher would constantly drop some words for his error in prayer or preaching, that will not make it unlawful in your own judgment for you to join, if it be not a flat heresy. 3. It is another man's error or fault that you foreknow, and not your own; and therefore foreknowledge maketh it not your own. 4. God himself doth as an universal cause of nature concur with men in those acts which he foreknoweth they will sinfully do; and yet God is not to be judged either an author or approver of the sin because of such concurrence and foreknowledge: therefore our foreknowledge maketh us no approvers, or guilty of the failings of any in their sacred ministrations, unless there be some other guilt. If you say that it is no one of these that maketh it unlawful, but all together, you must give us a distinct argument to prove that the concurrence of these three will prove that unlawful, which cannot be proved so by any of them alone, for your affirmation must not serve the turn; and when we know your argument, I doubt not but it may be answered. One thing I still confess may make any defective worship to