Comber on the use of forms

"we can pray by this Form with as much Zeal and more Knowledge, with as much Spirit and more Truth, than by any other kind of Prayer."

     Thomas Comber, A companion to the Temple, or A help to devotion in the use of the Common prayer (1672-76/1684), as quoted in Prayer book spirituality, ed. J. Robert Wright (New York:  The Church Hymnal Corporation, 1989), 36, under "The mistaken dissenters".

Johnson on the use of forms

"let me farther assure you, that now after near forty years use of our excellent method of worship, . . . it is so far from growing tedious or a matter of formality, as some imagine, that every opportunity seems to add fresh life, and I see fresh beauties, and find further advantages in it from time to time."

     Samuel Johnson, On the beauty of holiness in the worship of the Church of England (1749), as quoted in Prayer book spirituality, ed. J. Robert Wright (New York:  The Church Hymnal Corporation, 1989), 51.

"the habitat of natural gifts is the natural man."

"beware of showing God's grace and its work at such disadvantage as to make the few whom it has thoroughly influenced compete in intellect with the vast multitude who either have it not, or use it ill.  The elect are few to choose out of, and the world is inexhaustible.  From the first, Jabel and Tubalcain, Nimrod 'the stout hunter', the learning of the Pharaohs, and the wisdom of the East country, are of the world.  Every now and then they are rivalled by a Solomon or a Beseleel, but the habitat of natural gifts is the natural man."

     John Henry Newman, The idea of a university defined and illustrated, Discourse IX.7 (ed. I. T. Ker (Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 1976), 196).