To the Right Hoble, the Lords and Commons, &c.  
The humble Petition of Troubled Minds.  
Showeth,  
THat your Petitioners having been prohibited of serving God after their accustomed manner, and by a Directory put upon a public worshipping the Almighty by extemporary prayers, groundlessly without a Liturgy, presuming (as they suppose) to imitate the miraculous Founders of Christian Religion, who then for planting of Churches had special assistance of the holy Ghost, by which many signs, 
Joh. 14. 26.  wonders and miracles were wrought, for they then spoke as the Spirit gave them utterance: But our Divines wanting those apostolical gifts, neither in verity have they the holy Ghost as the Apostles had, whereby their utterance and frail memories might be helped, and understandings from errors be preserved, but in these things are subject to miscarriages, and therefore according to their weak abilities as they stand opinionated in judgements, a strange worship of their own inventions is oftentimes produced, whereby it comes to pass, that in praying they have strange words and passages, not according to godliness, but instead of a solemn sacred Service to a Divine Majesty (as our former Prayers were, composed by a conjunctive help of many men learned and holy, 
Mart. 2. Vol. pag. 660. Edit. 1641.  yea such as were Martyrs, and who as the Author of the Book of Martyrs saith, and the Act of Parl. made to confirm that Service in the time of King Edw. 6. performed it through the aid of the holy Ghost) we have now a model by a single, weak, yea and sometimes an heretical brain, which presumes to pour out prayers simple or senseless; yea sometimes heretical, or passages tending to blasphemy; sometimes treasonable, or passages tending to sedition; sometimes superstitious, or passages tending to Idolatry; sometimes malicious, tending to revenge, murder, bloodshed, all which though not expressed in plain, but doubtful terms, according to the corrupt cunning of deceivable men, whose perverse opinions, 
For the Antiquity of Churches, and a Christian church-liturgy, within 40. years of our Lord, see Euseb. lib. 2. ch. 17.  their seduced followers complying with, think they have performed a holy sacrifice to God: But your Petitioners tremble, they should now be forced, or the Almighty limited in his public Worship, to such Prayers and strange Service, which till this Age neither they nor their forefathers ever knew. Moreover, if the memory or utterance of those Divines that be orthodox and godly shall fail, than doth the solemn worship of Almighty God which the Directory hath made to depend upon those men's weak memory fail also. This much troubleth your Petitioners, who finding the prayers of these former rehearsed opinionated men, the most part nought, & these last though they be for life and doctrine unblameable, yet by reason of an unperfect or weak memory, their extemporary prayers, to which our Synod hath limited God's public Worship, prove not perfectly good. And besides, your Petitioners in hearing strange men, or every day new extemporary prayers, whilst their understandings are exercised, how lawfully to divers passages and Petitions they may say Amen, their devotions in the mean time which with zeal and fervency ought to be fixed upon the Almighty God, are by distempered thoughts extremely weakened, and made cold, if not totally lost:  
Wherefore the inconvenience of extemporary prayers being considered, we your Petitioners, Members of the Church of England, do humbly pray for the sake of God and our Saviour Christ, and for that Mother-Churches sake wherein yourselves have received baptism, Faith, and Grace, whereby you stand stated in hope of the glory of God, yea that Christian Protestant Church, Reformed not by the blood of others, but her own patient sufferings in her own blood, that you will suffer her children to worship God in their accustomed reverential manner: And we humbly pray that you would be pleased to consider, that the Judaical Christians were not forced to leave their Jewish customs, Act. 21. though abolished by Christ: Constantine the Great forced neither Pagans nor heretics to Christianity, 
Euseb. of the life of Const. lib. 1. ch. 38.  but made Edicts to the contrary. The Turk in matters of Religion doth not force men. Yea the very Church of Rome, although they think themselves infallible, yet in all places do not force men, and why will ye, who being more modest, 
Lib. 2. 55.  do judge yourselves subject to errors, force men to that now, from which upon better information ye may depart to morrow? 
Lib. 2. 59  we pray you to consider, and help us troubled minds, and allow us to serve God according to our former liturgy,  
And we shall ever pray, &c.