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Bible Dictionaries
Bidding Prayer
Charles Buck Theological Dictionary
or It was part of the office of the deacons in the primitive church to be monitors and directors of the people in their public devotions in the church. To this end they made use of certain known forms of words, to give notice when each part of the service began. Agreeable to this ancient practice is the form "Let us pray, " repeated before several of the prayers in the English liturgy. Bishop Burnet, in his History of the Reformation, vol. 2: p. 20, has preserved the form as it was in use before the reformation, which was this:
After the preacher had named and opened his text, he called on the people to go to their prayers, telling them what they were to pray for: Ye shall pray, says he, for the king, the pope, &c. After which, all the people said their beads in a general silence, and the minister kneeled down likewise, and said his: they were to say a paternoster, ave maria, &c. and then the sermon proceeded.
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Buck, Charles. Entry for 'Bidding Prayer'. Charles Buck Theological Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/cbd/b/bidding-prayer.html. 1802.
