---
title: 'Samuel Miller on the Sad Effects of Liturgical Worship'
type: post
author: 'R. Andrew Myers'
date: 2023-12-18
url: https://confessional.org/blog/2023-samuel-miller-on-the-sad-effects-of-liturgical-worship
---

# Samuel Miller on the Sad Effects of Liturgical Worship

“The result, then, is that liturgies were unknown in the primitive church; that, as piety declined, the clergy began to need external aids for conducting the public devotions of their congregations; that this matter, however, continued for several centuries to be managed by each pastor for himself; that in the exercise of this individual discretion, frequent blunders occurred, through the gross ignorance of the clergy, and some times blunders of a very unhappy kind; and that liturgies did not finally obtain universal prevalence until the church had sunk into a state of darkness and corruption, which all protestants acknowledge to have been deplorable.” — [**Samuel Miller**](/authors/samuel-miller), *On the Use of Liturgies* (1830)