Faith & Spirit Quote by John Selden

Selden’s advice sounds pious on the surface, but it carries the clipped authority of a statesman who’s spent enough time around petitioners to distrust long-winded pleas. “Prayer should be short” is less a spiritual tip than a rebuke to the human habit of treating God like a committee to be lobbied. The line punctures a familiar posture: if we just stack up enough arguments, display enough need, present enough “good reasons,” we can manage the outcome. Selden calls that what it is: a kind of sanctified self-importance.

The subtext is political as much as theological. In early modern England, public religion was entangled with power, rhetoric, and performance. Prayer could become another stage for display - proving one’s godliness, broadcasting allegiance, signaling moral superiority. Selden’s preference for brevity pushes against that performative economy. Keep it short; don’t audition your conscience.

His closing clause, “he knows best what is good for us,” does double work. It asserts divine omniscience while also disciplining the petitioner’s ego. The point isn’t that asking is wrong; it’s that arguing is absurd. Selden frames elaborate prayer as a category error: you don’t “reason” with an all-knowing sovereign. That’s a pointed metaphor from a man steeped in law and governance.

What makes it land is its cool, almost bureaucratic deflation of religious verbosity. Selden isn’t sentimental about faith; he’s suspicious of the ways people use faith to negotiate control. The ideal prayer, in his view, is less persuasion than surrender.