John Lightfoot on Matthew 6:7

[ROSARY, a chaplet of roses or beads used as an aid to memory in the repeating of prayers, as the Paternosters and Ave Marias. There are various patterns in use; one is a rosary of fifty-five beads, fifty small ones for the Ave Marias, separated into groups of ten by five large ones to mark Paternosters. Hindus, Mohammedans, and Buddhists all employ the rosary. The name is also given to a series of prayers ("Rosary of the Blessed Virgin") consisting of fifteen decades, comprising fifteen paternosters and doxologies, and 150 Ave Marias, divided into three parts.--Universal Standard Encyclopedia

ROSARY. Part of the ritual of the Roman Catholic Church is the rosary, fifteen groups or series of prayers, each series consisting of a Paternoster (Lord's Prayer), ten Aves (salutes to the Virgin Mary), and a Gloria. The string of beads used in counting the prayers is also called a rosary. It is symbolic, for the large beads stand for Paternosters (Our Father's) and Glorias, and the small beads for Aves (Hail Mary's), while the crucifix on the pendant symbolized the Apostles' Creed. The groups of beads are "decades"; generally only five decades are said at one time. Instead of a large bead at the end and at the beginning of each decade, only one bead is used to represent the Gloria and the Paternoster. During the telling of the beads in each decade, the worshiper meditates on one of the fifteen mysteries of the life and death of Christ.

In the Greek Church, the monks, and not the lay members of the congregation, recite their prayers with the rosary, which is composed of a hundred beads of equal size. In the Russian Church, the rosary consists of 103 beads which are divided into groups by four larger ones, representing the Evangelists. Rosaries are also used by Buddhists and Mohammedans.--The Wonderland of Knowledge Encyclopedia, 1965]

[Use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do] See the civil battology [vain repetitions] of the heathen in their supplications: "Let the parricide be dragged: we beseech thee. Augustus, let the parricide be dragged. This is the thing we ask, let the parricide be dragged. Hear us, Caesar. Let the false accusers be condemned to the lion. Hear us, Caesar. Let the false accusers be condemned to the lion. Hear us, Caesar," &c.

"Antoninus the pious, the gods keep thee. Antoninus the merciful, the gods keep thee. Antoninus the merciful, the gods keep thee." See also Capitolinus, in the Maximini.

Those words savour of vain repetition in prayer, 1 Kings 18:26; "The priest of Baal called upon the name of Baal from morning to noon, saying, O Baal, hear us."

After the same manner almost as the heathen mixed vain repetitions, in their prayers, did the Jews in their using divers words importing the same thing: not repeating, indeed, the same thing in varied phrases; which appears sufficiently to him that reads their liturgies through, as well the more ancient as those of a later date. And certainly the sin is equally the same in using different words of the same thing, as in a vain repetition of the same words; if so be there were the same deceit and hypocrisy in both; in words only multiplied, but the heart absent.

And in this matter the Jew sinned little less than the heathen. For this was an axiom with them, Every one that multiplies prayer is heard. Christ, therefore, does not so much condemn the bare saying over again the same petitions, either in the same words, or in words of the same import (for he himself spake the same things thrice, when he prayed in the garden), as a false opinion, as if there were some power, or zeal, or piety, in such kind of repetitions; and that they would be sooner heard, and more prevail with God. While he strikes the heathen, he strikes the Jews also, who laboured under the same phrensy: but there is mention only of the heathen, partly because this savoured rather of heathen blindness than of the profession of true religion, which the Jews boasted of; partly, and especially, that he might not condemn the public prayers of the Jews without cause, in which they sinned not at all by using synonymous expressions, if it were done out of a pious and sincere heart.