My Documents: Article of the Week Archive

 

The Singing of Psalms: Part 4
Copyright 1996 Sherman Isbell

[Editorial Note: I have become increasingly more frustrated with the current status of the Church, especially as it pertains to the utilization of differing genres in the corporate worship service. My personal understanding of the matter leaves little room in my mind that we ought to be singing the word of God and not some man made "love tune" that is better suited for a camp-fire sing-a-long. Certainly these are my personal opinions and should not be construed as an attack or response to any particular church. The matter can be debated and I welcome it. Feel free to do so by utilizing the link at the bottom of this article. This series contains 14 articles that will be taken in order until completion. If interested in reading ahead you may do so at: http://members.aol.com/RSISBELL/psalms1.html -- W. Hill]

The Circumstances of Worship (Continued)

Confirmation of what the Westminster Confession does and does not allow by the exception in chapter I, paragraph vi, is apparent from contemporary discussions by other men who labored on the drafting committee. Jack B. Rogers has observed that none of them wrote so extensively regarding circumstances common to human actions and societies as did Samuel Rutherfurd (1600-1661),(42) whose Divine Right of Church Government was published in the spring of 1646, while the Confession was being prepared. In its pages, Rutherfurd rebutted the Anglican apologists who urged that a biblical warrant was no more required for the manner of implementing worship actions than for executing functions in civil society. Rutherfurd answered them by identifying in worship a regulative role for Scripture, which it did not have in civil affairs.(43)

Rutherfurd writes: "But Formalists say, If man's will and authority cannot appoint crossing, holy human-days, surplice, and such - the decent expressions and incitements of devotion - in the kind of arbitrary, mutable and ambulatory worship, but they must be therein guilty of adding to the doctrine of piety and religion in the first table, by that same reason they cannot make human civil and positive laws in war and peace, to be means of conserving justice and mercy toward human societies in the kind of duties of righteousness and sobriety towards ourselves and neighbors. I answer: The case is not alike. We cannot be agents in the performing of any worship to God, nor can we use any religious means for honoring God, which belong to the first table, but in these we are moral agents, doing with special reference to conscience. And therefore in these we are precisely ruled by the wisdom of God, who hath in his Word set down what worship, and what means of exciting devotion and decoring of his worship, pleaseth him, and hath not left men to Lord-will, or Lord-wit.

"But in many actions that belong to human societies, we are not moral agents, but often agents by art, as in military discipline, trades useful for man's life, economy and policy in kingdoms and cities, in sciences, as logic, physic, mathematics. In these the end of the work is operation according to the principles of arts and policy, and we are not in them moral agents, and so not to be regulated by God's Word. For the Scripture giveth not to us precepts of grammar, of war, of trades and arts, teaching us to speak right Latin, to make accurate demonstrations."(44)

Having separated worship as a sphere regulated in a unique way by God's Word, Rutherfurd goes on to speak of some circumstances of worship which are not moral or religious circumstances, and gives examples of these. "Conclusion: In actions or religious means of worship, and actions moral, whatever is beside the Word of God is against the Word of God. I say in religious means, for there be means of worship, or circumstances physical, not moral, not religious, as whether the pulpit be of stone or of timber, the bell of this or this metal, the house of worship stand thus or thus in situation."(45)

Rutherfurd insists that the only circumstances of worship in which there need be no biblical prescription are those which are empty of any religious significance. "Now the house or church, as such, is no monument nor useless instrument in worship, as is a surplice, a human holy day. For it hath, as such, being a thing of walls and timber, no other than that very same physical influence in worshipping either the true God, or a saint, that it hath in civil use, in our ordinary dwelling, to wit, to fence our bodies, in religious, in natural, in civil actions, from injuries of heaven, clouds, and sin. The adjuncts of the church, as crucifixes, images, altars, ravels, Mass-clothes, and the like, are properly monuments and instruments of idolatry, because these are not necessary, as is the material house, nor have they any common and physical influence in the worship, as the temple hath. Yea all the necessity or influence that they have in the worship is only religious and human, flowing from the will of men, without either necessity from our natural constitution of body, or any word of Scripture. And therefore they are to be removed upon this ground, because they are unnecessary snares to idolatry."(46)

In an earlier work Rutherfurd speaks of "things merely physical, not moral, having no influence in God's worship at all, as such a day for meeting of an assembly of the church, Wednesday rather than Thursday, a cloak when you pray in private, rather than a gown. These have, or contribute of themselves, no moral influence to the action, as in what corner of your chamber you pray in private. These are merely indifferent, and tolerance in these I would commend. It is true, there is a strict connection often betwixt the physical and the moral circumstances, so as the physical circumstance doth put on, by some necessity, a moral habitude and respect, and then the physical circumstance becometh moral. As, in what corner of your chamber you pray, it is merely physical and indifferent. But if that corner that you pray in cast you obvious to the eyes of those who are walking in the streets, that they may see and hear your private prayers, then the place putteth on the moral respect of a savour of some Pharisaical ostentation, that you pray to be seen of men. And so the circumstance now is moral, and is to be regulated by the Word, whereas the circumstance that is merely physical is not, as it is such, in any capacity to receive scriptural regulation; nothing is required but a physical convenience for the action."(47)

The year before the ordinance of Parliament which summoned the Westminster Assembly, an English translation of the influential Marrow of Sacred Divinity by William Ames (1576-1633) was published "by order from the honorable the House of Commons." In explaining those circumstances of worship "which are common adjuncts of religious and civil acts," Ames refers to the same proof texts which the Assembly cites respecting circumstances "common to human actions and societies."

"The outward circumstances are those which pertain to order and decency. I Cor. 14:40. Let all things be done decently and in order. But the general rule of these is that they be ordered in that manner which maketh most for edification. I Cor. 14:26. Of this nature are the circumstances of place, time, and the like, which are common adjuncts to religious and civil acts. Therefore although such like circumstances are wont to be called of some rites, and religious or ecclesiastical ceremonies, yet they have nothing in their nature which is proper to religion, and therefore religious worship doth not so properly consist in them. However the holiness of religious worship is in some sort violated by the neglect and contempt of them, because that common respect of order and decency which doth equally agree to religious and civil actions cannot be severed from religious worship, but the dignity and majesty thereof is in some sort diminished.

"Such like circumstances, therefore, which of their own nature are civil or common, are not particularly commanded in the Scriptures, partly because they come into men's common sense, and partly because it would not stand with the dignity and majesty of the law of God that such things should be severally prescribed in it. For by this means many ridiculous things should have been provided for by a special law, as for example, that in the church assembly one should not place himself in another's bosom, spit in another's face, or should not make mouths in holy actions. Yet they are to be accounted as commanded from God. 1. Because they are commanded in general under the law of order, decency and edification. 2. Because most of them do necessarily follow from those things which are expressly appointed by God. For when God appointed that the faithful of all sorts should meet together to celebrate his name and worship, he did consequently ordain that they should have a fit and convenient place wherein they may meet together, and an hour also assigned at which they may be present together. When also there is a minister appointed by God, to teach others publicly, it is withal appointed that he have a seat, and that situation of his body, which is meet for such an action."(48)

An indication of the congruence between the thought of the Westminster divines and Ames on this matter is found in the following passage from Rutherfurd: "Time, place, pulpit, table-cloth, are new (physically) often, not new morally or religiously. They have no spiritual influence in worship. A civil declamation hath the same time, place, pulpit, with a preaching. For then, if for application you call them religious, as Dr. Ames saith well, An hill whereon a preacher preacheth, a judge persuadeth a law, a captain speaketh to his soldiers, is both a sacred, a judicial, a military hill."(49) And Gillespie writes: "Wherefore sacred significant ceremonies shall never be warranted by the precept of order and decency, which have no less in civility than in religion."(50) These passages represent the Westminster view of such worship circumstances as require no biblical justification.

Notes
(42) Rogers, Scripture in the Westminster Confession, pp. 360-62.
(43) Cf. Westminster Confession, XX.ii.
(44) Samuel Rutherfurd, The Divine Right of Church-Government and Excommunication (London: John Field for Christopher Meredith, 1646), pp. 107-108. George K. Fortescue, Catalogue of the Pamphlets, Books, Newspapers, and Manuscripts Relating to the Civil War, the Commonwealth, and Restoration, Collected by George Thomason, 1640-1661 (London: British Museum, 1908), 1:424, gives March 3, 1646 as the date either of publication or of the book coming into Thomason's possession. Cf. David Dickson, A Brief Exposition of the Evangel of Jesus Christ According to Matthew (1647, reprint ed., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1981), p. 207: "That which otherwise is lawful in itself while it abides within the limits of civil fashions may be left undone, and be discountenanced, when it is set up in state within the limits of religion."
(45) Rutherfurd, Divine Right of Church Government, p. 109.
(46) Rutherfurd, "A Dispute Touching Scandall and Christian libertie," pp. 63-64, in Divine Right of Church Government. Cf. p. 7, and Gillespie, English Popish Ceremonies, pp. 290-91.
(47) Samuel Rutherfurd, The Due Right of Presbyteries, (London: E. Griffin for Richard Whittaker and Andrew Crook, 1644), p. 373 (Aaa3 recto).
(48) William Ames, The Marrow of Sacred Divinity (London: Edward Griffin for Henry Overton, 1642), pp. 318-19. The order from the House of Commons appears on the title page. A recent translation is The Marrow of Theology, ed. and trans. John D. Eusden (Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1968); see p. 285 for the passage quoted. Cf. Jeremiah Burroughs, Gospel Worship (London: Peter Cole, 1653), pp. 8-9, or reprint ed. (Ligonier, Penn.: Soli Deo Gloria, 1990), pp. 13-15; Owen, Works, 15:35.
(49) Rutherfurd, Divine Right of Church Government, p. 137, quoting from Ames, A Fresh Suit Against Human Ceremonies in God's Worship.
(50) Gillespie, English Popish Ceremonies, p. 259. Cf. Gillespie, A Treatise of Miscellany Questions, (Edinburgh: Gedeon Lithgow for George Swintoun, 1649), p. 197: "For our part, except it be a circumstance such as belongeth to the decency and order which ought to appear in all human societies and actions whether civil or sacred, we hold that the church hath not power to determine anything belonging to religion." The passage is on p. 83 of the Edinburgh, 1844, edition.