My Documents: Article of the Week Archive

 

The Singing of Psalms: Part 5
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)

The Anglicans claimed that circumstances which did not touch the substance of worship are innocent. The Westminster divines replied that if a thing or action takes on a sacred significance, it matters not whether it be called an element or a circumstance, for it must have a divine prescription. Here is an example of Gillespie's identification of those things which are used in religion only: "Bishop Andrews avouches that ceremonies pertain to the church only, and to the service of God, not to civil solemnities. But so much, I trust, he would not have said of circumstances which have place in all moral actions, and that to the same end and purpose for which they serve in religious action, namely, for beautifying them with that decent demeanor which the very light and law of natural reason requires as a thing beseeming all human action. For the church of Christ being a society of men and women, must either observe order and decency in all the circumstances of their holy actions, times, places, persons, forms, etc., or else be deformed with that disorder and confusion which common reason and civility abhors. Ceremonies, therefore, which are sacred observances, and serve only to a religious and holy use, and which may not, without sacrilege, be applied to another use, must be sorted with things of another nature than circumstances."(51)

Rutherfurd is similar in his teaching that everything of a religious character in worship must find authorization in the Bible, regardless of whether men call it essential or accidental to the performance. "It is a vain and unwarrantable distinction to divide worship into essential, which hath God's particular approving will to be the warrant thereof, and worship accidental or arbitrary, which hath only God's general and permissive will, and hath man's will for its father. If the general must be warranted by the Word, so also specials under the general, else men's will may make a horned bullock a decent sacrifice to represent Christ already come in the flesh. For if the written Word warrant not the specials of religious observances, a door is open for all human inventions."(52)

And again, "For circumstances clothed with religious positive goodness, such as are the Sabbath day, the holy of holiest, the temple, these are not mere circumstances, but worship itself. So a religious habit, as an ephod or a surplice, is not a mere circumstance or a mere habit, but a worship, or such a part or limb of worship as must be warranted by the Word of truth, else it is nothing but a will-device and a forgery, and so to be rejected."(53)

John Owen, writing in 1662, gives the common Puritan judgment against the imposition of a liturgy of set prayers. In that year two thousand ministers of the Church of England left their charges rather than conform. In his Discourse Concerning Liturgies and Their Imposition, Owen rejects religious additions to God's worship which masquerade under the name of circumstances. "There are also some things, which some men call circumstances, also, that no way belong of themselves to the actions whereof they are said to be the circumstances, nor do attend them, but are imposed on them, or annexed unto them, by the arbitrary authority of those who take upon them to give order and rules in such cases; such as to pray before an image or towards the east, or to use this or that form of prayer in such gospel administrations, and no other. These are not circumstances attending the nature of the thing itself, but are arbitrarily superadded to the things that they are appointed to accompany. Whatever men may call such additions, they are no less parts of the whole wherein they serve than the things themselves whereunto they are adjoined."(54)

Owen's comments are especially pertinent because the context in which he writes is a controversy as to whether we should follow a text of human prescription in prayer. He says that this issue is not a thing indifferent, but is regulated by direction given in God's Word. "That their will and wisdom may have a share (some at least) in the ordering of his worship, is that which of all things they seem to desire. All making to ourselves is forbidden, though what we so make may seem unto us to tend to the furtherance of the worship of God. It is said men may add nothing to the substance of the worship of God, but they may order, dispose, and appoint the things that belong to the manner and circumstances of it, this is all that is done in the prescription of liturgies. Of circumstances in and about the worship of God we have spoken before, and removed that pretence. Nor is it safe distinguishing in the things of God where himself hath not distinguished. Indeed, there is nothing in its whole nature, as it belongs to the general being of things, so circumstantial, but that if it be appointed by God in his worship, it becomes a part of the substance of it; nor can any thing that is not so appointed ever by any be made a circumstance of his worship. "(55)

Finally, the OPC majority report speaks of the fewer and simpler ordinances in the New Testament pattern of worship, as compared with the ceremonies of the Old Testament. The report declares that in the New Testament, "because of the greater liberty bestowed by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, fewer circumstances of worship are prescribed than in the Old."(56) This plea is apparently intended to buttress an argument in the following paragraph of the report, to the effect that the Lord has authorized the New Testament church to compose uninspired songs for use in worship. But while it is true to say, with the Confession (VII.vi), that the New Testament does not have as many religious observances as the Old, it is contrary to the Confession to argue that such differences allow the church today a wider latitude in things which touch the substance of worship.

Here are Gillespie's words about the regulative principle in the worship of the Old and New Testaments: "And whilst Bishop Lindsey says, that in the particular circumstances of persons by whom, place where, time when, and of the form and order how, the worship and work of the ministry should be performed, the church has power to define whatsoever is most expedient, and that this is a prerogative wherein the Christian church differs from the Jewish synagogue; they do but speak their pleasure in vain, and cannot make it appear that the Christian church has any more power to add to the commandments of God than the synagogue had of old.

"But as for the ceremonies which are proper to God's holy worship, shall we say that the fidelity of Christ, the Son, has been less than the fidelity of Moses, the servant (Heb. 3:2)? which were to be said, if Christ had not, by as plain, plentiful, and particular directions and ordinances, provided for all the necessities of the Christian church in the matter of religion, as Moses for the Jewish? Or, if the least pin, and the meanest appurtenance of the tabernacle, and all the service thereof, behooved to be ordered according to the express commandment of God by the hand of Moses, how shall we think, that in the rearing, framing, ordering, and beautifying of the church, the house of the living God, he would have less honor and prerogative given than to his own well-beloved Son, by whom he has spoken to us in these last days, and whom he has commanded us to hear in all things? Or that he will accept, at our hands, any sacred ceremony which men have presumed to bring into his holy and pure worship, without the appointment of his own word and will revealed unto us? Albeit the worship of God and religion, in the church of the New Testament, is accompanied without ceremonies, very few in number, very easy to observe, most remarkable in meaning (as Augustine speaks of our sacraments), yet we have in Scripture, no less particular determination and distinct direction for our few, easy, and plain ceremonies, than the Jews had for their many heavy and obscure ones."(57)

To the same effect, William Cunningham writes: "There is no force in the presumption, that, because so little in regard to the externals of the church is fixed by scriptural authority, therefore much was left to be regulated by human wisdom, as experience might suggest or as the varying condition of the church might seem to require. For, on the contrary, every view suggested by Scripture of Christianity and the church, indicates, that Christ intended His church to remain permanently in the condition of simplicity as to outward arrangements, in which His apostles were guided to leave it. Men, under the pretence of curing the defects and shortcomings, the nakedness and bareness, attaching to ecclesiastical arrangements as set before us in the New Testament, have been constantly proposing innovations and improvements in government and worship. The question is, How ought these proposals to have been received? Our answer is, There is a great general scriptural principle which shuts them all out. We refuse even to enter into the consideration of what is alleged in support of them. It is enough for us that they have no positive sanction from Scripture."(58)

Notes
(51) Ibid., p. 282.
(52) Rutherfurd, Divine Right of Church Government, pp. 118-19.
(53) Rutherfurd, "Dispute Touching Scandall," p. 6.
(54) Owen, Works, 15:35-36.
(55) Ibid., p. 40. Cf. 16:471.
(56) "Report of the Committee on Song in the Public Worship of God," Minutes of the Fourteenth General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, May 22-28, 1947, p. 51.
(57) Gillespie, English Popish Ceremonies, pp. 290-91. Cf. Miscellany Questions (1649 edition), p. 241, or p. 102 in the 1844 edition; Owen, Works, 13:483-84 and 15:38-39; James H. Thornwell, The Collected Writings of James Henley Thornwell (1875, reprint ed., London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1974), 4:183-84 and 253-55.
(58) William Cunningham, The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation (1862, reprint ed., London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1967), pp. 34-36.