A Christian Directory, Part 3: Christian Ecclesiastics. Baxter Richard
is very injurious to such holy things; so your meet and comely words and gestures are the external beauty of the worship which you perform; and God should be served with the best. 3. Your words and gestures reflect much on your own hearts. As acts tend to the increase of the habits; so the external expressions tend to increase the internal affections, whether they be good or evil. 4. Your words and gestures must be regarded for the good of others, who see not your hearts, but by these expressions. And where many have communion in worshipping God, such acts of communion are of great regard.
CHAPTER II.
DIRECTIONS ABOUT THE MANNER OF WORSHIP, TO AVOID ALL CORRUPTIONS, AND FALSE, UNACCEPTABLE WORSHIPPING OF GOD
The lamentable contentions that have arisen about the manner of God's worship, and the cruelty, and blood, and divisions, and uncharitable revilings which have thence followed, and also the necessary regard that every christian must have to worship God according to his will, do make it needful that I give you some directions in this case.
Direct. I. Be sure that you seriously and faithfully practise that inward worship of God, in which the life of religion doth consist: as to love him above all, to fear him, believe him, trust him, delight in him, be zealous for him; and that your hearts be sanctified unto God, and set upon heaven and holiness: for this will be an unspeakable help to set you right in most controversies about the worshipping of God.18 Nothing hath so much filled the church with contentions, and divisions, and cruelties about God's worship, as the agitating of these controversies by unholy, unexperienced persons: when men that hate a holy life, and holy persons, and the holiness of God himself, must be they that dispute what manner of worship must be offered to God by themselves and others, and when the controversies about God's service are fallen into the hands of those that hate all serious serving of him, you may easily know what work they will make of it. As if sick men were to determine or dispute what meat and drink themselves and all other men must live upon, and none must eat but by their prescripts, most healthful men would think it hard to live in such a country. As men are within, so will they incline to worship God without. Outward worship is but the expression of inward worship; he that hath a heart replenished with the love and fear of God, will be apt to express it by such manner of worship, as doth most lively and seriously express the love and fear of God. If the heart be a stranger or an enemy to God, no marvel if such worship him accordingly. O could we but help all contenders about worship to the inward light, and life, and love, and experience of holy, serious christians, they would find enough in themselves, and their experiences, to decide abundance of controversies of this kind (though still there will be some, that require also other helps to decide them.) It is very observable in all times of the church, how in controversies about God's worship, the generality of the godly, serious people, and the generality of the ungodly and ludicrous worshippers, are ordinarily of differing judgments! and what a stroke the temper of the soul hath in the determination of such cases!
Direct. II. Be serious and diligent also in all those parts of the outward worship of God that all sober christians are agreed in. For if you be negligent and false in so much as you confess, your judgment about the controverted part is not much to be regarded. God is not so likely to direct profane ones and false-hearted hypocrites, and bless them with a sound judgment in holy things, (where their lives show that their practical judgments are corrupt,) as the sincere that obey him in that which he revealeth to them. We are all agreed that God's word must be your daily meditation and delight, Psal. i. 2; and that you should "speak of it lying down and rising up, at home and abroad," Deut. vi. 6-8; and that we must be constant, fervent, and importunate in prayer, both in public and private, 1 Thess. v. 17; Luke xviii. 1; James v. 16. Do you perform this much faithfully or not? If you do, you may the more confidently expect that God should further reveal his will to you, and resolve your doubts, and guide you in the way that is pleasing to him. But if you omit the duty that all are agreed on, and be unfaithful and negligent in what you know, how unmeet are you to dispute about the controverted circumstances of duty! To what purpose is it that you meddle in such controversies? Do you do it wilfully to condemn yourselves before God, and shame yourselves before men, by declaring the hypocrisy which aggravateth your ungodliness? What a loathsome and pitiful thing is it, to hear a man bitterly reproach those who differ from him in some circumstances of worship, when he himself never seriously worshipped God at all! when he meditateth not on the word of God, and instead of delighting in it, maketh light of it, as if it little concerned him; and is acquainted with no other prayer than a little customary lip-service! Is such an ungodly neglecter of all the serious worship of God, a fit person to fill the world with quarrels about the manner of his worship?
Direct. III. Differ not in God's worship from the common sense of the most faithful, godly christians, without great suspicion of your own understandings, and a most diligent trial of the case. For if in such practical cases the common sense of the faithful be against you, it is to be suspected that the teaching of God's Spirit is against you; for the Spirit of God doth principally teach his servants in the matter of worship and obedience.
The disadvantages of ungodly men in judging of holy worship.
There are several errors that I am here warning you to avoid: 1. The error of them that rather incline to the judgment of the ungodly multitude, who never knew what it was to worship God in spirit and truth. Consider the great disadvantages of these men to judge aright in such a case. (1.) They must judge them without that teaching of the Spirit, by which things spiritual are to be discerned, 1 Cor. ii. 13, 15. He that is blind in sin must judge of the mysteries of godliness. (2.) They must judge quite contrary to their natures and inclinations, or against the diseased habits of their wills: and if you call a drunkard to judge of the evil of drunkenness, or a whoremonger to judge of the evil of fornication, or a covetous, or a proud, or a passionate man to judge of their several sins, how partial will they be! And so will an ungodly man be in judging of the duties of godliness. You set him to judge of that which he hateth. 3. You set him to judge of that which he is unacquainted with: it is like he never thoroughly studied it; but it is certain he never seriously tried it, nor hath the experience of those, that have long made it a great part of the business of their lives. And would you not sooner take a man's judgment in physic, that hath made it the study and practice of his life, than a sick man's that speaketh against that which he never studied or practised, merely because his own stomach is against it? Or will you not sooner take the judgment of an ancient pilot about navigation, than one's that was never at sea? The difference is as great in this present case.
2. And I speak this also to warn you of another error, that you prefer not the judgment of a sect or party, or some few godly people, against the common sense of the generality of the faithful; for the Spirit of God is likelier to have forsaken a small part of godly people, than the generality, in such particular opinions, which even good men may be forsaken in: or if it be in greater things, it is more unreasonable and more uncharitable for me to suspect that most that seem godly are hypocrites and forsaken of God, than that a party or some few are so.
Direct. IV. Yet do not absolutely give up yourselves to the judgment of any in the worshipping of God, but only use the advice of men in a due subordination to the will of God, and the teaching of Jesus Christ. Otherwise you will set man in the place of God, and will reject Christ in his prophetical office, as much as using co-ordinate mediators is a rejecting him in his priestly office. None must be called master, but in subordination to Christ, because he is our Master, Matt. xxiii. 8-10.
Direct. V. Condemn not all that in others, which you dare not do yourselves; and practise not all that yourselves, which you dare not condemn in others.19 For you are more capable of judging in your own cases, and bound to do it with more exactness and diligent inquiry, than in the case of others. Ofttimes a rational doubt may necessitate you to suspend your practice, as your belief or judgment is suspended; when yet it will not allow you to condemn another whose judgment and practice hath no such suspension. Only you may doubt whether he be in the right, as you doubt as to yourself. And yet you may not therefore venture to do all that you dare not condemn in him; for then you must wilfully commit all the sins in the world, which your weakness shall make a doubt or controversy of.
Direct. VI. Offer God no worship that is clearly contrary to his nature and
Read on this subject a small book which I have written, called "Catholic Unity."
See Rom. xiv. xv; 1 Cor. viii. 13.