A Christian Directory, Part 3: Christian Ecclesiastics. Baxter Richard
but such as is suited to him as he is revealed to you in his word. Thus Christ teacheth us, to worship God as he is: and thus God often calleth for holy worship, because he is holy.20 1. "God is a Spirit: therefore they that worship him, must worship him in spirit and in truth;" (which Christ opposeth to mere external ceremony or shadows;) "for the Father seeketh such to worship him," John iv. 23, 24. 2. God is incomprehensible, and infinitely distant from us: therefore worship him with admiration, and make not either visible or mental images of him, nor debase him by undue resemblance of him to any of his creatures.21 3. God is omnipresent, and therefore you may every where lift up holy hands to him, 1 Tim. ii. 8. And you must always worship him as in his sight. 4. God is omniscient, and knoweth your hearts, and therefore let your hearts be employed and watched in his worship. 5. God is most wise, and therefore not to be worshipped ludicrously with toys, as children are pleased with to quiet them, but with wise and rational worship. 6. God is most great, and therefore to be worshipped with the greatest reverence and seriousness; and not presumptuously, with a careless mind, or wandering thoughts, or rude expressions. 7. God is most good and gracious, and therefore not to be worshipped with backwardness, unwillingness, and weariness, but with great delight. 8. God is most merciful in Christ, and therefore not to be worshipped despairingly, but in joyful hope. 9. God is true and faithful, and therefore to be worshipped believingly and confidently, and not in distrust and unbelief. 10. God is most holy, and therefore to be worshipped by holy persons, in a holy manner, and not by unholy hearts or lips, nor in a common manner, as if we had to do but with a man. 11. He is the Maker of your souls and bodies, and therefore to be worshipped both with soul and body. 12. He is your Redeemer and Saviour, and therefore to be worshipped by you as sinners in the humble sense of your sin and misery, and as redeemed ones in the thankful sense of his mercy, and all in order to your further cleansing, healing, and recovery. 13. He is your Regenerator and Sanctifier, and therefore to be worshipped not in the confidence of your natural sufficiency, but by the light, and love, and life of the Holy Ghost. 14. He is your absolute Lord, and the Owner of you and all you have, and therefore to be worshipped with the absolute resignation of yourself and all, and honoured with your substance, and not hypocritically, with exceptions and reserves. 15. He is your sovereign King, and therefore to be worshipped according to his laws, with an obedient kind of worship, and not after the traditions of men, nor the will or wisdom of the flesh.22 16. He is your heavenly Father, and therefore all these holy dispositions should be summed up into the strongest love, and you should run to him with the greatest readiness, and rest in him with the greatest joy, and thirst after the full fruition of him with the greatest of your desires, and press towards him for himself with the most fervent and importunate suits. All these the very being and perfections of God will teach you in his worship: and therefore if any controverted worship be certainly contrary to any of these, it is certainly unwarranted and unacceptable unto God.
Direct. VII. Pretend not to worship God by that which is destructive, or contrary to the ends of worship. For the aptitude of it as a means to its proper end, is essential to it. Now the ends of worship are, 1. The honouring of God. 2. The edifying of ourselves in holiness, and delighting our souls in the contemplation and praises of his perfections. 3. The communicating this knowledge, holiness, and delight to others, and the increase of his actual kingdom in the world. (1.) Avoid then all that pretended worship which dishonoureth God (not in the opinion of carnal men, that judge of him by their own misguided imaginations, but according to the discovery of himself to us in his works and word). Many travellers that have conversed with the soberer heathen and Mahometan nations, tell us, that it is not the least hinderance of their conversion, and cause of their contempt of christianity, to see the christians that live about them, to worship God so ignorantly, irrationally, and childishly, as many of them do.23 (2.) Affect most that manner of worship (cæteris paribus) which tendeth most to your own right information, and holy resolutions and affections, and to bring up your souls into nearer communion and delight in God: and not that which tendeth to deceive, or flatter, or divert you from him, nor to be in your ears as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal, or as one that is playing you a lesson of music; and tendeth not to make you better. (3.) Affect not that manner of worship which is an enemy to knowledge, and tendeth to keep up ignorance in the world: such as is a great part of the popish worship, especially their reading the Scriptures to the people in an unknown tongue, and celebrating their public prayers, and praises, and sacraments in an unknown tongue, and their seldom preaching, and then teaching the people to take up with a multitude of toyish ceremonies, instead of knowledge and rational worship. Certainly that which is an enemy to knowledge, is an enemy to all holiness and true obedience, and to the ends of worship, and therefore is no acceptable worshipping of God. (4.) Affect not that pretended worship which is of itself destructive of true holiness: such as is the preaching of false doctrine, not according to godliness, and the opposition and reproaching of a holy life and worship, in the misapplication of true doctrine; and then teaching poor souls to satisfy themselves with their mass, and mass ceremonies, and an image of worship, instead of serious holiness, which is opposed: Prov. xxiv. 24, "He that saith to the wicked, Thou art righteous, him shall the people curse, nations shall abhor him." And if this be done as a worship of God, you may hence judge how acceptable it will be: Isa. v. 20, "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" To make people believe that holiness is but hypocrisy, or a needless thing, or that the image of holiness is holiness itself, or that there is no great difference between the godly and ungodly, doth all tend to men's perdition, and to damn men by deceiving them, and to root out holiness from the earth. See Ezek. xxii. 26; xliv. 23; Jer. xv. 19. "If thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth," Mal. iii. 18; Psal. i.; xv. (5.) Affect not a dead and heartless way of worship, which tendeth not to convince and waken the ungodly, nor to make men serious as those that have to do with God.
Direct. VIII. Let the manner of your worshipping God be suited to the matter that you have in hand. Remember that you are speaking either to or of the eternal God; that you are employed about the everlasting salvation of your own or others' souls; that all is high and holy that you have to do: see then that the manner be answerable hereunto.
Direct. IX. Offer God nothing as a part of worship which is a lie; much less so gross a lie as to be disproved by the common senses and reason of all the world. God needeth not our lie unto his glory.24 What worship then do papists offer him in their mass, who take it for an article of their faith, that there is no bread or wine left after the consecration, it being all transubstantiate into the very body and blood of Christ? And when the certainty of all men's senses is renounced, then all certainty of faith and all religion is renounced; for all presuppose the certainty of sense.
Direct. X. Worship not God in a manner that is contrary to the true nature, and order, and operations of a rational soul. I mean not to the corrupted nature of man, but to nature as rational in itself considered. As, 1. Let not your mere will and inclination overrule your understandings; and say not as blind lovers do, I love this, but I know not why; or children that eat unwholesome meat, because they love it.25 2. Let not passion overtop your reason: worship God with such a zeal as is according to knowledge. 3. Let not your tongues lead your hearts, much less overgo them: words may indeed reflect upon the heart, and warm it more; but that is but the secondary use: the first is to be the expressions of the heart: you must not speak without or against your hearts, (that is, falsely,) that by so speaking you may better your hearts (and make the words true, that at first were not true); unless it be when your words are but reading recitations or narratives, and not spoken of yourselves. The heart was made to lead the tongue, and the tongue to express it, and not to lead it. Therefore speak not to God either the words of a parrot, which you do not understand, or the words of a liar or hypocrite, which express not the meaning, or desires, or feeling of your hearts: but first understand and feel what you should speak, and then speak that which you understand and feel.
Quest. How then can a prayer be lawful that is read or heard from a book?
Answ. There is in reading the eye, and in
Lev. xix. 2; xx. 7; 1 Pet. i. 16.
The second commandment. Cicero de Nat. Deor. lib. i. p. 46, saith, that Possidonius believed that Epicurus thought there was no God, but put a scorn upon him by describing him like a man, idle, careless, &c. which he would not have done if he had thought there was a God.
Matt. xv. 2, 3, 6; Mark vii. 3-14; Col. ii. 8, 18, 22.
But with the barbarous it is otherwise, saith Acosta the Jesuit, p. 249. l. 2. Proderit quam plurimum ritus et signa et omnem externum cultum diligenter curare. His quippe et delectantur et detinentur homines animales (N. B.) donec paulatim aboleatur memoria et gustus præteritorum. So Gr. Nyssen saith in vita Gr. Neocœs. that they turned the pagans' festivals into festivals for the martyrs, to please them the better. Which Beda and many others relate of the practice of those times.
Rom. iii. 7.
Read Plutarch of Superstition.