6. Argument 5. A humanly invented means exclusive of Christ's is not to be complied with.
Argument 5. A humanly invented means exclusive of Christ's is not to be complied with.
A rgument 5 Owen:
5th Argument: That which is a means humanly invented for the attaining of an end in divine worship which Christ has ordained a means for, unto the exclusion of that means so appointed by Christ, is false worship and not to be complied withal.
The end intended is the edification of the Church in the administration of all its holy ordinances; this the Service-book is ordained and appointed by men for, or it has no end or use at all; but the Lord Christ has appointed other means for the attaining this end, as is expressly declared. He has given gifts unto men for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the Body
(Eph. 4:7-8, 11-12), that is, in all gospel administrations. But this means ordained by Christ, namely the exercise of spiritual gifts in gospel administrations unto the edification of the Church is excluded, yea, expressly prohibited in the prescription of this Liturgical worship.
Baxter:
§19. To the major of your fifth argument I answer:
1. As to the former, no man is to comply by approbation with anything that excludes any of God's means; for instance, not with you that exclude the great duty of catholic communion. But we may so far comply with you and others as to join with you in God's worship, though you mix some evil.
Mr. Faldo at Barnet was fain many years to preach to a people that excluded singing psalms. He did what they would bear when he could not do what he would. He complied not by approbation with exclusion, for he spake against it.
Are you sure that all your ways have tended to the edification of the Church? Every weak minister that preaches or prays when an abler might be had, hinders the edification of the Church. Is it a sin therefore to hear any but the ablest?
2. That which hinders the Church's edification by the ruler's fault, it may be the people's duty to obey for a greater good. 1 For instance, it is less edifying to use our old singing psalms than a better version. And yet for concord, if the ruler appoint them, the people must use them because concord with that imperfection is better than to sing everyone a several better version or diverse versions at once. So a faulty translation of Scripture, a weak sermon, an inconvenient hour and place, when concord is necessary and cannot be had in the more edifying circumstances, it must be had in the best way we can. If the sheriff appoint an unfit time and place to meet to choose parliament-men, it's a duty to comply rather than not to meet at all. Every evil so far excludes good, and yet we must not renounce communion in all good where men mix any evil lest we also give over all good ourselves.
3. Christ gives gifts to men now in the due use of means and not by miracle: Therefore He gives them in great diversity and by hard study and long time, Heb. 5:12, "For the time they ought to have been teachers," etc.
Therefore a novice must not be a bishop, but an elder [older person], whence the office had its name.
All your pupils, people or ministers that had the Spirit's gifts had not your redundancy of expression. And many can talk more fluently for falsehood than good men can for truth. I was never much troubled myself for want of words to express what I know, but I have ten thousand times more begged hard for more knowledge, faith, love and hope than ever I did for the gift of utterance; a full heart is earnest, fervent and ready [Ps. 45:1].
It is another mistake that the exercise of spiritual gifts is expressly forbidden, unless you had meant that just at the use of the Liturgy extemporate utterance is forbidden: but it is not so in the pulpit.
And you should not confound things so different as is the use of the Liturgy and the forbidding of other prayers, nor yet the act of the commander and of the people. If rulers should command preaching, prayer, etc. to exclude the singing psalms, that is their sin and not the people's, who must not (like peevish children at meat) refuse all because they cannot have what they would.
Owen:
The pretense of men's liberty to use their gifts in prayer before sermons and in preaching is ridiculous; 2 they are excluded in all the solemn worship of the Church.
Baxter:
§20. This answer is not only a mistake, but of an ill aspect on yourselves.
It's not true that the use of gifts "is excluded in all the solemn worship of
the Church." As if prayer, praise, thanksgiving, confession, explication of the Scripture, reproof, exhortation, comfort, direction, benediction, were no part of the solemn worship of the Church. Indeed some super-conformists have said so, but I had hoped you would not.
2. I said it's of an ill aspect, for:
1. If preaching and pulpit-prayer before and after be none of the solemn worship of the churches, then all those Churches which seldom use any other (saving a psalm, which is a liturgic form) have no solemn worship at all.
2. But if it be otherwise (as it is), then the parish-churches so far excel most of you that they have all that you have (pulpit prayer and sermon, and sometimes a chapter) and all the Common-Prayer more. And is not that better than your nothing (except at sacraments)? I know that the nonconformists that I have conversed with are in judgment for more (for reading the psalms, chapters, Creed, Lord's Prayer, Decalogue, etc.), but I have come into so few of their churches that do any more than the common pulpit work (sing a psalm, pray and preach there) that I have in that respect preferred the churches that do all that and add all the liturgy besides, more than you use.
1. For an introduction to materially complying with what is impure for a greater good, see https://reformedbooksonline.com/on-cooperation-with-evil/#intro at 'On the Ethics of Material
Cooperation with, & Associations with Evil' (RBO).
2. The 1720 edition of Owen's tract in the second volume of his Sermons has "ridiculed".