7. Argument 6. It is unlawful to participate in obstructions to edification in worship.
Argument 6. It is unlawful to participate in obstructions to edification in worship.
A rgument 6 Owen:
Argument 6: That which has been and is obstructive of the edification of the Church, if it be in religious worship, it is false worship: 1 For the end of all true public worship is edification.
But such has been and is this Liturgical worship, for:
Baxter:
§21. Your sixth argument is but a former one repeated. To the major I grant it: All that is bad is so far false.
To the minor: 1. And such is all your errors and all the disorder, ill reflections, slovenly expressions which any weak minister uses, and the faults that all men have in some degree.
Owen:
1. It puts an utter stop to the progress of reformation in this nation, fixing bounds unto it that it could never pass.
2. It has kept multitudes in ignorance, etc.
3. It has countenanced and encouraged many in reviling and reproaching the Holy Spirit and his work.
4. It has set up and warranted an ungifted ministry.
5. It has made great desolations in the Church:
1. in the silencing of painful 2 ministers,2. in the ruin of families innumerable,3. in the destruction of souls.
It is not lawful to be participant in these things; yea, the glory of our profession lies in our testimony against them. 3
Baxter:
§22. To your reasons:
1. It's not the use of a liturgy that hinders reformation, but the abuse of it and forbidding other ways of duty.
2. The same I say of keeping men in ignorance: Use all other means and the Liturgy with it and it will keep none in ignorance. Some Helvetia ministers who endeavored to have practiced my Reformed Pastor, 4 in personal conference told me that there the common people go customarily, almost every day in the week, to a sermon, without ceremonies or liturgies,
(usually) with a Bible in their hands and continue as ignorant as those here that have no preaching.
3. I think it was not the esteem of a liturgy that made Quakers and Separatists here revile and scorn the best ministry, I think, in all the world.
4. Nor was it the Liturgy that set up and warranted such ill-gifted teachers as Mr. Erbery, Dell, Den, Paul Hobson, Chillington, Lilhurne, Prince,
Wallwin, William Sedgwick, no, nor Mr. Saltmarsh, 5 who wrote for comfort that Christ has repented and believed for us, and we should no more question our faith and repentance than we would question Christ. I pass by multitudes of army-preaching-soldiers, such as those in major
Bethel's troop in the same regiment that I was with, against whom, one day in Amersham Church, I was put to dispute from morning till near night, to save multitudes, whom they drew every week to hear them, from their absurd errors (and at last they turned Levellers 6 and Cromwell was put to hunt them to death). The like I was put to with Brown, an army chaplain and an Arian that maintained that Christ was not God, in a Church at Worcester: And this life I had with them long. Was all this caused by a liturgy?
5. The desolations made in the Church malignant men would make with or without a liturgy. What may not be abused? The authors must answer for it. Such as aforesaid, Jewel, Grindal, Ussher, etc. Preston, Sibbes, Bolton and a thousand such made no such havoc.
It is not lawful to partake in persecution but we must partake in much good which bad men will abuse to persecution. An excellent foreign Church has decreed to reject all ministers that are not (1) for the antiquity of the Hebrew [vowel] points, (2) against universal redemption. 7 Our learned author here was for both these, though men abused them to persecution.
1. It is false worship so far as it is impure, yet mere impurities do not overturn the validity of God's ordinances; and if they are God's ordinances, they have some obliging respect unto us. See https://reformedbooksonline.com/on-impurities-in-worship/#valid and https://reformedbooksonline.com/on-impurities-in-worship/#abstain at 'On Impurities of Worship'
(RBO).
2. That is, ministers that take great pains in fulfilling their work.
3. This is a false dichotomy: one may participate, in some circumstances, in materially good things, though they have from impurities mixed with them deleterious consequences for some, while testifying against those impurities.
4. Baxter gives a filled out paradigm for the duties and functions of pastors in this work, emphasizing accountability, diligence and spiritual disciplines, both for the pastor and in seeing such instilled in the people. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/A26932.0001.001 (London: 1656).
5. A number of these men were Antinomians and Levellers. William Sedgwick (1610-1669), a radical
Millenarian, is distinguished from Obadiah Sedgwick the Westminster divine (1600?-1658).
6. The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levellers were a political movement during the English civil war promoting radical political egalitarianism.
7. The Swiss Reformed Churches in the https://heidelblog.net/2012/09/helvetic-consensus-formula1675/ (1675). Baxter's characterization of the Hebrew vowel point issue is not precise: One could hold the vowel points as written were not of antiquity, but largely and in their final condition came in with the Medieval Jewish Masoretes (as in fact historically occurred), and yet still affirm in the Formula that "the power of the points" (an ambiguous phrase) was inspired, having been handed down and now so preserved. The sentence runs in Canon 2: "The Hebrew original of the OT which we have received and to this day do retain as handed down by the Hebrew Church… is, not only in its consonants, but in its vowels either the vowel points themselves, or at least the power of the points not only in its matter, but in its words, inspired by God."