Part 20
* Meander, Grot, de veritat relig. lib. 4, sec. 12. f lamblich. t Amyrald, Mor., torn. i. p. 309, 310.
288 CHARNOCK'S WORKS. [JOHN IV. 24.
template God, we must also worship God. We cannot think of him but with our minds, nor love him but with our will; and we cannot worship him without the acts of thinking and loving, and therefore cannot worship him without the exercise of our inward faculties. How is it possible, then, for any man that knows his own nature, to think that extended hands, bended knees, and lifted up eyes, were sufficient acts of worship, without a quick
ened and active spirit !
(2.) From the knowledge of God. As there was a knowledge of God by nature, so the same nature did dictate to man that God was to be glorified as God. The apostle implies the inference in the charge he brings against
them for neglecting it, Rom. i. 21. ' We should speak of God as he is,' said one ; * and the same reason would inform them that they were to act towards God as he is. The excellency of the object required a worship according to the dignity of his nature, which could not be answered but by the most serious inward affection as well as outward decency ; and a want of this cannot but be judged to be unbecoming the majesty of the Creator of the world, and the excellency of religion. No nation, no person did ever assert that the vilest part of man was enough for the most excellent being, as God is ; that a bodily service could be a sufficient acknowledgment of the greatness of God, or a sufficient return for the bounty of God.f Man could not but know that he was to act in religion conformably to the object of religion, and to the excellency of his own soul. The notion of a God was
sufficient to fill the mind of man with admiration and reverence, and the first conclusion from it would be to honour God, and that he have all the affection placed on him that so infinite and spiritual a being did deserve. The progress then would be, that this excellent being was to be honoured with the motions of the understanding and will, with the purest and most spiritual powers in the nature of man, because he was a spiritual being, and had nothing of matter mingled with him. Such a brutish imagination to suppose that blood and fumes, beasts and incense, could please a Deity, without a spiritual frame, cannot be supposed to befall any but those that had lost their reason in the rubbish of sense. Mere rational nature could never conclude that so excellent a spirit would be put off with a mere animal service, and attendance of matter and body without spirit, when they them selves, of an inferior nature, would be loath to sit down contented with an outside service from those that belong to them ; so that this instruction of our Saviour, that God is to be worshipped in spirit and truth, is conform able to the sentiments of nature, and drawn from the most undeniable prin
ciples of it. The excellency of God's nature, and the excellent constitution of human 'faculties, concur naturally to support this persuasion. This was as natural to be known by men, as the necessity of justice and temperance for the support of human societies and bodies. It is to be feared that if there be not among us such brutish apprehensions, there are such brutish dealings with God in our services against the light of nature, when we place all our worship of God in outward attendances and drooping countenances, with unbelieving frames and formal devotions ; when prayer is muttered over in private slightly, as a parrot learns lessons by rote, not understanding what it speaks, or to what end it speaks it ; not glorifying God in thought and spirit, with understanding and will.
(3.) Spiritual worship, therefore, was always required by God, and always offered to him by one or other. Man had a perpetual obligation upon him to such a worship, from the nature of God ; and what is founded upon the
nature of God is unvariable. This and that particular mode of worship
* Bias. t Amyrald, *6,
JOHN IV. 24.] SPIRITUAL WORSHIP. 289
may ' wax old as a garment, and as a vesture maybe folded up and changed,' as the expression is of the heavens, Heb. i. 11, 12, but God endures for ever. His spirituality fails not, therefore a worship of him in spirit must run through all ways and rites of worship. God must cease to be spirit, before any service but that which is spiritual can be accepted by him. The light of nature is the light of God ; the light of nature being unchangeable, what was dictated by that was always, and will always be, required by God. The worshipping of God being perpetually due from the creature, the wor shipping him as God is as perpetually his right, though the outward expressions of this honour were different, one way in paradise (for a worship
was then due, since a solemn time for that worship was appointed), another under the law, another under the gospel. The angels also worship God in heaven, and fall down before his throne ; yet though they differ in rites, they agree in this necessary ingredient, — all rites, though of a different shape, must be offered to him not as carcasses, but animated with the affec
tions of the soul. Abel's sacrifice had not been so excellent in God's esteem, without those gracious habits and affections working in his soul, Heb. xi. 4. Faith works by love ; his heart was on fire as well as his sacrifice. Cain rested upon his present, perhaps thought he had obliged God. He depended upon the outward ceremony, but sought not for the inward purity. It was an offering brought to the Lord, Gen. iv. 5 ; he had
the right object, but not the right manner : ver. 7, ' If thou dost well, shalt thou not be accepted?' And in the command afterwards to Abraham,
' Walk before me, and be thou perfect,' was the direction in all our religious acts and walkings with God. A sincere act of the mind and will, looking above and beyond all symbols, extending the soul to a pitch far above the
body, and seeing the day of Christ through the veil of the ceremonies, was
required by God. And though Moses, by God's order, had instituted a multitude of carnal ordinances, sacrifices, washings, oblations of sensible things, and recommended to the people the diligent observation of those statutes by the allurements of promises and denouncing of threatenings, as if there were nothing else to be regarded, and the true workings of grace were to be buried under a heap of ceremonies, yet sometimes he doth point them to the inward worship, and, by the command of God, requires of them
the ' circumcision of the heart,' Deut. x. 16, the * turning to God with all their heart and all their soul,' Deut. xxx. 10, whereby they might recollect that it was the engagement of the heart and the worship of the spirit that was most agreeable to God, and that he took not any pleasure in their observance of ceremonies, without true piety within, and the true purity of their thoughts.
(4.) It is therefore as much every man's duty to worship God in spirit, as it is their duty to worship him. Worship is so due to him as God, as that he that denies it disowns his Deity. And spiritual worship is so due, that he that waives it denies his spirituality. It is a debt of justice we owe to God to worship him, and it is as much a debt of justice to worship him according to his nature. Worship is nothing else but a rendering to God the honour that is due to him, and therefore the right posture of our spirits in it is as much or more due than the material worship in the modes of his own prescribing ; that is grounded both upon his nature and upon his com mand, this only upon his command ; that is perpetually due, whereas the channel wherein outward worship runs may be dried up, and the river diverted another way ; such a worship wherein the mind thinks of God, feels a sense of God, has the spirit consecrated to God, the heart glowing with affections to God. It is else a mocking God with a feather. A rational
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290 CHAENOCK'S WORKS. [JOHN IY. 24.
nature must worship God with that wherein the glory of God doth most
sparkle in him. God is most visible in the frame of the soul; it is there his image glitters. He hath given us a jewel as well as a case, and the
jewel as well as the case we must return to him. The spirit is God's gift, and must return to him, Eccles. xii. 7. It must return to him in every service morally, as well as it must return to him at last physically. It is not fit we should serve our Maker only with that which is the brute in us, and withhold from him that which doth constitute us reasonable creatures. We
must give him our bodies, but ' a living sacrifice,' Rom. xii. 1. If the spirit be absent from God when the body is before him, we present a dead sacrifice. It is morally dead in the duty, though it be naturally alive in the posture and action. It is not an indifferent thing whether we shall worship Gcd or no, nor is it an indifferent thing whether we shall worship
him with our spirits or no. As the excellency of man's knowledge consists in knowing things as they are in truth, so the excellency of the will in willing things as they are in goodness. As it is the excellency of man to know God as God, so it is no less his excellency, as well as his duty, to honour God as God. As the obligation we have to the power of God for our being binds us to a worship of him, so the obligation we have to his bounty, for fashioning us according to his own image, binds us to an exerlise of that part wherein his image doth consist. God hath * made all things for himself,' Prov. xvi. 4 ; that is, for the evidence of his own goodness and wisdom. We are therefore to render him a glory according to the excel lency of his nature, discovered in the frame of our own. It is as much our sin not to glorify God as God, as not to attempt the glorifying of him at all. It is our sin not to worship God as God, as well as to omit the testifying any respect at all to him. As the divine nature is the object of worship, so the divine perfections are to be honoured in worship. We do not honour God, if we honour him not as he is ; we honour him not as a spirit, if we think him not worthy of the ardours and ravishing admirations of our spirits. If we think the devotions of the body are sufficient for him, we contract him into the condition of our own being, and not only deny him to be a spiritual nature, but dash out all those perfections which he could not be possessed of were he not a spirit.
5. The ceremonial law was abolished to promote the spirituality of divine worship. That service was gross, carnal, calculated for an infant and sensi tive church. It consisted in rudiments, the circumcision of the flesh, the
blood and smoke of sacrifices, the streams of incense, observation of days, distinction of meats, corporal purifications ; every leaf of the law is clogged with some rite to be particularly observed by them. The spirituality of worship lay veiled under a thick cloud, that the people could not behold the glory of the gospel, which lay covered under those shadows : 2 Cor. iii. 13,
' They could not stedfastly look to the end of that which was abolished ! ' They understood not the glory and spiritual intent of the law, and therefore came short of that spiritual frame in the worship of God, which was their duty ; and therefore, in opposition to this administration, the worship of God under the gospel is called by our Saviour in the text, a worship in spirit ; more spiritual for the matter, more spiritual for the motives, and more spiritual for the manner and frames of worship.
(1.) This legal service is called flesh in Scripture, in opposition to the gospel, which is called spirit. The ordinances of the law, though of divine institution, are dignified by the apostle with no better a title than carnal ordinances, Heb. ix. 10, and a carnal command, Heb. vii. 16 ; but the gospel is called the ministration of the spirit, as being attended with a special
JOHN IV. 24.] SPIKITUAL WORSHIP. 291
and spiritual efficacy on the minds of men, 2 Cor. iii. 8. And when the degenerate Galatians, after having tasted of the pure streams of the gospel, turned about to drink of the thicker streams of the law, the apostle tells
them that they ' begun in the spirit,' and would not be ' made perfect in the flesh,' Gal. iii. 3 ; they would leave the righteousness of faith for a justifica tion by works. The moral law, which is in its own nature spiritual, Rom. vii. 14, in regard of the abuse of it in expectation of justification by the out ward works of it, is called flesh. Much more may the ceremonial adminis tration, which was never intended to run parallel with the moral, nor had any foundation in nature, as the other had.
That whole economy consisted in sensible and material things which only
touched the flesh ; it is called ' the letter,' and the ' oldness of the letter,' Rom. vii. 6 ; as letters, which are but empty sounds in themselves, but put to gether and formed into words, signify something to the mind of the hearer or reader. An old letter, a thing of no efficacy upon the spirit, but as a law written upon paper. The gospel hath an efficacious spirit attending it,
strongly working upon the mind and will, and moulding the soul into a spiritual frame for God ; according to the doctrine of the gospel, the one is old and decays, the other is new, and increaseth daily.
And as the law itself is called flesh, so the observers of it and resters in
it are called * Israel after the flesh,' 1 Cor. x. 18 ; and the evangelical wor shipper is called a ' a Jew after the spirit,' Rom. ii. 29. They were Israel after the flesh as born of Jacob, not Israel after the spirit as born of God ;
and therefore the apostle calls them Israel and not Israel, Rom. ix. 6 ; Israel after a carnal birth, not Israel after a spiritual ; Israel in the circum cision of the flesh, not Israel by a regeneration of the heart.
(2.) The legal ceremonies were not a fit means to bring the heart into a spiritual frame. They had a spiritual intent; the rock and manna prefigured the salvation and spiritual nourishment by the Redeemer, 1 Cor. x. 8, 4. The sacrifices were to point them to the justice of God in the punishment of sin, and the mercy of God in substituting them in their steads, as types of the Redeemer and the ransom by his blood. The circumcision of the flesh was to instruct them in the circumcision of the heart. They were flesh in regard of their matter, weakness, and cloudiness ; spiritual in regard of their intent and signification ; they did instruct, but not efficaciously work
strong spiritual affections in the soul of the worshipper. They were * weak and beggarly elements,' Gal. iv. 9, had neither wealth to enrich nor strength to nourish the soul. They could not perfect the comers to them, or put them into a frame agreeable to the nature of God, Heb. x. 1, ix. 9, nor
1 purge the conscience from those dead ' and dull dispositions which were by nature in them, ver. 14 ; being carnal, they could not have an efficacy to purify the conscience of the offerer, and work spiritual effects. Had they continued without the exhibition of Christ, they could never have wrought any change in us, or purchased any favour for us.* At the best they were but shadows, and came unexpressibly short of the efficacy of that person and state whose shadows they were. The shadow of a man is too weak to per form what the man himself can do, because it wants the life, spirit, and activity of the substance. The whole pomp and scene was suited more to the sensitive than the intellectual nature, and, like pictures, pleased the fancy of children, rather than improved their reason. The Jewish state was a state of childhood, Gal. v. 2, and that administration a pedagogy, iv. 24. The law was a schoolmaster, fitted for their weak and childish capacity, and could no more spiritualise the heart than^the teachings in a
* Burges, Vind. p. 256.
CHAKNOCK'S WORKS. [JOHN IY. 24.
primer school can enable the mind, and make it fit for affairs of state ; and, because they could not better the spirit, they were instituted only for a time, as elements delivered to an infant age, which naturally lives a life of sense rather than a life of reason. It was also a servile state, which doth rather debase than elevate the mind, rather carnalise than spiritualise the heart; besides, it is a sense of mercy that both melts and elevates the heart into a spiritual frame : Ps. cxxx. 4, < There is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be feared.' And they had in that state but some glimmerings of mercy in the daily bloody intimations of justice. There was no sacrifice for some sins, but a cutting off without the least hints of pardon ; and in the yearly remembrance of sin there was as much to shiver them with fear as to possess them with hopes, and such a state which always held them under the conscience of sin could not produce a free spirit, which was necessary for a worship of God according to his nature.
(8.) In their use they rather hindered than furthered a spiritual worship. In their own nature they did not tend to the obstructing a spiritual worship, for then they had been contrary to the nature of religion and the end of God who appointed them. Nor did God cover the evangelical doctrine under the clouds of the legal administration, to hinder the people of Israel from per ceiving it, but because they were not yet capable to bear the splendour of it had it been clearly set before them. The shining of the face of Moses was too dazzling for their weak eyes, and therefore there was a necessity of a veil, not for the things themselves, but the weakness of their eyes, 2 Cor. iii. 13, 14. The carnal affections of that people sunk down into the things themselves, stuck in the outward pomp, and pierced not through the veil to the spiritual intent of them ; and by the use of them, without rational conceptions, they besotted their minds, and became senseless of those spiritual motions required of them. Hence came all their expectations of a carnal Messiah ; the veil of ceremonies was so thick, and the film upon their eyes so condensed, that they could not look through the veil to the Spirit of Christ. They beheld not the heavenly Canaan for the beauty of the earthly, nor minded the regeneration of the spirit while they rested upon the purifi cations of the flesh. The prevalency of sense and sensitive affections diverted their minds from inquiring into the intent of them. Sense and matter are often clogs to the mind, and sensible objects are the same often to spiritual motions. Our souls are never more raised than when they are abstracted from the entanglements of them. A pompous worship, made up of many sensible objects, weakens the spirituality of religion. Those that are most zealous for outward are usually most cold and indifferent in inward observ ances, and those that overdo in carnal modes usually underdo in spiritual affections.
This was the Jewish state.* The nature of the ceremonies being pompous and earthly, by their show and beauty meeting with their weakness and childish affections, filled their eyes with an outward lustre, allured their minds, and detained them from seeking things higher and more spiritual. The kernel of those rites lay concealed in a thick shell, the spiritual glory was little seen, and the spiritual sweetness little tasted. Unless the Scripture be diligently searched, it seems to transfer the worship of God from true faith and the spiritual motions of the heart, and stake it down to outward observances and the opus operation.; besides, the voice of the law did only declare sacrifices, and invited the worshipper to them with a promise of the atonement of sin, turning away the wrath of God. It never plainly acquainted them that those things .were types and shadows of something future, that
* Illyric. de velam. Mosis, p. 221, &c.
JOHN IV. 24.] SPIRITUAL WORSHIP. 293
they were only outward purifications of the flesh. It never plainly'told them at the time of appointing them that those sacrifices could not abolish sin, and reconcile them to God. Indeed, we see more of them since their death and dissection in that one Epistle to the Hebrews than can be discerned in the five books of Moses. Besides, man naturally affects a carnal it life, and therefore affects a carnal worship ; he designs the gratifying his sense, and would have a religion of the same nature. Most men have no mind to busy their reason above the things of sense, and are naturally unwilling to raise them up to those things which are allied to the spiritual nature of God ; and therefore the more spiritual any ordinance is, the more averse is the heart of
man to it. There is a ' simplicity of the gospel,' from which our minds are easily corrupted by things that pleasure the sense, as Eve was by the curiosity of her eye and the liquorishness of her palate, 2 Cor. xi. 3. From this principle hath sprung all the idolatry in the world. The Jews knew they had a God who had delivered them, but they would have a sensible
God to go before them, Exod. xxxii. 1 ; and the papacy at this day is a witness of the truth of this natural corruption.
(4.) Upon these accounts, therefore, God never testified himself well pleased with that kind of worship. He was not displeased with them, as they were his own institution, and ordained for the representing (though in an obscure manner) the glorious things of the gospel ; nor was he offended with
those people's observance of them, for since he had commanded them, it was their duty to perform them, and their sin to neglect them ; but he was dis pleased with them as they were practised by them, with souls as morally carnal in the practices, as the ceremonies were materially carnal in their substance. It was not their disobedience to observe them ; but it was a disobedience, and a contempt of the end of the institution, to rest upon them, to be warm in them and cold in morals. They fed upon the bone, and neglected the marrow ; pleased themselves with the shell, and sought not for the kernel. They joined not with them the internal worship of God, fear of him, with faith in the promised seed, which lay veiled under those cover
ings : Hos. vi. 6, ' I desired mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burntofferings.' And therefore he seems sometimes weary of his own institutions, and calls them not his own, but their sacrifices, their feasts, Isa. i. 11, 14. They were his by appointment, theirs by abuse. The institution was from his goodness and condescension, therefore his ; the cor ruption of them was from the vice of their nature, therefore theirs. He often blamed them for their carnality in them, shewed his dislike of placing all their religion in them, gives the sacrificers, upon that account, no better a
title than that of the ' princes of Sodom and Gomorrah,' Isa. i. 10 ; and compares the sacrifices themselves to the ' cutting off a dog's neck,' ' swine's blood,' and the ' murder of a man,' Isa. Ixvi. 3. And indeed God never valued them, or expressed any delight in them. He despised the feasts of the wicked, Amos v. 21, and had no esteem for the material offerings of the
godly : Ps. 1. 13, « Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats ? ' which he speaks to his saints and people, before he comes to reprove the
wicked, which he begins, ver. 16, « But to the wicked, God said,' &c. So slightly he esteemed them, that he seems to disown them to be any part of his command, when he brought his people out of the land of Egypt : Jer.
vii. 22, ' I spake not to your fathers, nor commanded them concerning burntofferings and sacrifices.' He did not value nor regard them, in com parison of that inward frame which he had required by the moral law ; that being given before the law of ceremonies, obliged them, in the first place, to an observance of those precepts. They seemed to be below the nature of
294 CHARNOCK'S WORKS. [JOHN IV. 24.
God, and could not of themselves please him. None could in reason per suade themselves that the death of a beast was a proportionable offering for the sin of a man, or ever was intended for the expiation of transgression. In the same rank are all our bodily services under the gospel. A loud voice without spirit, bended bulrushes without inward affections, are no more delightful to God than the sacrifices of animals. It is but a change of one brute for another of a higher species ; a mere brute, for that part of man which hath an agreement with brutes. Such a service is a mere animal service, and not spiritual.
(5.) And therefore God never intended that sort of worship to be durable, and had often mentioned the change of it for one more spiritual. It was not good or evil in itself ; whatsoever goodness it had was solely derived to it by institution, and therefore it was mutable. It had no conformity with the spiritual nature of God, who was to be worshipped, nor with the rational nature of man, who was to worship. And therefore he often speaks of taking away the new moons, and feasts, and sacrifices, and all the ceremonial wor ship, as things he took no pleasure in, to have a worship more suited to his excellent nature. But he never speaks of removing the gospel adminis tration, and the worship prescribed there, as being more agreeable to the nature and perfections of God, and displaying them more illustriously to the world.
The apostle tells us it was to be disannulled because of its weakness, Heb. vii. 18. A determinate time was fixed for its duration, till the accomplish ment of the truth figured under that pedagogy, Gal. iv. 2. Some of the modes of that worship being only typical, must naturally expire and be insig nificant in their use, upon the finishing of that by the Redeemer, which they did prefigure ; and other parts of it, though God suffered them so long because of the weakness of the worshipper, yet because it became not God to be always worshipped in that manner, he would reject them, and introduce
another more spiritual and elevated. ' Incense and a pure offering' should be offered everywhere unto his name, Mai. i. 11.
He often told them he would make a new covenant by the Messiah, and
the old should be rejected ;* that the * former things should not be remem bered, and the things of old no more considered/ when he should do * a newthing in the earth,' Isa. xliii. 18, 19. Even the ark of the covenant, the symbol of his presence and the glory of the Lord in that nation, should not any more be remembered and visited, Jer. iii. 16 ; that the temple and sacrifices should be rejected, and others established ; that the order of the Aaronical priesthood should be abolished, and that of Melchisedec set up in the stead of it in the person of the Messiah, to endure for ever, Ps. ex. ; that Jerusalem should be changed, a new heaven and earth created, a worship more conformable to heaven, more advantageous to earth. God had pro ceeded in the removal of some part of it, before the time of taking down the whole furniture of this house. The pot of manna was lost, Urim and Thummim ceased, the glory of the temple was diminished, and the ignorant people wept at the sight of the one, without raising their faith and hope in the consideration of the other, which was promised to be filled with a spiritual glory. And as soon as ever the gospel was spread in the world, God thun dered out his judgments upon that place in which he had fixed all those legal observances ; so that the Jews, in the letter and flesh, could never practise the main part of their worship, since they were expelled from that place where it was only to be celebrated. It is one thousand six hundred years since they have been deprived of their altar, which was the foundation of all
* Pascal. Pen., 142.
JOHN IV. 24.] SPIRITUAL WORSHIP. 295
the Levitical worship, and have wandered in the world * without a sacrifice,
a prince or priest, an ephod or teraphim,' Hos. iii. 4. And God fully put an end to it in the command he gave to the apostles, and in them to us, in the presence of Moses and Elias, to hear his Son only :
Mat. xvii. 5, ' Behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased : hear him ; ' and at the death of our Saviour, testified it to that whole nation and the world, by the rending in twain the vail of the temple.
The whole frame of that service, which was carnal, and by reason of the corruption of man, weakened, is nulled, and a spiritual worship is made known to the world, that we might now serve God in a more spiritual manner, and with more spiritual frames.
Prop. 6. The service and worship the gospel settles is spiritual, and the performance of it more spiritual. Spirituality is the genius of the gospel, as carnality was of the law ; the gospel is therefore called spirit. We are abstracted from the employments of sense, and brought nearer to a heavenly
state. The Jews had angels' bread poured upon them ; we have angels' service prescribed to us : the praises of God, communion with God in spirit, through his Son Jesus Christ, and stronger foundations for spiritual affections. It is called a reasonable service, Rom. xii. 1. It is suited to a rational nature, though it finds no friendship from the corruption of reason. It pre scribes a service fit for the reasonable faculties of the soul, and advanceth them while it employs them. The word reasonable may be translated word
service* as well as reasonable service ; an evangelical service, in opposition to a law service. All evangelical service is reasonable, and all truly reason able service is evangelical.
The matter of the worship is spiritual. It consists in love of God, faith in God, recourse to his goodness, meditation on him, and communion with him. It lays aside the ceremonial, spiritualiseth the moral. The commands that concerned our duty to God, as well as those that concerned our duty to our neighbour, were reduced by Christ to the spiritual intention.
The motives are spiritual. It is a state of more grace, as well as of more truth, John i. 17, supported by spiritual promises, beaming out in spiritual privileges. Heaven comes down in it to earth, to spiritualise earth for heaven.
The manner of worship is more spiritual. Higher nights of the soul, stronger ardours of affections, sincerer aims at his glory ; mists are removed from our minds, clogs from the soul ; more of love than fear ; faith in Christ kindles the affections, and works by them.
The assistances to spiritual worship are greater. The Spirit doth not drop, but is plentifully poured out. It doth not light sometimes upon, but dwells in, the heart. Christ suited the gospel to a spiritual heart, and the Spirit changeth a carnal heart to make it fit for a spiritual gospel. He blows upon the garden, and causes the spices to flow forth ; and often makes the soul in worship like the chariots of Amminadab in a quick and nimble motion. Our blessed Lord and Saviour by his death discovered to us the nature of God, and after his ascension sent his Spirit to fit us for the worship of God, and converse with him.
One spiritual evangelical believing breath is more delightful to God than millions of altars made up of the richest pearls, and smoking with the cost liest oblations, because it is spiritual ; and a mite of spirit is of more worth than the greatest weight of flesh. One holy angel is more excellent than a whole world of mere bodies.
* V. Hammond, in loc.
296 CHARNOCK'S WORKS. [JonN IV. 24.
Prop. 7. Yet the worship of God with our bodies is not to be rejected upon the account that God requires a spiritual worship. Though we must perform the weightier duties of the law, yet we are not to omit and leave undone the lighter precepts ; since both the magnolia and minutula legis, the greater and the lesser duties of the law, have the stamp of divine autho rity upon them.
As God, under the ceremonial law, did not command the worship of the body, and the observation of outward rites, without the engagement of the spirit, so neither doth he command that of the spirit without the peculiar attendance of the body.
The Schwelkfendians denied bodily worship ; and the indecent postures of many in public attendance intimate no great care either of composing their bodies or spirits. A morally discomposed body intimates a tainted heart.
Our bodies as well as our spirits are to be presented to God, Rom. xii. 1. Our bodies in lieu of the sacrifices of beasts, as in the Judaical institutions : body for the whole man ; a living sacrifice, not to be slain, as the beasts were, but living a new life, in a holy posture, with crucified affections. This is the inference the apostle makes of the privileges of justification, adoption, co-heirship with Christ, which he had before discoursed of; pri vileges conferred upon the person, and not upon a part of man.
1. Bodily worship is due to God. He hath a right to an adoration by our bodies as they are his by creation ; his right is not diminished but
increased by the blessing of redemption : 1 Cor. vi. 20, ' For you are bought with a price ; therefore glorify God in your bodies and your spirits, which are
God's.' The body as well as the spirit is redeemed, since our Saviour suf fered crucifixion in his body, as well as agonies in his soul. Body is not taken here for the whole man, as it may be in Rom. xii. ; but for the mate rial part of our nature, it being distinguished from the spirit. If we are to render to God an obedience with our bodies, we are to render him such acts
of worship with our bodies as they are capable of. As God is * the Father of spirits,' so he is ' the God of all flesh ;' therefore the flesh he hath framed of the earth, as well as the noble portion he hath breathed into us, cannot be
denied him without a palpable injustice. The service of the body we must not deny to God, unless we will deny him to be the author of it, and the exer cise of his providential care about it. The mercies of God are renewed every day upon our bodies as well as our souls, and therefore they ought to express a fealty to God for his bounty every day. * Both are from God, both should be for God. Man consists of body and soul ; the service of man is the service of both. The body is to be sanctified as well as the soul, and therefore to be offered to God as well as the soul. Both are
to be glorified, both are to glorify. As our Saviour's divinity was manifested in his body, so should our spirituality in ours. To give God the service of the body, and not of the soul, is hypocrisy ; to give God the service of
the spirit, and not of the body, is sacrilege ; to give him neither, atheism.'* If the only part of man that is visible were exempted from the service of God, there could be no visible testimonies of piety given upon any occasion :
since not a moiety of man, but the whole, is God's creature, he ought to pay a homage with the whole, and not only with a moiety of himself.
2. Worship in societies is due to God, but this cannot be without some bodily expressions. The law of nature doth as much direct men to combine together in public societies for the acknowledgment of God, as in civil com munities for self-preservation and order ; and the notice of a society for jeligion is more ancient than the mention of civil associations for politic
* Sherman's Greek in the Temple, p. 61, 62.
JOHN IV. 24.] SPIRITUAL WORSHIP. 297
government : Gen. iv. 26, ' Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord,' viz., in the time of Seth. No question but Adam had worshipped God before as well as Abel, and a family religion had been preserved ; but as man kind increased in distinct families, they knit together in companies to solem nize the worship of God.* Hence, as some think, those that incorporated together for such ends were called the sons of God; sons by profession, though not sons by adoption ; as those of Corinth were saints by profes sion, though in such a corrupted church they could not be all so by regene ration, yet saints, as being of a Christian society, and calling upon the name of Christ, that is, worshipping God in Christ, though they might not be all saints in spirit and practice. So Cain and Abel met together to wor
ship, Gen. iv. 3, « at the end of the days,' at a set time. God settled a public worship among the Jews, instituted synagogues for their convening
together, whence called « the synagogues of God,' Ps. Ixxiv. 8. The Sab bath was instituted to acknowledge God a common benefactor. Public worship keeps up the memorials of God in a world prone to atheism, and a sense of God in a heart prone to forgetfulness. The angels sung in com pany, not singly, at the birth of Christ, Luke ii. 13, and praised God not only with a simple elevation of their spiritual nature, but audibly, by form ing a voice in the air. Affections are more lively, spirits more raised in public than private ; God will credit his own ordinance. Fire increaseth by laying together many coals in one place ; so is devotion inflamed by the union of many hearts, and by a joint presence ; nor can the approach of the last day of judgment, or particular judgments upon a nation, give a writ of ease from such assemblies : Heb. x. 25, * Not forsaking the assembling our
selves together, but so much the more as you see the day approaching.' Whether it be understood of the day of judgment, or the day of the Jewish destruction and the Christian persecution, the apostle uses it as an argu ment to quicken them to the observance, not to encourage them to a neglect.
Since, therefore, natural light informs us, and divine institution commands us, publicly to acknowledge ourselves the servants of God, it implies the service of the body. Such acknowledgments cannot be without visible testi monies, and outward exercises of devotion, as well as inward affections.
This promotes God's honour, checks others' profaneness, allures men to the same expressions of duty. And though there may be hypocrisy, and an outward garb without an inward frame, yet better a moiety of worship than none at all ; better acknowledge God's right in one than disown it in both.
3. Jesus Christ, the most spiritual worshipper, worshipped God with his body. He prayed orally, and kneeled, « Father, if it be thy will,' &c., Luke xxii. 41, 42. He blessed with his mouth, 'Father, I thank thee,' Mat, xi. 26. He lifted up his eyes, as well as elevated his spirit, when he praised his Father for mercy received, or begged for the blessings his disciples wanted, John xi. 41 ; xvii. 1. The strength of the spirit must have vent at the outward members. The holy men of God have employed the body in significant expressions of worship ; Abraham in falling on his face, Paul in kneeling, employing their tongues, lifting up their hands. Though Jacob was bed-rid, yet he would not worship God without some devout expression of reverence ; it is in one place leaning upon his staff, Heb.
xi. 21 ; in another bowing himself upon his bed's head, Gen. xlvii. 31. The reason of the diversity is in the Hebrew word, which without vowels may be read Mittah, a bed, or Matteh, a staff; howsoever, both signify a testi mony of adoration by a reverent gesture of the body. Indeed, in angels and
* Stillingfleet's Iremcum, cap. i. sect. 1, p. 23.
298 CHAENOCK'S WORKS. [JOHN IV. 24.
separated souls, a worship is performed purely by the spirit ; but whiles the soul is in conjunction with the body, it can hardly perform a serious act of worship without some tincture upon the outward man, and reverential composure of the body. Fire cannot be in the clothes, but it will be felt by the members ; nor flames be pent up in the soul without bursting out in the body. The heart can no more restrain itself from breaking out, than Joseph
could inclose his affections, without expressing them in tears to his brethren,
Gen. xlv. 1,2. ' We believe, and therefore speak,' 2 Cor. iv. 13.
To conclude ; God hath appointed some parts of worship which cannot be performed without the body, as sacraments ; we have need of them because
we are not wholly spiritual and incorporeal creatures.
The religion which consists . in externals only, is not for an intellectual nature. A worship purely intellectual is too sublime for a nature allied to sense and depending much upon it. The Christian mode of worship is pro portioned to both ; it makes the sense to assist the mind, and elevates the spirit above the sense. Bodily worship helps the spiritual. The members of the body reflect back upon the heart, the voice bars distractions, the tongue sets the heart on fire in good as well as in evil. It is as much against the light of nature to serve God without external significations, as to serve him only with them without the intention of the mind. As the invisible God declares himself to men by visible works and signs, so should we de clare our invisible frames by visible expressions. God hath given us a soul and body in conjunction, and we are to serve him in the same manner he
hath framed us.
II. The second thing I am to shew is, what spiritual worship is. In general, the whole spirit is to be employed. The name of God is not sancti fied but by the engagement of our souls.
Worship is an act of the understanding, applying itself to the knowledge of the excellency of God, and actual thoughts of his majesty, recognising him as the supreme Lord and governor of the world, which is natural know ledge ; beholding the glory of his attributes in the Eedeemer, which is evan gelical knowledge ; this is the sole act of the spirit of man. The same reason is for all our worship as for our thanksgiving. This must be done
with understanding : Ps. xlvii. 7, ' Sing ye praise with understanding,' with a knowledge and sense of his greatness, goodness, and wisdom. It is also an act of the will, whereby the soul adores and reverenceth his majesty, is ravished with his amiableness, embraceth his goodness, enters itself into an intimate communion with this most lovely object, and pitcheth all his affec tions upon him.
We must worship God understandingly ; it is not else a reasonable service. The nature of God and the law of God abhor a blind offering ; we must wor ship him heartily, else we offer him a dead sacrifice. A reasonable service is that wherein the mind doth truly act something with God. All spiritual acts must be acts of reason, otherwise they are not human acts, because they want that principle which is constitutive of man, and doth difference him from other creatures. Acts done only by sense are the acts of a brute ; acts done by reason are the acts of a man ; that which is only an act of sense cannot be an act of religion. The sense without the conduct of reason is not the subject of religious acts, for then beasts were capable of religion as well as men. There cannot be religion where there is not reason ; and there cannot be the exercise of religion, where there is not an exercise of the rational faculties. Nothing can be a Christian act, that is not a human act. Besides, all worship must be for some end ; the worship of God must be for
JOHN IV. 24.] SPIEITUAL WOKSHIP. 299
God ; it is by the exercise of our rational faculties, that we only can intend an end. An ignorant and carnal worship is a brutish worship,
Particularly,
1. Spiritual worship is a worship from a spiritual nature. Not only physically spiritual, so our souls are in their frame, but morally spiritual, by a renewing principle. The heart must be first cast into the mould of the gospel, before it can perform a worship required by the gospel. Adam
living in paradise might perform a spiritual worship, but Adam fallen from his rectitude could not. We being heirs of his nature, are heirs of his impotence. Eestoration to a spiritual life must precede any act of spiritual worship. As no work can be good, so no worship can be spiritual,
till we are created in Christ, Eph. ii. 10. ' Christ is our life,' Col. iii. 4. As no natural action can be performed without life in the root or heart, so no spiritual act without Christ in the soul. Our being in Christ is as necessary to every spiritual act, as the union of our soul with our body is necessary to natural action. Nothing can exceed the limits of its nature ; for then it should exceed itself in acting, and do that which it hath no prin ciple to do. A beast cannot act like a man, without partaking of the nature of a man ; nor a man act like an angel, without partaking of the angelical nature. How can we perform spiritual acts without a spiritual principle ? Whatsoever worship proceeds from the corrupted nature, cannot deserve the title of spiritual worship, because it springs not from a spiritual habit. If those that are evil cannot speak good things, those that are carnal cannot
offer a spiritual service. Poison is the fruit of a viper's nature : Mat. xii. 34, 1 0 generation of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things ? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.' As the root is, so is the fruit. If the soul be habitually carnal, the worship cannot be actually spiritual. There may be an intention of spirit, but there is no spiritual principle as a root of that intention. A heart may be sensibly united with a duty, when it is not spiritually united with Christ in it. Carnal motives and carnal ends may fix the mind in an act of worship, as the sense of some
pressing affliction may enlarge a man's mind in prayer. Whatsoever is agreeable to the nature of God, must have a stamp of Christ upon it ; a stamp of his grace in performance, as well as of his meditation* in the accept ance. The apostle lived not, but ' Christ lived in him,' Gal. ii. 20 ; the soul worships not, but Christ in him. Not that Christ performs the act of worship, but enables us spiritually to worship, after he enables us spiritually to live. As God counts not any soul living but in Christ, so he counts not
any a spiritual worshipper but in Christ. The goodness and fatness of the fruit comes from the fatness of the olive wherein we are engrafted. We
must find healing in Christ's wings, before God can find spirituality in our services. All worship issuing from a dead nature, is but a dead service. A living action cannot be performed without being knit to a living root.
2. Spiritual worship is done by the influence and with the assistance of the Spirit of God. A heart may be spiritual, when a particular act of wor ship may not be spiritual. The Spirit may dwell in the heart, when he may suspend his influence on the act. Our worship is then spiritual, when the fire that kindles our affections comes from heaven, as that fire upon the altar wherewith the sacrifices were consumed. God tastes a sweetness in no
service, but as it is dressed up by the hand of the Mediator, and hath the air of his own Spirit in it : they are but natural acts without a supernatural assistance. Without an actual influence we cannot act from spiritual motives, nor for spiritual ends, nor in a spiritual manner. We cannot
* Qu. * mediation ' ? — ED.
300 CHARNOCK'S WORKS. [JOHN IV. 24.
mortify a lust without the Spirit, Rom. viii. 13, nor quicken a service with out the Spirit. Whatsoever corruption is killed, is slain by his power; whatsoever duty is spiritualised, is refined by his breath. He ' quickens our dead bodies' in our resurrection, ver. 11 ; he renews our dead souls in our regeneration ; he quickens our carnal services in our adorations ; the choicest acts of worship are but infirmities, without his auxiliary help, ver. 26. We are logs, unable to move ourselves, till he raise our faculties to a pitch agreeable to God, puts his hand to the duty, and lifts that up, and us with it. Never any great act was performed by the apostles to God, or for God, but they are said to be filled with the Holy Ghost. Christ could not have been conceived immaculate as * that holy thing/ without the Spirit's overshadowing the virgin ; nor any spiritual act conceived in our heart, without the Spirit's moving upon us, to bring forth a living religion from us. The acts of worship are said to be in the Spirit, * supplication in the Spirit,' Eph. vi. 18 ; not only with the strength and affection of our own spirits, but with the mighty operation of the Holy Ghost, if Jude may be the interpreter, ver. 20, — the Holy Ghost exciting us, impelling us, and firing our souls by his divine flame, raising up the affections, and making the
soul cry, with a holy importunity, 'Abba, Father.' To render our worship spiritual, we should, before every engagement in it, implore the actual pres ence of the Spirit, without which we are not able to send forth one spiritual breath or groan, but be wind-bound, like a ship without a gale, and our wor ship be no better than carnal. How doth the spouse solicit the Spirit with
an ' Awake, 0 north wind; and come, thou south wind,' &c., Cant. iv. 16. 3. Spiritual worship is done with sincerity. When the heart stands right to God, and the soul performs what it pretends to perform ; when we
serve God with our spirits, as the apostle, Rom. i. 9, ' God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son;' this is not meant of the Holy Ghost, for the apostle would never have called the Spirit of God his own spirit ; but with my spirit, that is, a sincere frame of heart. A carnal
worship, whether under the law or gospel, is when we are busied about external rites, without an inward compliance of soul. God demands the
heart : Prov. xxiii. 26, ' My son, give me thy heart ; ' not give me thy tongue, or thy lips, or thy hands ; these may be given without the heart, but the heart can never be bestowed without these as its attendants. A heap of services can be no more welcome to God, without our spirits, than
all Jacob's sons could be to Joseph without the Benjamin he desired to see. God is not taken with the cabinet, but the jewel ; he first respected Abel's faith and sincerity, and then his sacrifice ; he disrespected Cain's infidelity
and hypocrisy, and then his offering. « For this cause he rejected the offerings of the Jews, the prayers of the Pharisees, and the alms of Ananias and Sapphira, because their hearts and their duties were at a distance from one
another. In all spiritual sacrifices our spirits are God's portion. Under the law the reins were to be consumed by the fire on the altar, because the
secret intentions of the heart were signified by them: Ps. vii. 9, " The Lord trieth the heart and the reins." It was an ill omen among the heathen if a victim wanted a heart. The widow's mites, with her heart in them, were more esteemed than the richer offerings without it.'* Not the quantity of service, but the will in it, is of account with this infinite Spirit. All that was to be brought for the framing of the tabernacle was to be offered « will ingly with the heart,' Exod. xxv. 7. The more of will, the more of spirituality and acceptableness to God : Ps. cxix. 108, ' Accept the freewilloffering of my lips.' Sincerity is the salt which seasons every sacrifice. The heart is
* Moulin. Sermons, Decad. 4, Ser. 4, p. 80.
JOHN IV. 24.] SPIRITUAL WORSHIP. 801
most like to the object of worship ; the heart in the body is the spring of all vital actions, and a spiritual soul is the spring of all spiritual actions. How can we imagine God can delight in the mere service of the body, any more than we can delight in converse with a carcass !
Without the heart it is no worship ; it is a stage-play, an acting a part without being that person really which is acted by us ; a hypocrite, in the notion of the word, is a stage-player. We may as well say a man may believe with his body as worship God only with his body. Faith is a great
ingredient in worship, and it is ' with the heart man believes unto righteous ness,' Rom. x. 10. We may be truly said to worship God, though we want perfection, but we cannot be said to worship him if we want sincerity. A statue upon a tomb, with eyes and hands lifted up, offers as good and true a service ; it wants only a voice, the gestures and postures are the same ; nay, the service is better ; it is not a mockery, it represents all that it can be framed to. But to worship without our spirits is a presenting God with a picture, an echo, voice, and nothing else ; a compliment, a mere
lie, a ' compassing him about with lies,' Hosea xi. 12. Without the heart the tongue is a liar, and the greatest zeal, dissembling with him. To present the spirit is to present that which can never naturally die ; to present him only the body, is to present him that which is every day crumbling to dust, and will at last lie rotting in the grave. To offer him a few rags easily torn, a skin for a sacrifice, a thing unworthy the majesty of God, a fixed eye and elevated hands, with a sleepy heart and earthly soul, are pitiful things for an ever blessed and glorious Spirit ; nay, it is so far from being spiritual, that it is blasphemy ; to pretend to be a Jew outwardly, without being so inwardly, is in the judgment of Christ to blaspheme, Rev. ii. 9. And is not the same title to be given with as much reason to those that pretend a worship and perform none ? Such a one is not a spiritual worshipper, but
a blaspheming devil in Samuel's mantle. 4. Spiritual worship is performed with an unitedness of heart. The
heart is not only now and then with God, but ' united to fear' or worship 'his name,' Ps. Ixxxvi. 11. A spiritual duty must have the engagement of the Spirit, and the thoughts tied up to the spiritual object. The union of all the parts of the heart together with the body is the life of the body, and the moral union of our hearts is the life of any duty. A heart quickly flitting from God makes not God his treasure ; he slights the worship, and therein affronts the object of worship. All our thoughts ought to be ravished with God, bound up in him as in a bundle of life. But when we start from him to gaze after every feather, and run after every bubble, we disown a full and affecting excellency, and a satisfying sweetness in him. When our thoughts
run from God, it is a testimony we Lave no spiritual affection to God. Affection would stake down the thoughts to the object affected. It is but a mouth-love, as the prophet phraseth it : Ezek. xxxiii. 31, ' But their hearts go after their covetousness.' Covetous objects pipe, and the heart danceth after them, and thoughts of God are shifted off to receive a multitude of other imaginations. The heart and the service stayed a while together, and then took leave of one another. The psalmist still found his heart with God when he awaked, Ps. cxxxix. 18 ; still with God in spiritual affections, and fixed meditations. A carnal heart is seldom with God, either in or out of worship. If God should knock at the heart in any duty, it would be found not at home, but straying abroad. Our worship is spiritual when the door of the heart is shut against all intruders, as our Saviour com mands in closet-duties, Mat. vi. 6. It was not his meaning to command the shutting the closet-door, and leave the heart-door open for every thought
302 CHARNOCK'S WORKS. [JOHN IY. 24.
that would be apt to haunt us. Worldly affections are to be laid aside, if we would have our worship spiritual. This was meant by the Jewish custom of wiping or washing off the dust of their feet before their entrance into the temple, and of not bringing money in their girdles. To be spiritual in worship is to have our souls gathered and bound up wholly in themselves, and offered to God. Our loins must be girt, as the fashion was in the eastern countries, where they wore long garments, that they might not waver with the wind, and be blown between their legs, to obstruct them in their travel. Our faculties must not hang loose about us. He is a carnal worshipper that gives God but a piece of his heart, as well as he that denies him the whole of it ; that hath some thoughts pitched upon God in worship, and as many willingly upon the world. David sought God, not with a
moiety of his heart, but ' with his whole heart,' with his entire frame, Ps. cxix. 10. He brought not half his heart, and left the other in the pos session of another master. It was a good lesson Pythagoras gave his
scholars,* not to make the observance of God a work by the by. If those guests be invited, or entertained kindly, or if they come unexpected, the spirituality of that worship is lost ; the soul kicks down what is wrought before. But if they be brow-beaten by us, and our grief rather than our pleasure, they divert our spiritual intention from the work in hand, but
hinder not God's acceptance of it as spiritual, because they are not the acts of our will, but offences to our wills.
5. Spiritual worship is performed with a spiritual activity and sensibleness of God, with an active understanding to meditate on his excellency, and an active will to embrace him when he drops upon the soul. If we understand the amiableness of God, our affections will be ravished ; if we understand the immensity of his goodness, our spirits will be enlarged. We are to act with the highest intention, suitable to the greatness of that
God with whom we have to do : Ps. cl. 2, ' Praise him according to his excellent greatness.' Not that we can worship him equally, but in some
proportion the frame of the heart is to be suited to the excellency of the object ; our spiritual strength is to be put out to the utmost, as creatures that act naturally do. The sun shines, and the fire burns, to the utmost of their natural power. This is so necessary that David, a spiritual worshipper, prays for it before he sets upon acts of adoration : Ps. Ixxx. 18, ' Quicken
us, that we may call upon thy name.' As he was loath to have a drowsy faculty, he was loath to have a drowsy instrument, and would willingly have them as lively as himself : Ps. Ivii. 8, ' Awake up, my glory ; awake, psaltery and harp : I myself will awake early.' How would this divine soul screw himself up to God, and be turned into nothing but a holy flame ! Our souls must be boiling hot when we serve the Lord (£sovrgg), Eom. xii. 11. The heart doth no less burn when it spiritually comes to God,
than when God doth spiritually approach to it, Luke xxiv. 32. A Nabal's heart, one as cold as a stone, cannot offer up a spiritual service.
Whatsoever is enjoined us as our duty, ought to be performed with the greatest intenseness of our spirit. As it is our duty to pray, so it is our duty to pray with the most fervent importunity. It is our duty to love God, but with the purest and most sublime affections. Every command of God requires the whole strength of the creature to be employed in it. That love to God, wherein all our duty to God is summed up, is to be with all our strength, with all our might, &c.f Though in the covenant of grace he hath mitigated the severity of the law, and requires not from us such an
* 'Oy yao vaoseyov fa? <ffois7<rQcu rov Qtfa. — lamblich, 1. i, c. 518, p. 87. t Lady Falkland's Life, p. 130.
JOHN IV. 24.] SPIKITUAL WOESHIP. 303
elevation of our affections as was possible in the state of innocence, yet God requires of us the utmost moral industry to raise our affections to a pitch at least equal to what they are in other things. What strength of affection we naturally have ought to be as much and more excited in acts of worship than upon other occasions and our ordinary works. As there was an activity of soul in worship, and a quickness to sin when sin had the
dominion, so when the soul is spiritualised the temper is changed, there is an inactivity to sin and an ardour in duty. The more the soul is ' dead to
sin,' the more it is ' alive to God,' Rom. vi. 11, and the more lively too in all that concerns God and his honour. For grace being a new strength added to our natural, determines the affections to new objects, and excites them to a greater vigour. And as the hatred of sin is more sharp, the love to everything that destroys the dominion of it is more strong. And acts of worship may be reckoned as the chiefest batteries against the power of this inbred enemy. When the Spirit is in the soul, like the rivers of waters flowing out of the belly, the soul hath the activity of a river, and makes haste to be swallowed up in God, as the streams of the river in the sea.
Christ makes his people * kings and priests to God,' Rev. i. 6. First kings, then priests; gives first a royal temper of heart, that they may offer spiritual sacrifices as priests ; kings and priests to God, acting with a magnificent spirit in all their motions to him. We cannot be spiritual priests till we be spiritual kings. The Spirit appeared in the likeness of
fire, and where he resides, communicates, like fire, purity and activity.
Dulness is against the light of nature. I do not remember that the heathen ever offered a snail to any of their false deities, nor an ass, but to Priapus their unclean idol; but the Persians sacrificed to the sun a horse, a swift and generous creature. God provided against those in the law,
commanding an ass's firstling, the offspring of a sluggish creature, to be redeemed, or his neck broke, but by no means to be offered to him, Exod. xiii. 13. God is a Spirit infinitely active, and therefore frozen and benumbed frames are unsuitable to him : ' He rides upon a cherub, and
flies,' he comes ' upon the wings of the wind,' he rides upon ' a swift cloud,' Isa. xix. 1, and therefore demands of us not a dull reason, but an active spirit. God is a living God, therefore must have a lively service. Christ is life, and slothful adorations are not fit to be offered up in the name of life. The worship of God is called wrestling in Scripture, and Paul was a
striver in the service of his Master : Col. i. 29, ' in an agony' (ayuvifypsvos). Angels worship God spiritually with their wings on ; and when God com mands them to worship Christ, the next scripture quoted is that he makes them ' flames of fire,' Heb. i. 7.
If it be thus, how may we charge ourselves ? What Paul said of the
sensual widow, -1 Tim. v. 6, that she is ' dead while she lives,' we may say often of ourselves, we are dead while we worship. Our hearts are in duty
as the Jews' were in deliverances, 'as those in a dream,' Ps. cxxvi. 1; by which unexpectedness God shewed the greatness of his care and mercy, and we attend him as men in a dream, whereby we discover our negligence and folly. This activity doth not consist in outward acts. The body may be hot and the heart may be faint, but in an inward stirring, meltings, flights. In the highest raptures, the body is most insensible. Strong spiritual affec tions are abstracted from outward sense.
6. Spiritual worship is performed with acting spiritual habits. When all the living springs of grace are opened, as the fountains of the deep were in the deluge, the soul and all that is within it, all the spiritual impresses of
o-od upon it, erect themselves to bless his holy name, Ps. ciii. 1.
304 CHARNOCK'S WORKS. [JOHN IV. 24.
This is necessary to make a worship spiritual. As natural agents are determined to act suitable to their proper nature, so rational agents are to act conformable to a rational being. When there is a conformity between the act and the nature whence it flows, it is a good act in its kind ; if it be rational, it is a good rational act, because suitable to its principle. As a man endowed with reason must act suitable to that endowment, and exer cise his reason in his acting, so a Christian endued with grace must act suitable to that nature, and exercise his grace in his acting. Acts done by a natural inclination are no more human acts than the natural acts of a beast may be said to be human. Though they are the acts of a man as he is the efficient cause of them, yet they are not human acts, because they arise not from that principle of reason which denominates him a man. So acts of worship performed by a bare exercise of reason, are not Christian and spiritual acts, because they come not from the principle which con stitutes him a Christian. Reason is not the principle, for then all rational creatures would be Christians. They ought therefore to be acts of a higher principle, exercises of that grace whereby Christians are what they are ; not but that rational acts in worship are due to God, for worship is due from us as men, and we are settled in that rank of being by our reason. Grace doth not exclude reason, but ennobles it, and calls it up to
another form ; but we must not rest in a bare rational worship, but exert that principle whereby we are Christians. To worship God with our reason, is to worship him as men ; to worship God with our grace, is to worship him as Christians, and so spiritually; but to worship him only with our bodies, is no better than brutes.