3. Jesus Christ, the most spiritual worshipper, worshipped God with his body.He prayed orally, and kneeled, “Father, if it bethy will,”[474] &c. He blessed with his mouth, “Father, I thank thee.”[475] 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.[476] 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;”[477] in another, “bowing himself upon his bed’s head.”[478] The reason of the diversity is in the Hebrew word, which, without vowels, may be read mittah, a bedor matteh, a staff; however, both signify a testimony of adoration by a reverent gesture of the body. Indeed, in angels and separated souls, a worship is performed purely by the spirit; but while 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.[479] “We believe, and therefore speak.”[480]
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 proportioned 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 declare 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 show is, what spiritual worship is. In general, the whole spirit is to be employed; the name of God is not sanctified 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; recognizing him as the supreme Lord and Governor of the world, which is natural knowledge; beholding the glory of his attributes in the Redeemer, which is evangelical 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: (Psalmxlvii. 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 reverences 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 affections 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 worship 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 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. Restoration 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.[481] Christ is our life.[482] 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 principle 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 (Matt. xii. 34): “O 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 mediation in the acceptance.The apostle lived not, but Christ lived in him;[483] 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 come 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 worship 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 mortify a lust without the Spirit,[484] nor quicken a service without the Spirit.Whatsoever corruption is killed, is slain by his power; whatsoever duty is spiritualized, is refined by his breath. He quickens our dead bodies in our resurrection;[485] 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.[486] 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;”[487] 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;[488] the Holy Ghost exciting us, impelling us, and firing our souls by his divine flame; raising up the affections, and making thesoul cry with a holy importunity, Abba, Father. To render our worship spiritual, we should, before every engagement in it, implore the actual presence 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 worship be no better than carnal.How doth the spouse solicit the Spirit with an “Awake, O north wind, and come, thou south wind,”[489] &c.
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; “My son, give me thy heart;”[490] 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 (Psalm 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.[491] 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 “willingly with the heart.”[492] The more of will, the more of spirituality and acceptableness to God (Psalm cxix. 108), “Accept the free‑will offering of my lips.” Sincerity is the salt which seasons every sacrifice. The heart is 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 righteousness.”[493] 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.”[494] Without the heart the tongue is a liar; and the greatest zeal a dissembling with him. To present the spirit, is to present with 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.[495] 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.”[496] 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 have no spiritual affection to God; affection would stake down the thoughts to the object affected;it is but a mouth love, as the prophet praiseth it;[497] 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 staid awhile together, and then took leave of one another.The Psalmist[498] still found his heart with God when he awaked; 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 commands in closet‑duties.[499] It was not his meaning to command the shutting the closet‑door, and leave the heart‑door open for every thought that would be apt to haunt us. Worldly affections are to be laid aside if we would haveour 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;[500] he brought not half his heart, and left the other in the possession of another master.It was a good lesson Pythagoras gave his scholars,[501] “Not to make the observance of God a work by the bye.” 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 it 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 (Psalm 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 (Psalm lxxx. 18): “Quicken us, that we may call upon thy name;” as he was loth to have a drowsy faculty, he was loth to have a drowsy instrument, and would willingly have them as lively as himself (Psalm lvii. 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.[502] The heart doth no less burn when it spiritually comes to God, than when God doth spiritually approach to it;[503] 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 itis 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.[504] Though in the covenant of grace he hath mitigated the severity of the law, and requires not from us such an 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 inactivity of soul in worship, and a quickness to sin, when sin had the dominion; so when the soul is spiritualized, the temper is changed; there is an inactivity to sin, and an ardor in duty;the more the soul is “dead to sin,” the more it is “alive to God,”[505] and the more lively too in all that concerns God and his honor; for grace being a new strength added to our natural, determines the affections to new objects, and excites them to a greater vigor. 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;”[506] 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’ firstling, the offspring of a sluggish creature, to be redeemed, or his neck broke, but by no means to be offered to him.[507] 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;”[508] and therefore demands of us not a dull reason, but an active spirit. God is a living God, and 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,[509] “in an agony.”[510] Angels worshipped God spiritually with their wings on; and when God commands them to worship Christ, the next Scripture quoted is, that he makes them“flames of fire.”[511] If it be thus, how may we charge ourselves?What Paul said of the sensual widow,[512] 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;”[513] by which unexpectedness God showed 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 affections 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 God upon it,erect themselves to “bless his holy name.”[514] 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 exercise 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 constitutes 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. Our desires of the word are to issue from the regenerate principle (1 Pet. ii. 2): “As new‑born babes desire the sincere milk of the word;” it seems to be not a comparison, but a restriction. All worship must have the same spring, and be the exercise of that principle, otherwise we can have no communion with God. Friends that have the same habitual dispositions, have a fundamental fitness for an agreeable converse with one another; but if the temper wherein their likeness consists be languishing, and the string out of tune, there is not an actual fitness;and the present indisposition breaks the converse, and renders the company troublesome. Though we may have the habitual graces which compose in us a resemblance to God, yet for want of acting those suitable dispositions, we render ourselves unfit for his converse, and make the worship, which is fundamentally spiritual, to become actually carnal. As the will cannot naturally act to any object but by the exercise of its affections, so the heart cannot spiritually act towards God but by the exercise of graces. This is God’s music (Eph. v. 19): “Singing and making melody to God in your hearts.” Singing and all other acts of worship are outward, but the spiritual melody is “by grace in the heart” (Col. iii. 16): this renders it a spiritual worship; for it is an effect of the fulness of the spirit in the soul, as (ver. 19), “But be filled with the Spirit.” The overflowing of the Spirit in the heart, setting the soul of a believer thus on work to make a spiritual melody to God, shows that something higher than bare reason is put in tune in the heart.Then is the fruit of the garden pleasant to Christ, when the Holy Spirit, “the north and south wind, blow upon the spices,” and strike out the fragrancy of them.[515] Since God is the Author of graces, and bestows them to have a glory from them, they are best employed about him and his service. It is fit he should have the cream of his own gifts. Without the exercise of grace we perform but a work of nature, and offer him a few dry bones without marrow. The whole set of graces must be one way or other exercised. If any treble be wanting in a lute, there will be great defect in the music.If any one spiritual string be dull, the spiritual harmony of worship will be spoiled. And therefore;
1. Faith must be acted in worship; a confidence in God. A natural worship cannot be performed without a natural confidence in the goodness of God;whosoever comes to him, must regard him as a rewarder, and a faithful Creator.[516] A spiritual worship cannot be performed without an evangelical confidence in him as a gracious Redeemer. To think him a tyrant, meditating revenge, damps the soul; to regard him as a gracious king, full of tender bowels, spirits the affections to him. The mercy of God is the proper object of trust (Psalm xxxiii. 18): “The eye of the Lord is upon them that fear him, upon them that hope in his mercy.” The worship of God in the Old Testament is most described by fear; in the New Testament by faith. Fear, or the worship of God, and hope in his mercy are linked together; when they go hand in hand, the accepting eye of God is upon us; when we do not trust, we do not worship. Those of Judah had the temple‑worship among them, especially in Josiah’s time (Zeph. iii. 2), the time of that prophecy; yet it was accounted no worship, because no trust in the worshippers. Interest in God cannot be improved without an exercise of faith. The gospel‑worship is prophesied of, to be a confidence in God, as in a husband more than in a lord (Hos. ii. 16): “Thou shalt call me Ishi, and shalt call me no more Baali.” “Thou shalt call me;” that is, thou shalt worship me, worship being often comprehended under invocation. More confidence is to be exercised in a husband or father, than in a lordor master. If a man have not faith, he is without Christ; and though a man be in Christ by the habit of faith, he performs a duty out of Christ without an act of faith: without the habit of faith, our persons are out of Christ; and without the exercise of faith, the duties are out of Christ. As the want of faith in a person is the death of the soul, so the want of faith in a service is the death of the offering. Though a man were at the cost of an ox, yet to kill it without bringing it to the “door of the tabernacle,” was not a sacrifice, but a murder (Lev. xvii. 3, 4). The tabernacle was a type of Christ, and a look to him is necessary in every spiritual sacrifice. As there must be faith to make any act an act of obedience, so there must be faith to make any act of worship spiritual. That service is not spiritual that is not vital; and it cannot be vital without the exercise of a vital principle; all spiritual life is “hid in Christ,” and drawn from him by faith (Gal. ii. 20). Faith, as it hath relation to Christ, makes every act of worship a living act, and, consequently, a spiritual act. Habitual unbelief cuts us off from the body of Christ (Rom. xi. 20): “Because of unbelief they were broken off;” and a want of actuated belief breaks us off from a present communion with Christ in spirit. As unbelief in us hinders Christ from doing any mighty work, so unbelief in us hinders us from doing any mighty spiritual duty; so that the exercise of faith, and a confidence in God, is necessary to every duty.