wherein we are like to God. Spirit is nobler than body; we must,
therefore, value our spirits above our bodies. The soul, as spirit,
partakes more of the divine nature, and deserves more of our choicest
cares. If we have any love to this Spirit, we should have a real
affection to our own spirits, as bearing a stamp of the spiritual
Divinity, the chiefest of all the works of God; as it is said of
behemoth (Job xl. 19). That which is most the image of this immense
spirit, should be our darling; so David calls his soul (Psalm xxxv.
17). Shall we take care of that wherein we partake not of God, and not
delight in the jewel which hath his own signature upon it? God was not
only the Framer of spirits, and the End of spirits; but the Copy and
Exemplar of spirits. God partakes of no corporeity; he is pure Spirit.
But how do we act, as if we were only matter and body! We have but
little kindness for this great Spirit as well as our own, if we take
no care of his immediate offspring, since he is not only Spirit, but
the Father of spirits.[414]
_Inference 7._ If God be a Spirit, let us take heed of those sins
which are spiritual. Paul distinguisheth between the filth of the
flesh, and that of the spirit.[415] By the one we defile the body;
by the other we defile the spirit, which, in regard of its nature, is
of kin to the Creator. To wrong one who is near of kin to a prince,
is worse than to injure an inferior subject. When we make our spirits,
which are most like to God in their nature, and framed according
to his image, a stage to act vain imaginations, wicked desires, and
unclean affections, we wrong God in the excellency of his work, and
reflect upon the nobleness of the pattern; we wrong him in that part
where he hath stamped the most signal character of his own spiritual
nature; we defile that whereby we have only converse with him as a
Spirit, which he hath ordered more immediately to represent him in
this nature, than all corporeal things in the world can, and make that
Spirit with whom we desire to be joined unfit for such a knot. God’s
spirituality is the root of his other perfections. We have already
heard he could not be infinite, omnipresent, immutable, without {a204}
it. Spiritual sins are the greatest root of bitterness within us.
As grace in our spirits renders us more like to a spiritual God, so
spiritual sins bring us into a conformity to a degraded devil.[416]
Carnal sins change us from men to brutes, and spiritual sins divest
us of the image of God for the image of Satan. We should by no means
make our spirits a dunghill, which bear upon them the character of
the spiritual nature of God, and were made for his residence. Let us,
therefore, behave ourselves towards God in all those ways which the
spiritual nature of God requires us.
{a205} DISCOURSE IV.
ON SPIRITUAL WORSHIP.
JOHN iv. 24.――God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must
worship him in spirit and in truth.
HAVING thus despatched the first proposition, “God is a Spirit,” it
will not be amiss to handle the inference our Saviour makes from that
proposition, which is the second observation propounded.
_Doct._ That the worship due from us to God ought to be spiritual, and
spiritually performed. Spirit and truth are understood variously. We
are to worship God,
1. Not by legal ceremonies. The evangelical administration being
called spirit, in opposition to the legal ordinances as carnal; and
truth in opposition to them as typical. As the whole Judaical service
is called flesh, so the whole evangelical service is called spirit; or
spirit may be opposed to the worship at Jerusalem, as it was carnal;
truth, to the worship on the Mount Gerizim, because it was false. They
had not the true object of worship, nor the true medium of worship
as those at Jerusalem had. Their worship should cease, because it was
false; and the Jewish worship should cease, because it was carnal.
There is no need of a candle when the sun spreads his beams in the air;
no need of those ceremonies when the Sun of righteousness appeared;
they only served for candles to instruct and direct men till the time
of his coming. The shadows are chased away by displaying the substance,
so that they can be of no more use in the worship of God, since the
end for which they were instituted is expired; and that discovered to
us in the gospel, which the Jews sought for in vain among the baggage
and stuff of their ceremonies.
2. With a spiritual and sincere frame. _In spirit_, _i. e._ with
spirit; with the inward operations of all the faculties of our souls,
and the cream and flower of them; and the reason is, because there
ought to be a worship suitable to the nature of God; and as the
worship was to be spiritual, so the exercise of that worship ought
to be in a spiritual manner.[417] It shall be a worship “in truth,”
because the true God shall be adored without those vain imaginations
and fantastic resemblances of him,[418] which were common among the
blind Gentiles, and contrary to the glorious nature of God, and
unworthy ingredients in religious services. It shall be a worship “in
spirit,” without those carnal rites the degenerate Jews rested on;
such a {a206} posture of soul which is the life and ornament of every
service God looks for at your hands. There must be some proportion
between the object adored, and the manner in which we adore it; it
must not be a mere corporeal worship, because God is not a body; but
it must rise from the centre of our soul, because God is a Spirit. If
he were a body, a bodily worship might suit him, images might be fit
to represent him; but being a Spirit, our bodily services enter us not
into communion with him. Being a spirit, we must banish from our minds
all carnal imaginations of him, and separate from our wills all cold
and dissembled affections to him. We must not only have a loud voice,
but an elevated soul; not only a bended knee, but a broken heart;
not only a supplicating tone, but a groaning spirit; not only a ready
ear for the word, but a receiving heart; and this shall be of greater
value with him, than the most costly outward services offered at
Gerizim or Jerusalem. Our Saviour certainly meant not by worshipping
in spirit, only the matter of the evangelical service, as opposed
to the legal administration, without the manner wherein it was to
be performed. It is true, God always sought a worship in spirit; he
expected the heart of the worshipper should join with his instituted
rights of adoration in every exercise of them; but he expects such a
carriage more under the gospel administration, because of the clearer
discoveries of his nature made in it, and the greater assistances
conveyed by it.
I shall, therefore, 1. Lay down some general propositions. 2. Show
what this spiritual worship is. 3. Why we must offer to God a
spiritual service. 4. The use.
1. Some general propositions.
_Prop. I._ The right exercise of worship is founded upon, and riseth
from, the spirituality of God.[419] The first ground of the worship
we render to God, is the infinite excellency of his nature, which
is not only one attribute, but results from all; for God, as God, is
the object of worship; and the notion of God consists not in thinking
him wise, good, just, but all those infinitely beyond any conception;
and hence it follows that God is an object infinitely to be loved and
honored. His goodness is sometimes spoken of in Scripture as a motive
of our homage (Psalm cxxx. 4): “There is forgiveness with thee that
thou mayest be feared.” Fear, in the Scripture dialect, signifies the
“whole worship of God” (Acts x. 35): but in every nation, “he that
fears him” is accepted of him.[420] If God should act towards men
according to the rigors of his justice due to them for the least of
their crimes, there could be no exercise of any affection but that
of despair, which could not engender a worship of God, which ought to
be joined with love, not with hatred. The beneficence and patience of
God, and his readiness to pardon men, is the reason of the honor they
return to him; and this is so evident a motive, that generally the
idolatrous world ranked those creatures in the number of their gods,
which they perceived useful and beneficial to mankind, as the sun
and moon, the Egyptians the ox, &c. And the more beneficial anything
appeared to mankind, the higher station men gave it in the rank
of their deities, and bestowed a more peculiar and solemn worship
{a207} upon it. Men worshipped God to procure and continue his favor,
which would not have been acted by them, had they not conceived it
a pleasing thing to him to be merciful and gracious. Sometimes his
justice is proposed to us as a motive of worship (Heb. xii. 28, 29):
“Serve God with reverence and godly fear, for our God is a consuming
fire;” which includes his holiness, whereby he doth hate sin, as well
as his wrath, whereby he doth punish it. Who but a mad and totally
brutish person, or one that was resolved to make war against heaven,
could behold the effects of God’s anger in the world, consider him
in his justice as a “consuming fire,” and despise him, and rather be
drawn out by that consideration to blasphemy and despair, than to seek
all ways to appease him? Now though the infinite power of God, his
unspeakable wisdom, his incomprehensible goodness, the holiness of
his nature, the vigilance of his providence, the bounty of his hand,
signify to man that he should love and honor him, and are the motives
of worship; yet the spirituality of his nature is the rule of worship,
and directs us to render our duty to him with all the powers of our
soul. As his goodness beams out upon us, worship is due in justice to
him; and as he is the most excellent nature, veneration is due to him
in the highest manner with the choicest affections. So that indeed
the spirituality of God comes chiefly into consideration in matter of
worship: all his perfections are grounded upon this: he could not be
infinite, immutable, omniscient, if he were a corporeal being;[421] we
cannot give him a worship unless we judge him worthy, excellent, and
deserving a worship at our hands; and we cannot judge him worthy of
a worship, unless we have some apprehensions and admirations of his
infinite virtues; and we cannot apprehend and admire those perfections,
but as we see them as causes shining in their effects. When we see,
therefore, the frame of the world to be the work of his power, the
order of the world to be the fruit of his wisdom, and the usefulness
of the world to be the product of his goodness, we find the motives
and reasons of worship; and weighing that this power, wisdom, goodness,
infinitely transcend any corporeal nature, we find a rule of worship,
that it ought to be offered by us in a manner suitable to such a
nature as is infinitely above any bodily being. His being a Spirit
declares what he is; his other perfections declare what kind of Spirit
he is. All God’s perfections suppose him a Spirit; all centre in
this; his wisdom doth not suppose him merciful, or his mercy suppose
him omniscient; there may be distinct notions of those, but all
suppose him to be of a spiritual nature. How cold and frozen will our
devotions be, if we consider not his omniscience, whereby he discerns
our hearts! How carnal will our services be, if we consider him not as
a pure Spirit![422] In our offers to, and transactions with men, we
deal not with them as mere animals, but as rational creatures; and we
debase their natures if we treat them otherwise; and if we have not
raised apprehensions of God’s spiritual nature in our treating with
him, but allow him only such frames as we think fit enough for men, we
debase his spirituality to the littleness of our own being. We must,
therefore, possess our souls with {a208} this; we shall else render
him no better than a fleshly service. We do not much concern ourselves
in those things of which we are either utterly ignorant, or have but
slight apprehensions of. That is the first proposition;――The right
exercise of worship is grounded upon the spirituality of God.
_Prop. II._ This spiritual worship of God is manifest by the light of
nature, to be due to him. In reference to this, consider,
1. The outward means or matter of that worship which would be
acceptable to God, was not known by the light of nature. The law for a
worship, and for a spiritual worship by the faculties of our souls was
natural, and part of the law of creation; though the determination of
the particular acts, whereby God would have this homage testified, was
of positive institution, and depended not upon the law of creation.
Though Adam in innocence knew God was to be worshipped, yet by nature
he did not know by what outward acts he was to pay this respect, or at
what time he was more solemnly to be exercised in it than at another:
this depended upon the directions God, as the sovereign Governor
and Lawgiver, should prescribe. You therefore find the positive
institutions of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” and the
determination of the time of worship (Gen. ii. 3, 17). Had there been
any such notion in Adam naturally, as strong as that other, that a
worship was due to God, there would have been found some relics of
these modes universally consented to by mankind, as well as of the
other. But though all nations have by an universal consent concurred
in the acknowledgment of the being of God, and his right to adoration,
and the obligation of the creature to it; and that there ought to be
some public rule and polity in matters of religion (for no nation hath
been in the world without a worship, and without external acts and
certain ceremonies to signify that worship); yet their modes and rites
have been as various as their climates, unless in that common notion
of sacrifices, not descending to them by nature, but tradition from
Adam; and the various ways of worship have been more provoking than
pleasing. Every nation suited the kind of worship to their particular
ends and polities they designed to rule by. How God was to be
worshipped is more difficult to be discerned by nature with its eyes
out than with its eyes clear.[423] The pillars upon which the worship
of God stands cannot be discerned without revelation, no more than
blind Samson could tell where the pillars of the Philistines’ theatre
stood, without one to conduct him. What Adam could not see with his
sound eyes, we cannot with our dim eyes; he must be told from heaven
what worship was fit for the God of heaven. It is not by nature that
we can have such a full prospect of God as may content and quiet us;
this is the noble effect of Divine revelation; He only knows himself,
and can only make himself known to us. It could not be supposed that
an infinite God should have no perfections but what were visible
in the works of his hands; and that these perfections should not
be infinitely greater, than as they were sensible in their present
effects: this had been to apprehend God a limited Being, meaner than
he is. Now it is impossible to honor God as we ought, {a209} unless we
know him as he is; and we could not know him as he is, without divine
revelation from himself; for none but God can acquaint us with his
own nature: and therefore the nations void of this conduct, heaped up
modes of worship from their own imaginations, unworthy of the majesty
of God, and below the nature of man. A rational man would scarce
have owned such for signs of honor, as the Scripture mentions in the
services of Baal and Dagon; much less an infinitely wise and glorious
God. And when God had signified his mind to his own people, how
unwilling were they to rest satisfied with God’s determination, but
would be warping to their own inventions, and make gods, and ways of
worship to themselves![424] as in the matter of the golden calf, as
was lately spoken of.
2. Though the outward manner of worship acceptable to God could not be
known without revelation, and those revelations might be various; yet
the inward manner of worship with our spirits was manifest by nature:
and not only manifest by nature to Adam in innocence, but after his
fall, and the scales he had brought upon his understanding by that
fall. When God gave him his positive institutions before the fall,
or whatsoever additions God should have made, had he persisted in
that state; or, when he appointed him, after his fall, to testify his
acknowledgment of him by sacrifices, there needed no command to him
to make those acknowledgments by those outward ways prescribed to
him, with the intention and prime affection of his spirit: this nature
would instruct him in without revelation; for he could not possibly
have any semblance of reason to think that the offering of beasts, or
the presenting the first fruits of the increase of the ground, as an
acknowledgment of God’s sovereignty over him and his bounty to him,
was sufficient, without devoting to him that part wherein the image
of his Creator did consist: he could not but discern, by a reflection
upon his own being, that he was made for God as well as by God: for it
is a natural principle of which the apostle speaks (Rom. xi. 36), “For
of him, and through him, and to him are all things,” &c.: that the
whole whereof he did consist was due to God; and that his body, the
dreggy and dusty part of his nature, was not fit to be brought alone
before God, without that nobler principle, which he had, by creation,
linked with it. Nothing in the whole law of nature, as it is informed
of religion, was clearer, next to the being of a God, than this manner
of worshipping God with the mind and spirit. And as the Gentiles
never sunk so low into the mud of idolatry, as to think the images
they worshipped were really their gods, but the representations, or
habitations of their gods; so they never deserted this principle in
the notion of it, that God was to be honored with the best they were,
and the best they had: as they never denied the being of a God in
the notion, though they did in the practice, so they never rejected
this principle in notion, though they did, and now most men do, in
the inward observation of it: it was a maxim among them that God was
_mens animus_, mind and spirit, and therefore was to be honored with
the mind and spirit: that religion did not consist in the ceremonies
of the body, but the work of the soul; whence the speech of one
of them: {a210} “Sacrifice to the gods, not so much clothed with
purple garments as a pure heart:”[425] and of another: “God regards
not the multitude of the sacrifices, but the disposition of the
sacrificer.”[426] It is not fit we should deny God the cream and the
flower, and give him the flotten part and the stalks. And with what
reverence and intention of mind they thought their worship was to be
performed, is evident by the priests crying out often, _Hoc age_, Mind
this, let your spirits be intent upon it. This could not but result,
(1.) From the knowledge of ourselves. It is a natural principle,
“God hath made us, and not we ourselves” (Psalm c. 1, 2). Man knows
himself to be a rational creature; as a creature he was to serve
his Creator, and as a rational creature with the best part of that
rational nature he derived from him. By the same act of reason that
he knows himself to be a creature, he knows himself to have a Creator;
that this Creator is more excellent than himself, and that an honor
is due from him to the Creator for framing of him; and, therefore,
this honor was to be offered to him by the most excellent part
which was framed by him. Man cannot consider himself as a thinking,
understanding, being, but he must know that he must give God the
honor of his thoughts, and worship him with those faculties whereby
he thinks, wills, and acts.[427] He must know his faculties were given
him to act, and to act for the glory of that God who gave him his soul,
and the faculties of it; and he could not in reason think they must be
only active in his own service, and the service of the creature, and
idle and unprofitable in the service of his Creator. With the same
powers of our soul, whereby we contemplate 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 quickened 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.[428] “We should speak of God
as he is,” said one;[429] 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 for the greatness
of God, or a sufficient return for the bounty of God. 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 {a211} soul:[430]
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 honor 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 honored 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; an attendance of matter and body
without spirit, when they themselves, of an inferior nature, would
be loth 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 conformable to the sentiments
of nature, and drawn from the most undeniable principles 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.