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 invariable. This and that
particular mode of worship may wax old as a garment, and as a vesture
may be folded up and changed, as the expression is of the heavens;[431]
but God endures forever; 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 alway, and will alway be, required by God.
The worship of God being perpetually due from the creature, the
worshipping him as God is as perpetually his right. Though the outward
expressions of his honor 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, {a212} must be
offered to him, not as carcasses, but animated with the affections 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.[432]
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;[433] he had the right
object, but not the right manner (Gen. iv. 7): “If thou doest 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.
_Prop. IV._ 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 honor 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 command; 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 a spirit consecrated to God, the heart glowing with
affections to God; it is else a mocking God with a feather. A rational
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;”[434] 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 {a213} 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.”[435] 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 God 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 honor
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
exercise 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 excellency 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 honored in worship; we do not honor God if we
honor him not as he is; we honor him not as a Spirit, if we think him
not worthy of the ardors 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.
_Prop. V._ The ceremonial law was abolished to promote the
spirituality of divine worship. That service was gross, carnal,
calculated for an infant and sensitive church. It consisted in
rudiments, the circumcision of the flesh, the blood and smoke of
sacrifices, the steams 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 steadfastly look to the end of
that which is 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
{a214} title than carnal ordinances,[436] and a carnal command:[437]
but the gospel is called the ministration of the Spirit, as being
attended with a special and spiritual efficacy on the minds of
men.[438] 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 now be made perfect in the flesh;[439] they would
leave the righteousness of faith for a justification by works. The
moral law, which is in its own nature spiritual,[440] in regard of
the abuse of it, in expectation of justification by the outward works
of it, is called flesh: much more may the ceremonial administration,
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;[441] as letters,
which are but empty sounds of themselves, but put together 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;[442] and the evangelical
worshipper is called 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;[443] Israel after a carnal birth, not Israel after a spiritual;
Israel in the circumcision 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.[444] 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;[445] 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,[446] nor purge the
conscience from those dead and dull dispositions which were by nature
in them:[447] 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 {a215} any favor for us.[448]
At the best they were but shadows, and came inexpressibly short of the
efficacy of that person and state whose shadows they were. The shadow
of a man is too weak to perform 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,[449]
and that administration a pedagogy.[450] The law was a schoolmaster
fitted for their weak and childish capacity, and could no more
spiritualize the heart, than the teachings in a 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 carnalize
than spiritualize the heart: besides, it is a sense of mercy that
both melts and elevates the heart into a spiritual frame: “There is
forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared;”[451] 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.
3. 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 perceiving it, but because they were
not yet capable to bear the splendor 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.”[452] 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 purifications of the flesh; the prevalency
of sense and sensitive affections diverted their minds from inquiring
into {a216} 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
observances; and those that overdo in carnal modes, usually underdo
in spiritual affections. This was the Jewish state.[453] 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 rights
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 the
true faith and the spiritual motions of the heart, and stake it down
to outward observances, and the _opus operatum_. Besides, the voice
of the law did only declare sacrifices, and invited the worshippers 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 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 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 reasons about 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
eyes, and the liquorishness of her palate.[454] 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;[455] 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 displeased with them as they were
practised by them, with souls as morally carnal in the practices, as
the ceremonies were materially carnal {a217} 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
coverings (Hos. vi. 6); “I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the
knowledge of God more than burnt‑offerings;” 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 corruption of them was from the
vice of their nature, therefore theirs. He often blamed them for their
carnality in them; showed his dislike of placing all their religion
in them; gives the sacrificers, on that account, no better a title
than that of the princes of Sodom and Gomorrah;[456] and compares
the sacrifices themselves to the “cutting off a dog’s neck,” “swine’s
blood,” and “the murder of a man.”[457] 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 (Psalm l. 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 esteems 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. 21): “I spake not to your fathers,
nor commanded them concerning burnt‑offerings and sacrifices.” He did
not value and regard them, in comparison with 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 God, and could
not of themselves please him. None could in reason persuade 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 {a218} moons, and feasts,
and sacrifices, and all the ceremonial worship, 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 administration, 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;”[458] a determinate time was fixed for its duration, till
the accomplishment of the truth figured under that pedagogy.[459] Some
of the modes of that worship being only typical, must naturally expire
and be insignificant 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.[460] He often told them he would make a “new covenant by the
Messiah,” and the old should be rejected;[461] that the “former things
should not be remembered, and the things of old no more considered,”
when he should do “a new thing in the earth.”[462] 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;[463] that
the temple and sacrifices should be rejected, and others established;
that the order of the Aaronical priesthood should be abolished, and
that of Melchizedek set up in the stead of it, in the person of the
Messiah, to endure forever;[464] that Jerusalem should be changed;
a new heaven and earth created; a worship more conformable to heaven,
more advantageous to earth. God had proceeded in the removal of some
parts 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 thundered 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 the Levitical worship,
and have wandered in the world without a sacrifice, a prince, or
priest, an ephod or teraphim.[465] 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 (Matt. xvii. 5):
“Behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved
Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.” And at the death of
our Saviour, testified it to that whole nation and the world, by
the rending in twain the veil of the temple. The whole frame of that
service, {a219} 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. VI._ 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;”[466] it is suited to a rational nature, though
it finds no friendship from the corruption of reason. It prescribes
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,”[467] as well as reasonable service; an evangelical
service, in opposition to a law service. All evangelical service is
reasonable, and all truly reasonable service is evangelical.