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 have {a227} 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;[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 it {a228} 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.[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 {a229} “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; {a230} 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
lord {a231} or 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.
2. Love must be acted to render a worship spiritual. Though God
commanded love in the Old Testament, yet the manner of giving the law
bespoke more of fear than love. The dispensation of the law was with
fire, thunder, &c., proper to raise horror, and benumb the spirit;
which effect it had upon the Israelites, when they desired that God
would speak no more to them. Grace is the genius of the gospel, proper
to excite the affection of love. The law was given by the “disposition
of angels,” with signs to amaze; the gospel was ushered in with the
“songs of angels,” composed of peace and good‑will, calculated to
ravish the soul. Instead of the terrible voice of the law, “Do this
and live,” the comfortable voice of the gospel is, “Grace, grace!”
Upon this account the principle of the Old Testament was fear, and the
worship often expressed by the fear of God. The principle of the New
Testament is love. The Mount Sinai gendereth to bondage (Gal. iv. 44);
Mount Sion, from whence the gospel or evangelical law goes forth,
gendereth to liberty; and therefore the “spirit of bondage unto fear,”
as the property of the law, is opposed to the state of adoption, the
principle of love, as the property of the gospel (Rom. viii. 15);
and therefore the worship of God under the gospel, or New Testament,
is oftener expressed by love than fear, as proceeding from higher
principles, and acting nobler passions. In this state we are to serve
him without fear (Luke i. 74); without a bondage fear; not without
a fear of unworthy treating him; with a “fear of his goodness” as it
is prophesied of (Hos. ix. 5). Goodness is not the object of terror,
but reverence; God, in the law, had more the garb of a judge; in the
gospel, of a father; the name of a father is sweeter and bespeaks more
of affection. As their services were with a feeling of the thunders
of the law in their consciences, {a232} so is our worship to be with
a sense of gospel grace in our spirits; spiritual worship is that,
therefore, which is exercised with a spiritual and heavenly affection,
proper to the gospel. The heart should be enlarged according to the
liberty the gospel gives of drawing near to God as a father. As he
gives us the nobler relation of children, we are to act the nobler
qualities of children. Love should act according to its nature, which
is desired of union; desire of a moral union by affections, as well as
a mystical union by faith; as flame aspires to reach flame, and become
one with it. In every act of worship we should endeavor to be united
to God, and become one spirit with him. This grace doth spiritualize
worship; in that one word, love, God hath wrapt up all the devotion
he requires of us; it is the total sum of the first table, “Thou shalt
love the Lord thy God:” it is to be acted in everything we do; but
in worship our hearts should more solemnly rise up and acknowledge
him amiable and lovely, since the law is stripped of its cursing
power, and made sweet in the blood of the Redeemer. Love is a thing
acceptable of itself, but nothing acceptable without it; the gifts
of one man to another are spiritualized by it. We would not value a
present without the affection of the donor; every man would lay claim
to the love of others, though he would not to their possessions.
Love is God’s right in every service, and the noblest thing we can
bestow upon him in our adorations of him. God’s gifts to us are
not so estimable without his love; nor our services valuable by him
without the exercise of a choice affection. Hezekiah regarded not his
deliverance without the love of the Deliverer; “In love to my soul
thou hast delivered me” (Isa. xxxviii. 17). So doth God say, In love
to my honor thou hast worshipped me: so that love must be acted, to
render our worship spiritual.
3. A spiritual sensibleness of our own weakness is necessary to make
our worship spiritual. Affections to God cannot be without relentings
in ourselves. When the eye is spiritually fixed upon a spiritual God,
the heart will mourn that the worship is no more spiritually suitable.
The more we act love upon God, as amiable and gracious, the more
we should exercise grief in ourselves, as we are vile and offending.
Spiritual worship is a melting worship, as well as an elevating
worship; it exalts God, and debaseth the creature. The Publican was
more spiritual in his humble address to God, when the Pharisee was
wholly carnal with his swelling language. A spiritual love in worship
will make us grieve that we have given him so little, and could give
him no more. It is a part of spiritual duty to bewail our carnality
mixed with it; as we receive mercies spiritually, when we receive
them with a sense of God’s goodness and our own vileness; in the same
manner we render a spiritual worship.
4. Spiritual desires for God render the service spiritual; when the
soul “follows hard after him” (Psalm lxiii. 8); pursues after God as
a God of infinite and communicative goodness, with sighs and groans
unutterable. A spiritual soul seems to be transformed into hunger and
thirst, and becomes nothing but desire. A carnal worshipper is taken
with the beauty and magnificence of the temple; a spiritual worshipper
desires to see the glory of God in the sanctuary (Psalm lxiii. 2),
{a233} he pants after God: as he came to worship, to find God, he
boils up in desires for God, and is loth to go from it without God,
“the living God” (Psalm xlii. 2). He would see the Urim and the
Thummim; the unusual sparkling of the stones upon the high‑priest’s
breast‑plate. That deserves not the title of spiritual worship, when
the soul makes no longing inquiries: “Saw you him whom my soul loves?”
A spiritual worship is when our desires are chiefly for God in the
worship; as David desires to dwell in the house of the Lord; but his
desire is not terminated there, but to behold the beauty of the Lord
(Psalm xxvii. 4), and taste the ravishing sweetness of his presence.
No doubt but Elijah’s desires for the enjoyment of God while he
was mounting to heaven, were as fiery as the chariot wherein he was
carried. Unutterable groans acted in worship are the fruit of the
Spirit, and certainly render it a spiritual service (Rom. viii. 26).
Strong appetites are agreeable to God, and prepare us to eat the fruit
of worship. A spiritual Paul presseth forward to know Christ, and the
power of his resurrection; and a spiritual worshipper actually aspires
in every duty to know God, and the power of his grace. To desire
worship as an end is carnal; to desire it as a means, and act desires
in it for communion with God in it, is spiritual, and the fruit of
a spiritual life.
5. Thankfulness and admiration are to be exercised in spiritual
service. This is a worship of spirits; praise is the adoration of the
blessed angels (Isa. vi. 3), and of glorified spirits (Rev. iv. 11):
“Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor, and power;” and
(Rev. v. 13, 14), they worship him ascribing “Blessing, honor, glory,
and power to Him that sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb forever
and ever.” Other acts of worship are confined to this life, and leave
us as soon as we have set our foot in heaven; there, no notes but
this of praise are warbled out; the power, wisdom, love, and grace in
the dispensation of the gospel, seat themselves in the thoughts and
tongues of blessed souls. Can a worship on earth be spiritual, that
hath no mixture of an eternal heavenly duty with it? The worship of
God in innocence had been chiefly an admiration of him in the works
of creation; and should not our evangelical worship be an admiration
of him in the works of redemption, which is a restoration to a better
state? After the petitioning for pardoning grace (Hos. xiv. 2), there
is a rendering the calves or heifers of our lips, alluding to the
heifers used in eucharistical sacrifices. The praise of God is the
choicest sacrifice and worship under a dispensation of redeeming grace;
this is the prime and eternal part of worship under the gospel. The
Psalmist (Psalm cxlix. cl.), speaking of the gospel times, spurs on to
this kind of worship; “Sing to the Lord a new song; let the children
of Zion be joyful in their king; let the saints be joyful in glory,
and sing aloud upon their beds; let the high praises of God be in
their mouths;” he begins and ends both psalms with “Praise ye the
Lord.” That cannot be a spiritual and evangelical worship, that hath
nothing of the praise of God in the heart. The consideration of God’s
adorable perfections, discovered in the gospel, will make us come to
him with more seriousness; beg blessings of him with more confidence;
fly to him with a winged {a234} faith and love, and more spiritually
glorify him in our attendances upon him.