CHAPTER VIII.

RELIGIOUS WORSHIP.

THERE is a principle in Christianity, the application of which would have extricated the early fathers from the perplexities and errors, in which their doctrine involves the Christian sacraments.

To this principle, we conceive, must be referred the extraordinary circumstance, that these sacraments should constitute its entire prescribed ritual. Liturgical formularies of devotion, and rounds of observances, which are the very essence of all other religions, engaged no part of the attention of those who were inspired to proclaim the precepts and doctrines of Christianity. Our Divine Master, when appealed to by the Samaritan woman upon the question between her nation and the Jews, at once answered her enquiry, but failed not, at the same time, to foretell the speedy overthrow of the temple worships, both of mount Zion and mount Gerizim; and to embody in a single sentence, more instruction regarding this branch of our duty to our Maker, than was to be found in all the prescriptions of religious service that the world contained : -"God is a Spirit: and they that worship him, must worship him in spirit and in truth." This was the principle, and this alone, which was regarded in the construction of

1 John iv. 24.

the whole exterior of his religion. Nothing else appears to have weighed with him for a moment. He has not left us a single direction regarding the worship of God, which does not bear exclusively upon the heart of the worshipper, discarding every other adjunct of circumstance.— Time, and place, and posture, so important in the older rituals, are less than nothing and vanity with him; he does not bestow even a thought upon them. The apostles also follow exactly the footsteps of their Lord in this, as in every thing. Anxious only to press home the important truths, that form and ceremony were abolished, and that the worship of God was an act and exercise of the heart, none of the other circumstances of religious service appear to have dwelt in their recollection.-As if fearful of withdrawing the regards of the Christian man from them, in any measure, they have studiously avoided recording the particulars of the mode in which the worship of God was conducted by themselves; that there might be no form of their prescription for his wayward heart to rest in, and that this principle of his religion might flash upon his understanding from every page of inspiration, "God is a Spirit and they that worship him, must worship him in spirit and in truth."

It is from hence that we contend to best advantage with the materialists in both sacraments. If they be part and parcel of Christianity, which we all agree that they are, they must recognise this principle in its whole extent. We answer the advocates of baptismal regeneration, that the Gospel propounds no other evidence of sin forgiven, than sin forsaken; and no other medium for its remission, than the blood of Christ, applied by faith to the conscience. We tell the materialist in the other sacrament, that it is the faith of the worthy partaker that

alone discerns, or can discern, the Lord's body in the holy Eucharist; and that, therefore, his doctrine of the real presence is as needless as it is ridiculous. This high ground best befits the dignity of the entire subject :—that in all our acts of worship the heart of the worshipper, and that alone, is regarded by him to whom they are addressed, is a grand principle of Christianity; and whatever is not in exact obedience to this principle forms no part of Christ's religion.

We have seen that the early fathers have greatly obscured this principle, in their doctrine of the sacraments. We now proceed to consider their opinions upon other acts of religious observance; when we shall find, that though we may meet occasionally with formal acknowledgments of it, yet it does not exercise that entire influence over their doctrine upon these points, which is so apparent in the canonical writings.

We commence with prayer; a subject upon which, of all others, he who professes to take the New Testament for his guide, would seem to be in the least danger of error: since, by an apparent departure from the course observed with regard to other acts of religion, the Holy Spirit has recorded in the New Testament both the time, and mode, and form of prayer which will be accepted. The time,-pray always: the mode,-pray with the heart: the form, was given by our Lord himself; and though too brief to admit, for a moment, of the supposition that it is the only prayer which a Christian man may use, is, nevertheless, so wonderfully comprehensive, that he can scarcely offer a petition to the throne of grace which is not included in it. As Tertullian justly and beautifully observes, "it is the summary of the whole gospel: for whatever the

2 De Oratione, cc. 1, 9.

2

writings of prophets, evangelists, and apostles, the discourses, parables, precepts, and example of our Lord have touched upon, is contained in these few words.What duty which they enjoin is omitted? Honour to the Godhead in the Father; a testimony of faith in his name; a profession of obedience to his will; a commemoration of hope in his kingdom; a petition for life in the bread; a confession of sin in the deprecation; solicitude concerning temptation, in the prayer for help against it.-But God alone could prompt the prayer, which himself would hear and answer."

It is surprising that there should be any deflections in these early writers, from a path so straitly hedged in as this. Nevertheless, they do err, and in the direction we have pointed out.

St. Clement of Rome writes thus to the Corinthians : "It will behove us to take care, brethren, that looking into the depths of the divine knowledge we do all things in order, whatsoever our Lord has commanded us to do: and particularly that we perform our offerings and service to God at their appointed seasons: for these he has commanded to be done, not by chance and disorderly, but at certain determinate times and hours.-They, therefore, that make their offerings at the appointed seasons are happy and accepted." In perusing this passage we naturally enquire where is the divine command to which St. Clement refers? If his reference be to the ceremonial law of Moses, we instantly reply to him, that it is abolished: neither does any such occur in the New Testament. Should his appeal be to the Christian tradition, which probably it is, we apply to it the argument with which

5

5 τοις προςεταγμενοις καιροῖς.

6 Clem. ad Cor., c. 40.

Tertullian has supplied us :-we compare the unwritten, with the written tradition, with the canonical and inspired writings: when we discover, that it is in clear opposition to the Christian doctrine upon the point; inasmuch as the same observances which St. Clement urges upon the church at Corinth, St. Paul stigmatises in the Judaizing Christians of Galatia, as a departure from the simplicity of the Gospel, "Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years." We, therefore, at once reject it; on the ground, that there can be no apostolical tradition which contradicts the apostolical epistles. We readily grant,

that an order of ecclesiastical service must and will be agreed upon, in every community over which the influence of Christ's religion is fully exerted: and that order being once settled, according to the Word of God, we greatly question the propriety, or the wisdom, of needless innovations upon it but that there is any divine command, prescribing the hours and ceremonies of public worship, we utterly deny :-and we produce the assertion of St. Clement that there is such, as evidence that the great principle of Christian worship was soon misapprehended, and that, even in the earliest uninspired records of the church, we discover a leaning to formality and materialism.9

The following passage, from another of the apostolical writers, is also highly objectionable :-" Remove from

7 De Præscriptionibus Hæreticorum.

8 Gal. iv. 10.

9 It is quite needful the reader should be aware, that the commencement of the passage from Clement upon which we have commented, is quoted by his namesake of Alexandria-4 Strom. § 18.; and that he connects it with a sentence altogether different from the rest of it, which does not occur at all in our copy of the Epistle. Though the learned father occasionally mutilates his quotations, the circumstance certainly raises a suspicion that the place may be a spurious one.