Volume 1 — DISCOURSE IV. ON SPIRITUAL WORSHIP. (continued 2)

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), 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 faith and love, and more spiritually glorify him in our attendances upon him.

6. Spiritual worship is performed with delight. The evangelical worship is prophetically signified by keeping the feast of tabernacles; “They shall go up from year to year, to worship the King, the Lord of Hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles” (Zech. xiv. 16): why that feast, when there were other feasts observed by the Jews? That was a feast celebrated with the greatest joy; typical of the gladness which was to be under the exhibition of the Messiah, and a thankful commemoration of the redemption wrought by him. It was to be celebrated five days after the “solemn day of atonement” (Lev. xxiii. 34, compared with ver. 27), wherein there was one of the solemnest types of the sacrifice of the death of Christ. In this feast they commemorated their exchange of Egypt for Canaan; the manna wherewith they were fed; the water out of the rock wherewith they were refreshed; in remembrance of this, they poured water on the ground, pronouncing those words in Isaiah, they shall “draw waters out of the wells of salvation;” which our Saviour refers to himself (John vii. 37), inviting them to him, to drink “upon the last day, the great day of the feast of tabernacles,” wherein the solemn ceremony was observed. Since we are freed by the death of the Redeemer from the curses of the law, God requires of us a joy in spiritual privileges. A sad frame in worship gives the lie to all gospel liberty, to the purchase of the Redeemer’s death, the triumphs of his resurrection: it is a carriage, as if we were under the influences of the legal fire and lightning, and an entering a protest against the freedom of the gospel. The evangelical worship is a spiritual worship; and praise, joy, and delight are prophesied of, as great ingredients in attendance on gospel ordinances (Isaiah xii. 3‒5). What was occasion of terror in the worship of God under the law, is the occasion of delight in the worship of God under the gospel. The justice and holiness of God, so terrible in the law, becomes comfortable under the gospel; since they have feasted themselves on the active and passive obedience of the Redeemer. The approach is to God as gracious, not to God as unpacified; as a son to a father, not as a criminal to a judge. Under the law, God was represented as a judge; remembering their sin in their sacrifices, and representing the punishment they had merited: in the gospel as a father, accepting the atonement, and publishing the reconciliation wrought by the Redeemer. Delight in God is a gospel frame; therefore the more joyful, the more spiritual: “The sabbath is to be a delight;” not only in regard of the day, but in regard to the duties of it (Isa. lviii. 13); in regard of the marvellous work he wrought on it; raising up our blessed Redeemer on that day, whereby a foundation was laid for the rendering our persons and services acceptable to God (Psalm cxviii. 24); “This is the day which the Lord hath made, we will be glad and rejoice in it.” A lumpish frame becomes not a day and a duty, that hath so noble and spiritual a mark upon it. The angels, in the first act of worship after the creation, were highly joyful (Job xxxviii. 7): “They shouted for joy,” &c. The saints have particularly acted this in their worship. David would not content himself with an approach to the altar, without going to God as his “exceeding joy” (Psalm xliii. 4). My triumphant joy: when he danced before the ark, he seems to be transformed into delight and pleasure (2 Sam. vi. 14, 16). He had as much delight in worship, as others had in their harvest and vintage. And those that took joyfully the spoiling of their goods, would as joyfully attend upon the communications of God. Where there is a fulness of the Spirit, there is a “waking melody to God in the heart” (Eph. v. 18, 19); and where there is an acting of love (as there is in all spiritual services), the proper fruit of it is joy in a near approach to the object of the soul’s affection. Love is appetitus unionis; the more love, the more delight in the approachings of God to the soul, or the outgoings of the soul to God. As the object of worship is amiable in a spiritual eye, so the means tending to a communion with this object are delightful in the exercise. Where there is no delight in a duty, there is no delight in the object of the duty; the more of grace, the more of pleasure in the actings of it; as the more of nature there is in any natural agent, the more of pleasure in the act, so the more heavenly the worship, the more spiritual. Delight is the frame and temper of glory. A heart filled up to the brim with joy, is a heart filled up to the brim with the Spirit; joy is the fruit of the Holy Ghost (Gal. v. 22). (1.) Not the joy of God’s dispensation flowing from God, but a gracious active joy streaming to God. There is a joy, when the comforts of God are dropped into the soul, as oil upon the wheel; which indeed makes the faculties move with more speed and activity in his service, like the chariots of Aminadab; and a soul may serve God in the strength of this taste, and its delight terminate in the sensible comfort. This is not the joy I mean, but such a joy that hath God for its object, delighting in him as the term, in worship as the way to him; the first is God’s dispensation, the other is our duty; the first is an act of God’s favor to us, the second a sprout of habitual grace in us. The comforts we have from God may elevate our duties; but the grace we have within doth spiritualize our duties. (2.) Nor is every delight an argument of a spiritual service. All the requisites to worship must be taken in. A man may invent a worship and delight in it; as Micah in the adoration of his idol, when he was glad he had got both an Ephod and a Levite (Judges xvii). As a man may have a contentment in sin, so he may have a contentment in worship; not because it is a worship of God, but the worship of his own invention, agreeable to his own humor and design, as (Isa. lviii. 2) it is said, they “delighted in approaching to God;” but it was for carnal ends. Novelty engenders complacency; but it must be a worship wherein God will delight; and that must be a worship according to his own rule and infinite wisdom, and not our shallow fancies. God requires a cheerfulness in his service, especially under the gospel, where he sits upon a throne of grace; discovers himself in his amiableness, and acts the covenant of grace, and the sweet relation of a father. The priests of old were not to sully themselves with any sorrow, when they were in the exercise of their functions. God put a bar to the natural affections of Aaron and his sons, when Nadab and Abihu had been cut off by a severe hand of God (Lev. x. 6). Every true Christian in a higher order of priesthood, is a person dedicated to joy and peace, offering himself a lively sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving; and there is no christian duty, but is to be set off and seasoned with cheerfulness: he that loves a cheerful giver in acts of charity, requires no less a cheerful spirit in acts of worship; as this is an ingredient in worship, so it is the means to make your spirits intent in worship. When the heart triumphs in the consideration of divine excellency and goodness, it will be angry at anything that offers to jog and disturb it.

7. Spiritual worship is to be performed, though with a delight in God, yet with a deep reverence of God. The gospel, in advancing the spirituality of worship, takes off the terror, but not the reverence of God; which is nothing else in its own nature, but a due and high esteem of the excellency of a thing according to the nature of it; and, therefore, the gospel presenting us with more illustrious notices of the glorious nature of God, is so far from indulging any disesteem of him, that it requires of us a greater reverence suitable to the height of its discovery, above what could be spelt in the book of creation; the gospel worship is therefore expressed by trembling (Hos. xi. 10): “They shall walk after the Lord; he shall roar like a lion; when he shall roar, then the children shall tremble from the West.” When the lion of the tribe of Judah shall lift up his powerful voice in the gospel, the western Gentiles shall run trembling to walk after the Lord. God hath alway attended his greatest manifestations with remarkable characters of majesty, to create a reverence in his creature: he caused the “wind to march before him,” to cut the mountain, when he manifested himself to Elijah (1 Kings xix. 11); “A wind and a cloud of fire,” before that magnificent vision to Ezekiel (chap. i. 4, 5); “Thunders and lightnings” before the giving the law (Exod. xix. 18); and a “mighty wind” before the giving the Spirit (Acts ii.): God requires of us an awe of him in the very act of performance. The angels are pure, and cannot fear him as sinners, but in “reverence they cover their faces” when they stand before him (Isa. vi. 2): his power should make us reverence him, as we are creatures; his justice, as we are sinners; his goodness, as we are restored creatures. “God is clothed with unspeakable majesty; the glory of his face shines brighter than the lights of heaven in their beauty. Before him the angels tremble, and the heavens melt; we ought not therefore to come before him with the sacrifice of fools, nor tender a duty to him, without falling low upon our faces, and bowing the knees of our hearts in token of reverence.”517 Not a slavish fear, like that of devils; but a “godly fear,” like that of saints (Heb. xii. 28); joined with a sense of an unmovable kingdom, becometh us; and this the apostle calls a grace necessary to make our service acceptable, and therefore the grace necessary to make it spiritual, since nothing finds admission to God, but what is of a spiritual nature. The consideration of his glorious nature should imprint an awful respect upon our souls to him; his goodness should make his majesty more adorable to us, as his majesty makes his goodness more admirable in his condescensions to us. As God is a Spirit, our worship must be spiritual; and being, as he is, the supreme Spirit, our worship must be reverential; we must observe the state he takes upon him in his ordinances; “He is in heaven, we upon the earth;” we must not therefore be “hasty to utter anything before God” (Eccles. v. 7). Consider him a Spirit in the highest heavens, and ourselves spirits dwelling in a dreggy earth. Loose and garish frames debase him to our own quality; slight postures of spirit intimate him to be a slight and mean being; our being in covenant with him, must not lower our awful apprehensions of him; as he is the Lord thy God, it is a glorious and fearful name, or wonderful (Deut. xxviii. 58); though he lay by his justice to believers, he doth not lay by his majesty; when we have a confidence in him, because he is the Lord our God, we must have awful thoughts of his majesty, because his name is glorious. God is terrible from his holy places, in regard of the great things he doth for his Israel (Psalm lxviii. 35); we should behave ourselves with that inward honor and respect of him, as if he were present to our bodily eyes; the higher apprehensions we have of his majesty, the greater awe will be upon our hearts in his presence, and the greater spirituality in our acts. We should manage our hearts so, as if we had a view of God in his heavenly glory.

8. Spiritual worship is to be performed with humility in our spirits. This is to follow upon the reverence of God. As we are to have high thoughts of God, that we may not debase him; we must have low thoughts of ourselves, not to vaunt before him. When we have right notions of the Divine Majesty, we shall be as worms in our own thoughts, and creep as worms into his presence; we can never consider him in his glory, but we have a fit opportunity to reflect upon ourselves, and consider how basely we revolted from him, and how graciously we are restored by him. As the gospel affords us greater discoveries of God’s nature, and so enhanceth our reverence of him, so it helps us to a fuller understanding of our own vileness and weakness, and therefore is proper to engender humility; the more spiritual and evangelical therefore any service is, the more humble it is. That is a spiritual service that doth most manifest the glory of God; and this cannot be manifested by us, without manifesting our own emptiness and nothingness. The heathens were sensible of the necessity of humility by the light of nature;518 after the name of God, signified by Εἶ inscribed on the temple at Delphos, followed Γνῶθί σεαυτον, whereby was insinuated, that when we have to do with God, who is the only Ens, we should behave ourselves with a sense of our own infirmity, and infinite distance from him. As a person, so a duty leavened with pride, hath nothing of sincerity, and therefore nothing of spirituality in it (Hab. ii. 4): “His soul which is lifted up, is not upright in him.” The elders that were crowned by God to be kings and priests, to offer spiritual sacrifices, uncrown themselves in their worship of him, and cast down their ornaments at “his feet”519 the Greek word to worship, προσκυνεῖν, signifies to creep like a dog upon his belly before his master; to lie low. How deep should our sense be of the privilege of God’s admitting us to his worship, and affording us such a mercy under our deserts of wrath! How mean should be our thoughts, both of our persons and performances! How patiently should we wait upon God for the success of worship! How did Abraham, the father of the faithful, equal himself to the earth, when he supplicated the God of heaven, and devote himself to him under the title of very “dust and ashes!” (Gen. xviii. 27.) Isaiah did but behold an evangelical apparition of God and the angels worshipping him, and presently reflects upon his “own uncleanness” (Isa. vi. 5). God’s presence both requires and causes humility. How lowly is David in his own opinion, after a magnificent duty performed by himself and his people (1 Chron. xxix. 14): “Who am I? and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly?” The more spiritual the soul is in its carriage to God, the more humble it is; and the more gracious God is in his communications to the soul, the lower it lies. God commanded not the fiercer creatures to be offered to him in sacrifices, but lambs and kids, meek and lowly creatures; none that had stings in their tails, or venom in their tongues520 The meek lamb was the daily sacrifice; the doves were to be offered by pairs; God would not have honey mixed with any sacrifice (Lev. ii. 11), that breeds choler, and choler pride; but oil he commanded to be used, that supples and mollifies the parts. Swelling pride and boiling passions render our services carnal; they cannot be spiritual, without a humble sweetness and an innocent sincerity; one grain of this transcends the most costly sacrifices: a contrite heart puts a gloss upon worship (Psalm li. 16, 17). The departure of men and angels from God, began in pride; our approaches and return to him must begin in humility; and therefore all those graces, which are bottomed on humility, must be acted in worship, as faith, and a sense of our own indigence. Our blessed Saviour, the most spiritual worshipper, prostrated himself in the garden with the greatest lowliness, and offered himself upon the cross a sacrifice with the greatest humility. Melted souls in worship have the most spiritual conformity to the person of Christ in the state of humiliation, and his design in that state; as worship without it is not suitable to God, so neither is it advantageous for us. A time of worship is a time of God’s communication. The vessel must be melted to receive the mould it is designed for; softened wax is fittest to receive a stamp, and a spiritually melted soul fittest to receive a spiritual impression. We cannot perform duty in an evangelical and spiritual strain, without the meltingness and meanness in ourselves which the gospel requires.

9. Spiritual worship is to be performed with holiness. God is a holy Spirit; a likeness to God must attend the worshipping of God as he is; holiness is alway in season; “It becomes his house forever” (Psalm xci. 5). We can never serve the living God till we “have consciences purged from dead works” (Heb. ix. 14). Dead works in our consciences are unsuitable to God, an eternal living Spirit. The more mortified the heart, the more quickened the service. Nothing can please an infinite purity but that which is pure; since God is in his glory, in his ordinances, we must not be in our filthiness. The holiness of his Spirit doth sparkle in his ordinances; the holiness of our spirits ought also to sparkle in our observance of them. The holiness of God is most celebrated in the worship of angels;521 spiritual worship ought to be like angelical; that cannot be with souls totally impure. As there must be perfect holiness to make a worship perfectly spiritual; so there must be some degree of holiness to make it in any measure spiritual. God would have all the utensils of the sanctuary employed about his service to be holy; the inwards of the sacrifice were to be rinsed thrice.522 The crop and feathers of sacrificed doves were to be hung eastward towards the entrance of the temple, at a distance from the holy of holies, where the presence of God was most eminent (Lev. i. 16). When Aaron was to go into the holy of holies, he was to “sanctify himself” in an extraordinary manner (Lev. xvi. 4). The priests were to be bare‑footed in the temple, in the exercise of their office; shoes alway were to be put off upon holy ground: “Look to thy foot when thou goest to the house of God,” saith the wise man (Eccles. v. 1). Strip the affections, the feet of the soul, of all the dirt contracted; discard all earthly and base thoughts from the heart. A beast was not to touch the Mount Sinai, without losing his life; nor can we come near the throne with brutish affections, without losing the life and fruit of the worship. An unholy soul degrades himself from a spirit to a brute, and the worship from spiritual to brutish. If any unmortified sin be found in the life, as it was in the comers to the temple, it taints and pollutes the worship (Isa. i. 15). All worship is an acknowledgment of the excellency of God as he is holy; hence it is called, a “sanctifying God’s name” (Jer. vii. 9, 10); how can any person sanctify God’s name that hath not a holy resemblance to his nature? If he be not holy as he is holy, he cannot worship him according to his excellency in spirit and in truth; no worship is spiritual wherein we have not a communion with God. But what intercourse can there be between a holy God, and an impure creature; between light and darkness? We have no fellowship with him in any service, unless “we walk in the light,” in service and out of service, as he is light (1 John i. 7). The heathen thought not their sacrifices agreeable to God without washing their hands; whereby they signified the preparation of their hearts, before they made the oblation: clean hands without a pure heart, signify nothing; the frame of our hearts must answer the purity of the outward symbols (Psalm xxvi. 6): “I will wash my hands in innocence, so will I compass thine altar, O Lord;” he would observe the appointed ceremonies, but not without “cleansing his heart as well as his hands.” Vain man is apt to rest upon outward acts and rites of worship; but this must alway be practised; the words are in the present tense, “I wash,” “I compass.” Purity in worship ought to be our continual care. If we would perform a spiritual service, wherein we would have communion with God, it must be in holiness; if we would walk with Christ, it must be in “white” (Rev. iii. 4), alluding to the white garments the priests put on, when they went to perform their service; as without this we cannot see God in heaven, so neither can we see the beauty of God in his own ordinances.

10. Spiritual worship is performed with spiritual ends, with raised aims at the glory of God. No duty can be spiritual that hath a carnal aim; where God is the sole object, he ought to be the principal end; in all our actions he is to be our end, as he is the principle of our being; much more in religious acts, as he is the object of our worship. The worship of God in Scripture is expressed by the “seeking of him” (Heb. xi. 6); him, not ourselves; all is to be referred to God. As we are “not to live to ourselves, that being the sign of a carnal state, so we are not to worship for ourselves” (Rom. xiv. 7, 8). As all actions are denominated good from their end, as well as their object, so upon the same account they are denominated spiritual. The end spiritualizeth our natural actions, much more our religious; then are our faculties devoted to him when they centre in him. If the intention be evil, there is nothing but darkness in the whole service (Luke xi. 34). The first institution of the Sabbath, the solemn day for worship, was to contemplate the glory of God in his stupendous works of creation, and render him a homage for them (Rev. iv. 11): “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive honor, glory, and power; for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.” No worship can be returned without a glorifying of God; and we cannot actually glorify him, without direct aims at the promoting his honor. As we have immediately to do with God, so we are immediately to mind the praise of God. As we are not to content ourselves with habitual grace, but be rich in the exercise of it in worship, so we are not to acquiesce in the habitual aims at the glory of God, without the actual overflowings of our hearts in those aims. It is natural for man to worship God for self; self‑righteousness is the rooted aim of man in his worship since his revolt from God, and being sensible it is not to be found in his natural actions, he seeks for it in his moral and religious. By the first pride we flung God off from being our sovereign, and from being our end, since a pharisaical spirit struts it in nature, not only to do things to be seen of men, but to be admired by God (Isa. lviii. 3): “Wherefore have we fasted and thou takest no knowledge?” This is to have God worship them, instead of being worshipped by them. Cain’s carriage after his sacrifice testified some base end in his worship; he came not to God as a subject to a sovereign, but as if he had been the sovereign, and God the subject; and when his design is not answered, and his desire not gratified, he proves more a rebel to God, and a murderer of his brother. Such base scents will rise up in our worship from the body of death which cleaves to us, and mix themselves with our services, as weeds with the fish in the net. David, therefore, after his people had offered willingly to the temple, begs of God that their “hearts might be prepared to him” (1 Chron. xxix. 18); that their hearts might stand right to God, without any squinting to self‑ends. Some present themselves to God, as poor men offer a present to a great person; not to honor him, but to gain for themselves a reward richer than their gift. “What profit is it that we have kept his ordinance?” &c. (Mal. iii. 14). Some worship him, intending thereby to make him amends for the wrong they have done him; wipe off their scores, and satisfy their debts; as though a spiritual wrong could be recompensed with a bodily service, and an infinite Spirit be outwitted and appeased by a carnal flattery. Self is the spirit of carnality; to pretend a homage to God, and intend only the advantage of self, is rather to mock him than worship him. When we believe that we ought to be satisfied, rather than God glorified, we set God below ourselves, imagine that he should submit his own honor to our advantage; we make ourselves more glorious than God, as though we were not made for him, but he hath a being only for us; this is to have a very low esteem of the majesty of God. Whatsoever any man aims at in worship above the glory of God, that he forms as an idol to himself instead of God, and sets up a golden image, God counts not this as a worship. The offerings made in the wilderness for forty years together, God esteemed as not offered to him (Amos v. 25): “Have you offered to me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?” They did it not to God, but to themselves; for their own security, and the attainment of the possession of the promised land. A spiritual worshipper performs not worship for some hopes of carnal advantage; he uses ordinances as means to bring God and his soul together, to be more fitted to honor God in the world, in his particular place; when he hath been inflamed and humble in any address or duty, he gives God the glory; his heart suits the doxology at the end of the Lord’s Prayer, ascribes the kingdom, power, and glory to God alone, and if any viper of pride starts out upon him, he endeavors presently to shake it off. That which was the first end of our framing, ought to be the chief end of our acting towards God; but when men have the same ends in worship as brutes, the satisfaction of a sensitive part, the service is no more than brutish. The acting for a sensitive end is unworthy the majesty of God to whom we address, and unbecoming a rational creature. The acting for a sensitive end is not a rational, much less can it be a spiritual service; though the act may be good in itself, yet not good in the agent, because he wants a due end. We are, then, spiritual, when we have the same end in our redeemed services, as God had in his redeeming love, viz., his own glory.

11. Spiritual service is offered to God in the name of Christ. Those are only “spiritual sacrifices, that are offered up to God by Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. ii. 5); that are the fruits of the sanctification of the Spirit, and offered in the mediation of the Son: as the altar sanctifies the gift, so doth Christ spiritualize our services for God’s acceptation; as the fire upon the altar separated the airy and finer parts of the sacrifice from the terrene and earthly; this is the golden altar upon which the prayers of the saints are offered up “before the throne” (Rev. viii. 3). As all that we have from God streams through his blood, so all that we give to God ascends by virtue of his merits. All the blessings God gave to the Israelites came out of Sion,523 that is, from the gospel hid under the law; all the duties we present to God are to be presented in Sion, in an evangelical manner; all our worship must be bottomed on Christ. God hath intended that we should “honor the Son, as we honor the Father;” as we honor the Father by offering our service only to him, so we are to honor the Son by offering it only in his name; in him alone God is well pleased, because in him alone he finds our services spiritual and worthy of acceptation; we must therefore take fast hold of him with our spirits, and the faster we hold him, the more spiritual is our worship. To do anything in the name of Christ, is not to believe the worship shall be accepted for itself, but to have our eye fixed upon Christ for the acceptance of it, and not to rest upon the work done, as carnal people are apt to do. The creatures present their acknowledgments to God by man; and man can only present his by Christ. It was utterly unlawful after the building of the temple, to sacrifice anywhere else; the temple being a type of Christ, it is utterly unlawful for us to present our services in any other name than his. This is the way to be spiritual. If we consider God out of Christ, we can have no other notions but those of horror and bondage. We behold him a Spirit, but environed with justice and wrath for sinners; but the consideration of him in Christ, veils his justice, draws forth his mercy, represents him more a father than a judge. In Christ the aspect of justice is changed, and by that the temper of the creature; so that in and by this Mediator, we “can have a spiritual boldness, and access to God with confidence” (Eph. iii. 12), whereby the spirit is kept from benumbness and distraction, and our souls quickened and refined. The thoughts kept upon Christ in a duty of worship quickly elevates the soul, and benumbness the whole service. Sin makes our services black, and the blood of Christ makes both our persons and services white.

To conclude this head. God is a Spirit infinitely happy, therefore we must approach to him with cheerfulness; he is a Spirit of infinite majesty, therefore we must come before him with reverence; he is a Spirit infinitely high, therefore we must offer up our sacrifices with the deepest humility; he is a Spirit infinitely holy, therefore we must address him with purity; he is a Spirit infinitely glorious, we must therefore acknowledge his excellency in all that we do, and in our measures contribute to his glory, by having the highest aims in his worship; he is a Spirit infinitely provoked by us, therefore we must offer up our worship in the name of a pacifying Mediator and Intercessor.

III. The third general is, Why a spiritual worship is due to God, and to be offered to him. We must consider the object of worship, and the subject of worship; the worshipper and the worshipped. God is a spiritual Being; man is a reasonable creature. The nature of God informs us what is fit to be presented to him; our own nature informs us what is fit to be presented by us.

Reason I. The best we have is to be presented to God in worship. For,

1. Since God is the most excellent Being, he is to be served by us with the most excellent thing we have, and with the choicest veneration. God is so incomprehensibly excellent, that we cannot render him what he deserves: we must render him what we are able to offer: the best of our affections; the flower of our strength; the cream and top of our spirits. By the same reason that we are bound to give God the best worship, we must offer it to him in the best manner. We cannot give to God anything too good for so blessed a Being; God being a “great king,” slight services become not his majesty (Mal. i. 13, 14); it is unbecoming the majesty of God, and the reason of a creature, to give him a trivial thing; it is unworthy to bestow the best of our strength on our lust, and the worst and weakest in the service of God. An infinite Spirit should have affections as near to infinite as we can; as he is a Spirit without bounds, so he should have a service without limits; when we have given him all, we cannot serve him according to the excellency of his nature (Josh. xxiv. 19); and shall we give him less than all? His infinite excellency, and our dependence on him as creatures, demands the choicest adoration; our spirits, being the noblest part of our nature, are as due to him as the service of our bodies, which are the vilest; to serve him with the worst only, is to diminish his honor.

2. Under the law, God commanded the best to be offered him. He would have the males, the best of the kind; the fat, the best of the creature;524 he commanded them to offer him the firstlings of the flock; not the firstlings of the womb, but the firstlings of the year: the Jewish cattle having two breeding‑times, in the beginning of the spring and the beginning of September; the latter breed was the weaker, which Jacob knew (Gen. xxx.) when he laid the rods before the cattle when they were strong in the spring, and withheld them when they were feeble in the autumn. One reason (as the Jews say) why God accepted not the offering of Cain was, because he brought the meanest, not the best of the fruit; and therefore, it is said, only that he brought of the “fruit” of the ground (Gen. iv. 3), not the first of the fruit, or the best of the fruit, as Abel, who brought the “firstling” of his flock, and the fat thereof (ver. 4).

3. And this the heathen practised by the light of nature. They for the most part offered males, as being more worthy; and burnt the male, not the female frankincense, as it is divided into those two kinds; they offered the best, when they offered their children to Moloch. Nothing more excellent than man, and nothing dearer to parents than their children, which are part of themselves. When the Israelites would have a golden calf for a representation of God, they would dedicate their jewels, and strip their wives and children of their richest ornaments, to show their devotion. Shall men serve their dumb idols with the best of their substance, and the strength of their souls; and shall the living God have a duller service from us, than idols had from them? God requires no such hard, but delightful worship from us, our spirits.

4. All creatures serve man, by the providential order of God, with the best they have. As we, by God’s appointment, receive from creatures the best they can give, ought we not with a free will to render to God the best we can offer? The beasts give us their best fat; the trees their best fruit; the sun its best light; the fountains their best streams; shall God order us the best from creatures, and we put him off with the worst from ourselves?

5. God hath given us the choicest thing he had—a Redeemer that was the power of God, and the wisdom of God; the best he had in heaven, his own Son, and in himself a sacrifice for us, that we might be enabled to present ourselves a sacrifice to him. And Christ offered himself for us, the best he had, and that with the strength of the Deity through the eternal Spirit; and shall we grudge God the best part of ourselves? As God would have a worship from his creature, so it must be with the best part of his creature. If we have “given ourselves to the Lord” (2 Cor. viii. 5), we can worship with no less than ourselves. What is the man without his spirit? If we are to worship God with all that we have received from him, we must worship him with the best part we have received from him; it is but a small glory we can give him with the best, and shall we deprive him of his right by giving him the worst? As what we are is from God, so what we are ought to be for God. Creation is the foundation of worship (Psalm c. 2, 3): “Serve the Lord with gladness; know ye that the Lord he is God; it is he that hath made us.” He hath ennobled us with spiritual affections; where is it fittest for us to employ them, but upon him? and at what time, but when we come solemnly to converse with him? Is it justice to deny him the honor of his best gift to us? our souls are more his gift to us, than anything in the world; other things are so given that they are often taken from us, but our spirits are the most durable gift. Rational faculties cannot be removed without a dissolution of nature. Well then, as he is God, he is to be honored with all the propensions and ardor that the infiniteness and excellency of such a Being require, and the incomparable obligations he hath laid upon us in this state deserve at our hands. In all our worship, therefore, our minds ought to be filled with the highest admiration, love, and reverence. Since our end was to glorify God, we answer not our end, and honor him not, unless we give him the choicest we have.525

Reason II. We cannot else act towards God according to the nature of rational creatures. Spiritual worship is due to God, because of his nature; and due from us, because of our nature. As we are to adore God, so we are to adore him as men; the nature of a rational creature makes this impression upon him; he cannot view his own nature without having this duty striking upon his mind. As he knows, by inspection into himself, that there was a God that made him; so, that he is made to be in subjection to God, subjection to him in his spirit as well as his body, and ought morally to testify this natural dependence on him. His constitution informs him that he hath a capacity to converse with God; that he cannot converse with him, but by those inward faculties; if it could be managed by his body without his spirit, beasts might as well converse with God as men. It can never be a “reasonable service” (Rom. xii. 1), as it ought to be, unless the reasonable faculties be employed in the management of it; it must be a worship prodigiously lame, without the concurrence of the chiefest part of man with it. As we are to act conformably to the nature of the object, so also to the nature of our own faculties. Our faculties, in the very gift of them to us, were destined to be exercised, about what? What? All other things but the Author of them. It is a conceit cannot enter into the heart of a rational creature, that he should act as such a creature in other things, and as a stone in things relating to the donor of them; as a man, with his mind about him in the affairs of the world; as a beast, without reason in his acts towards God. If a man did not employ his reason in other things, he would be an unprofitable creature in the world: if he do not employ his spiritual faculties in worship, he denies them the proper end and use for which they were given him; it is a practical denial that God hath given him a soul, and that God hath any right to the exercise of it. If there were no worship appointed by God in the world, the natural inclination of man to some kind of religion would be in vain; and if our inward faculties were not employed in the duties of religion they would be in vain; the true end of God in the endowment of us with them would be defeated by us, as much as lies in us, if we did not serve him with that which we have from him solely at his own cost. As no man can with reason conclude, that the rest commanded on the Sabbath and the sanctification of it, was only a rest of the body, that had been performed by the beasts as well as men, but some higher end was aimed at for the rational creature; so no man can think that the command for worship terminated only in the presence of the body; that God should give the command to man as a reasonable creature, and expect no other service from him than that of a brute. God did not require a worship from man for any want he had, or any essential honor that could accrue to him, but that men might testify their gratitude to him, and dependence on him. It is the most horrid ingratitude not to have lively and deep sentiments of gratitude after such obligations, and not to make those due acknowledgments that are proper for a rational creature. Religion is the highest and choicest act of a reasonable creature; no creature under heaven is capable of it that wants reason. As it is a violation of reason not to worship God, so it is no less a violation of reason not to worship him with the heart and spirit; it is a high dishonor to God, and defeats him not only of the service due to him from man, but that which is due to him from all the creatures. Every creature, as it is an effect of God’s power and wisdom, doth passively worship God; that is, it doth afford matter of adoration to man that hath reason to collect it, and return it where it is due. Without the exercise of the soul, we can no more hand it to God, than without such an exercise, we can gather it from the creature; so that by this neglect, the creatures are restrained from answering their chief end; they cannot pay any service to God without man; nor can man, without the employment of his rational faculties, render a homage to God, any more than beasts can. This engagement of our inward power stands firm and inviolable, let the modes of worship be what they will, or the changes of them by the sovereign authority of God never so frequent; this could not expire or be changed as long as the nature of man endured. As man had not been capable of a command for worship, unless he had been endued with spiritual faculties; so he is not active in a true practice of worship, unless they be employed by him in it. The constitution of man makes this manner of worship perpetually obligatory, and the oblation can never cease, till man cease to be a creature furnished with such faculties; in our worship, therefore, if we would act like rational creatures, we should extend all the powers of our souls to the utmost pitch, and essay to have apprehensions of God, equal to the excellency of his nature, which, though we may attempt, we can never attain.

Reason III. Without this engagement of our spirits no act is an act of worship. True worship, being an acknowledgment of God and the perfections of his nature, results only from the soul, that being only capable of knowing God and those perfections which are the object and motive of worship. The posture of the body is but to testify the inward temper and affection of the mind; if, therefore, it testifies what it is not, it is a lie, and no worship; the cringes a beast may be taught to make to an altar may as well be called worship, since a man thinks as little of that God he pretends to honor, as the beast doth of the altar to which he bows. Worship is a reverent remembrance of God, and giving some honor to him with the intention of the soul; it cannot justly have the name of worship, that wants the essential part of it; it is an ascribing to God the glory of his nature, an owning subjection and obedience to him as our sovereign Lord; this is as impossible to be performed without the spirit, as that there can be life and motion in a body without a soul; it is a drawing near to God, not in regard of his essential presence, so all things are near to God, but in an acknowledgment of his excellency, which is an act of the spirit; without this, the worst of men in a place of worship are as near to God as the best. The necessity of the conjunction of our soul ariseth from the nature of worship, which being the most serious thing we can be employed in, the highest converse with the highest object requires the choicest temper of spirit in the performance. That cannot be an act of worship, which is not an act of piety and virtue; but there is no act of virtue done by the members of the body, without the concurrence of the powers of the soul. We may as well call the presence of a dead carcass in a place of worship, an act of religion, as the presence of a living body without an intent spirit; the separation of the soul from one is natural, the other moral; that renders the body lifeless, but this renders the act loathsome to God; as the being of the soul gives life to the body, so the operation of the soul gives life to the actions. As he cannot be a man that wants the form of a man, a rational soul; so that cannot be a worship that wants an essential part, the act of the spirit; God will not vouchsafe any acts of man so noble a title without the requisite qualifications (Hos. v. 6): “They shall go with their flocks and their herds to seek the Lord,” &c. A multitude of lambs and bullocks for sacrifice, to appease God’s anger. God would not give it the title of worship, though instituted by himself, when it wanted the qualities of such a service. “The spirit of whoredom was in the midst of them” (v. 4). In the judgment of our Saviour, it is a “vain worship, when the traditions of men are taught for the doctrines of God” (Matt. xv. 9); and no less vain must it be, when the bodies of men are presented to supply the place of their spirits. As an omission of duty is a contempt of God’s sovereign authority, so the omission of the manner of it is a contempt of it, and of his amiable excellency; and that which is a contempt and mockery, can lay no just claim to the title of worship.

Reason IV. There is in worship an approach of God to man. It was instituted to this purpose, that God might give out his blessings to man; and ought not our spirits to be prepared and ready to receive his communications? We are, in such acts, more peculiarly in his presence. In the Israelites hearing the law, it is said, God was to “come among them” (Exod. xix. 10, 11). Then, men are said to stand before the Lord (Deut. x. 8): “God, before whom I stand” (1 Kings, xvii. 1): that is, whom I worship; and therefore when Cain forsook the worship of God settled in his father’s family, he is said, “to go out from the presence of the Lord” (Gen. iv. 16). God is essentially present in the world; graciously present in his church. The name of the evangelical city is Jehovah Shammah (Ezek. xlviii. 35), “the Lord is there.” God is more graciously present in the evangelical institutions than in the legal; he “loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob” (Ps. lxxxvii. 2); his evangelical law and worship which was to go forth from Zion, as the other did from Sinai (Mic. iv. 2). God delights to approach to men, and converse with them in the worship instituted in the gospel, more than in all the dwellings of Jacob. If God be graciously present, ought not we to be spiritually present? A lifeless carcass service becomes not so high and delectable a presence as this; it is to thrust him from us, not invite him to us; it is to practise in the ordinances what the prophet predicts concerning men’s usage of our Saviour (Isa. liii. 2): “There is no form, no comeliness, nor beauty that we should desire him.” A slightness in worship reflects upon the excellency of the object of worship. God and his worship are so linked together, that whosoever thinks the one not worth his inward care, esteems the other not worth his inward affection. How unworthy a slight is it of God, who proffers the opening his treasure; the re‑impressing his image; conferring his blessings; admits us into his presence, when he hath no need for us; who hath millions of angels to attend him in his court, and celebrate his praise! He that worships not God with his spirit, regards not God’s presence in his ordinances, and slights the great end of God in them, and that perfection he may attain by them. We can only expect what God hath promised to give, when we tender to him what he hath commanded us to present. If we put off God with a shell, he will put us off with a husk. How can we expect his heart, when we do not give him ours; or hope for the blessing needful for us, when we render not the glory due to him? It cannot be an advantageous worship without spiritual graces; for those are uniting, and union is the ground of all communion.

Reason V. To have a spiritual worship is God’s end in the restoration of the creature, both in redemption by his Son and sanctification by his spirit. A fitness for spiritual offerings was the end of the “coming of Christ” (Mal. iii. 3); he should purge them as gold and silver by fire, a spirit burning up their dross, melting them into a holy compliance with and submission to God. To what purpose? That they may offer to the lord an offering in righteousness; a pure offering from a purified spirit; he came to “bring us to God” (1 Pet. iii. 18) in such a garb, as that we might be fit to converse with him. Can we be thus, without a fixedness of our spirits on him? The offering of spiritual sacrifices is the end of making any a “spiritual habitation” and a “holy priesthood” (1 Pet. ii. 5). We can no more be worshippers of God without a worshipper’s nature, than a man can be a man without human nature. As man was at first created for the honor and worship of God, so the design of restoring that image which was defaced by sin tends to the same end. We are not brought to God by Christ, nor are our services presented to him, if they be without our spirits; would any man that undertakes to bring another to a prince, introduce him in a slovenly and sordid habit, such a garb that he knows hateful to him? or bring the clothes or skin of a man stuffed with straw, instead of the person? to come with our skins before God, without our spirits, is contrary to the design of God in redemption and regeneration. If a carnal worship would have pleased God, a carnal heart would have served his turn, without the expense of his Spirit in sanctification. He bestows upon man a spiritual nature, that he may return to him a spiritual service; he enlightens the understanding, that he may have a rational service; and new moulds the will, that he may have a voluntary service. As it is the milk of the word wherewith he feeds us, so it is the service of the word wherewith we must glorify him. So much as there is of confusedness in our understanding, so much of starting and levity in our wills, so much of slipperiness and skipping in our affections; so much is abated of the due qualities of the worship of God, and so much we fall short of the end of redemption and sanctification.

Reason VI. A spiritual worship is to be offered to God, because no worship but that can be acceptable. We can never be secured of acceptance without it; he being a Spirit, nothing but the worship in spirit can be suitable to him: what is unsuitable, cannot be acceptable; there must be something in us, to make our services capable of being presented by Christ for an actual acceptation. No service is “acceptable to God by Jesus Christ,” but as it is a spiritual sacrifice, and offered by a spiritual heart (1 Pet. ii. 5). The sacrifice is first spiritual, before it be acceptable to God by Christ; when it is “an offering in righteousness,” it is then, and only then, pleasant to the Lord (Mal. iii. 3, 4). No prince would accept a gift that is unsuitable to his majesty, and below the condition of the person that presents it. Would he be pleased with a bottle of water for drink, from one that hath his cellar full of wine? How unacceptable must that be that is unsuitable to the Divine Majesty! And what can be more unsuitable than a withdrawing the operations of our souls from him, in the oblation of our bodies? We as little glorify God as God, when we give him only a corporeal worship, as the heathen did, when they represented him in a corporeal shape (Rom. i. 21); one as well as the other denies his spiritual nature: this is worse, for had it been lawful to represent God to the eye, it could not have been done but by a bodily figure suited to the sense; but since it is necessary to worship him, it cannot be by a corporeal attendance, without the operation of the Spirit. A spiritual frame is more pleasing to God than the highest exterior adornments, than the greatest gifts, and the highest prophetic illuminations. “The glory of the second temple” exceeded the glory of the first (Hag. ii. 8, 9). As God accounts the spiritual glory of ordinances most beneficial for us, so our spiritual attendance upon ordinances is most pleasing to him; he that offers the greatest services without it, offers but flesh (Hos. viii. 13): “They sacrifice flesh for the sacrifices of my offerings, but the Lord accepts them not.” Spiritual frames are the soul of religious services; all other carriages without them are contemptible to this spirit: we can never lay claim to that promise of God, none shall “seek my face in vain.” We affect a vain seeking of him, when we want a due temper of spirit for him; and vain spirits shall have vain returns: it is more contrary to the nature of God’s holiness to have communion with such, than it is contrary to the nature of light to have communion with darkness. To make use of this:

Use 1. First it serves for information.

1. If spiritual worship be required by God, how sad is it for them that they are so far from giving God a spiritual worship, that they render him no worship at all! I speak not of the neglect of public, but of private; when men present not a devotion to God from one year’s end to the other. The speech of our Saviour, that we must worship God in spirit and truth, implies that a worship is due to him from every one; that is the common impression upon the consciences of all men in the world, if they have not by some constant course in gross sins, hardened their souls, and stifled those natural sentiments. There was never a nation in the world without some kind of religion; and no religion was ever without some modes to testify a devotion; the heathens had their sacrifices and purifications; and the Jews, by God’s order, had their rites, whereby they were to express their allegiance to God. Consider,

(1.) Worship is a duty incumbent upon all men. It is a homage mankind owes to God, under the relation wherein he stands obliged to him; it is a prime and immutable justice to own our allegiance to him; it is as unchangeable a truth that God is to be worshipped, as that God is; he is to be worshipped as God, as creator, and therefore by all, since he is the Creator of all, the Lord of all, and all are his creatures, and all are his subjects. Worship is founded upon creation (Psalm c. 2, 3): it is due to God for himself and his own essential excellency, and therefore due from all; it is due upon the account of man’s nature; the human rational nature is the same in all. Whatsoever is due to God upon the account of man’s nature, and the natural obligations he hath laid upon man, is due from all men; because they all enjoy the benefits which are proper to their nature. Man in no state was exempted, nor can be exempted from it; in Paradise he had his Sabbath and sacraments; man therefore dissolves the obligation of a reasonable nature, by neglecting the worship of God. Religion is in the first place to be minded. As soon as Noah came out of the ark, he contrived not a habitation for himself, but an altar for the Lord, to acknowledge him the author of his preservation from the deluge (Gen. viii. 20): and wheresoever Abraham came, his first business was to erect an altar, and pay his arrears of gratitude to God, before he ran upon the score for new mercies (Gen. xii. 7; xiii. 4, 18): he left a testimony of worship wherever he came.

(2.) Wholly therefore to neglect it, is a high degree of atheism. He that calls not upon God, “saith in his heart, There is no God;” and seems to have the sentiments of natural conscience, as to God, stifled in him (Psalm xiv. 1, 4): it must arise from a conceit that there is no God, or that we are equal to him, adoration not being due from persons of an equal state; or that God is unable, or unwilling to take notice of the adoring acts of his creatures: what is any of these but an undeifying the supreme Majesty? When we lay aside all thoughts of paying any homage to him, we are in a fair way opinionatively to deny him, as much as we practically disown him. Where there is no knowledge of God, that is, no “acknowledgment of God,” a gap is opened to all licentiousness (Hos. iv. 1, 2); and that by degrees brawns the conscience, and razeth out the sense of God. Those forsake God that “forget his holy mountain” (Isa. lxv. 11); they do not practically own him as the Creator of their souls or bodies. It is the sin of Cain, who turning his back upon worship, is said to “go out from the presence of the Lord” (Gen. iv. 16). Not to worship him with our spirits, is against his law of creation: not to worship him at all, is against his act of creation; not to worship him in truth, is hypocrisy; not to worship him at all, is atheism; whereby we render ourselves worse than the worms in the earth, or a toad in a ditch.

(3.) To perform a worship to a false God, or to the true God in a false manner, seems to be less a sin than to live in perpetual neglect of it. Though it be directed to a false object instead of God, yet it is under the notion of a God, and so is an acknowledgment of such a Being as God in the world; whereas the total neglect of any worship, is a practical denying of the existence of any supreme Majesty. Whosoever constantly omits a public and private worship, transgresses against an universally received dictate; for all nations have agreed in the common notion of worshipping God, though they have disagreed in the several modes and rites whereby they would testify that adoration. By a worship of God, though superstitious, a veneration and reverence of such a being is maintained in the world; whereas by a total neglect of worship, he is virtually disowned and discarded, if not from his existence, yet from his providence and government of the world; all the mercies we breathe in are denied to flow from him. A foolish worship owns religion, though it bespatters it; as if a stranger coming into a country mistakes the subject for the prince, and pays that reverence to the subject which is due to the prince; though he mistakes the object, yet he owns an authority; or if he pays any respect to the true prince of that country after the mode of his own, though appearing ridiculous in the place where he is, he owns the authority of the prince; whereas the omission of all respect would be a contempt of majesty: and, therefore, the judgments of God have been more signal upon the sacrilegious contemners of worship among the heathens, than upon those that were diligent and devout in their false worship; and they generally owned the blessings received to the preservation of a sense and worship of a Deity among them. Though such a worship be not acceptable to God, and every man is bound to offer to God a devotion agreeable to his own mind; yet it is commendable, not as worship, but as it speaks an acknowledgment of such a being as God, in his power and creation, and his beneficence in his providence. Well, then, omissions of worship are to be avoided. Let no man execute that upon himself which God will pronounce at last as the greatest misery, and bid God depart from him, who will at last be loth to hear God bid him depart from him. Though man hath natural sentiments that God is to be worshipped, yet having an hostility in his nature, he is apt to neglect, or give it him in a slight manner; he therefore sets a particular mark and notice of attention upon the fourth command, “Remember thou keep holy the Sabbath day.” Corrupt nature is apt to neglect the worship of God, and flag in it. This command, therefore, which concerns his worship, he fortifies with several reasons. Nor let any neglect worship, because they cannot find their hearts spiritual in it. The further we are from God, the more carnal shall we be. No man can expect heat by a distance from the sunbeams, or other means of warmth. Though God commanded a circumcised heart in the Jewish services, yet he did not warrant a neglect of the outward testimonies of religion he had then appointed. He expected, according to his command, that they should offer the sacrifices, and practise the legal purification he had commanded; he would have them diligently observed, though he had declared that he imposed them only for a time; and our Saviour ordered the practice of those positive rites as long as the law remained unrepealed, as in the case of the leper (Mark xiv. 4). It is an injustice to refuse the offering ourselves to God according to the manner he hath in his wisdom prescribed and required. If spiritual worship be required by God, then,

2. It informs us, that diligence in outward worship is not to be rested in. Men may attend all their days on worship, with a juiceless heart and unquickened frame, and think to compensate the neglect of the manner with abundance of the matter of service.526 Outward expressions are but the badges and liveries of service, not the service itself. As the strength of sin lies in the inward frame of the heart, so the strength of worship in the inward complexion and temper of the soul. What do a thousand services avail, without cutting the throat of our carnal affections? What are loud prayers, but as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals, without divine charity? A pharisaical diligence in outward forms, without inward spirit, had no better a title vouchsafed by our Saviour than that of hypocritical. God desires not sacrifices, nor delights in burnt‑offerings: shadows are not to be offered instead of substance. God required the heart of man for itself, but commanded outward ceremonies as subservient to inward worship, and goads and spurs unto it. They were never appointed as the substance of religion, but auxiliaries to it. What value had the offering of the human nature of Christ been of, if he had not had a divine nature to qualify him to be the Priest? and what is the oblation of our bodies, without a priestly act of the spirit in the presentation of it? Could the Israelites have called themselves worshippers of God according to his order, if they had brought a thousand lambs that had died in a ditch, or been killed at home? They were to be brought living to the altar; the blood shed at the foot of it. A thousand sacrifices killed without had not been so valuable as one brought alive to the place of offering: one sound sacrifice is better than a thousand rotten ones. As God took no pleasure in the blood of beasts without its relation to the Antitype; so he takes no pleasure in the outward rites of worship, without faith in the Redeemer. To offer a body with a sapless spirit, is a sacrilege of the same nature with that of the Israelites when they offered dead beasts. A man without spiritual worship is dead while he worships, though by his diligence in the externals of it, he may, like the angel of the church of Sardis, “have a name to live” (Rev. iii. 1). What security can we expect from a multitude of dead services? What weak shields are they against the holy eye and revenging wrath of God! What man, but one out of his wits, would solicit a dead man to be his advocate or champion? Diligence in outward worship is not to be rested in.

Use II. shall be for examination. Let us try ourselves concerning the manner of our worship. We are now in the end of the world, and the dregs of time; wherein the apostle predicts there may be much of a form, and little of the power of godliness (2 Tim. iii. 1, 5); and, therefore, it stands us in hand to search into ourselves, whether it be not thus with us? whether there be as much reverence in our spirits as there may be devotion in our countenances and outward carriages.

1. How, therefore, are our hearts prepared to worship? Is our diligence greater to put our hearts in an adoring posture, than our bodies in a decent garb? or are we content to have a muddy heart, so we may have a dressed carcass? To have a spirit a cage of unclean birds, while we wipe the filth from the outside of the platter, is no better than a pharisaical devotion, and deserves no better a name than that of a whited sepulchre. Do we take opportunities to excite and quicken our spirits to the performance, and cry aloud with David, “Awake, awake, my glory!” Are not our hearts asleep when Christ knocks? When we hear the voice of God, “Seek my face;” do we answer him with warm resolutions, “Thy face, Lord, we will seek?” (Ps. xxvii. 8.) Do we comply with spiritual motions, and strike whilst the iron is hot? Is there not more of reluctancy than readiness? Is there a quick rising of the soul in reverence to the motion, as Eglon to Ehud; or a sullen hanging the head at the first approach of it? Or if our hearts seem to be engaged and on fire, what are the motives that quicken that fire? Is it only the blast of a natural conscience, fear of hell, desires of heaven, as abstracted from God? or is it an affection to God; an obedient will to please him; longings to enjoy him, as a holy and sanctifying God in his ordinances, as well as a blessed and glorified God in heaven? What do we expect in our approaches from him? that which may make divine impressions upon us, and more exactly conform us to the Divine nature? or do we design nothing but an empty formality, a rolling eye, and a filling the air with a few words, without any openings of heart to receive the incomes, which, according to the nature of the duty, might be conveyed to us? Can this be a spiritual worship? The soul then closely waits upon him, when its expectation is only from him (Psalm lxii. 6). Are our hearts seasoned with a sense of sin; a sight of our spiritual wants; raised notions of God; glowing affections to him; strong appetite after a spiritual fulness? Do we rouse up our sleepy spirits, and make a covenant with all that is within us to attend upon him? So much as we want of this, so much we come short of a spiritual worship. In Ps. lvii. 7 (“My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed”), David would fix his heart, before he would engage in a praising act of worship. He appeals to God about it, and that with doubling the expression, as being certain of an inward preparedness. Can we make the same appeals in a fixation of spirit?

2. How are our hearts fixed upon him; how do they cleave to him in the duty? Do we resign our spirits to God, and make them an entire holocaust, a whole burnt‑offering in his worship? or do we not willingly admit carnal thoughts to mix themselves with spiritual duties, and fasten our minds to the creature, under pretences of directing them to the Creator? Do we not pass a mere compliment upon God, by some superficial act of devotion; while some covetous, envious, ambitious, voluptuous imagination may possess our minds? Do we not invert God’s order, and worship a lust instead of God with our spirits, that should not have the least service, either from our souls or bodies, but with a spiritual disdain be sacrificed to the just indignation of God? How often do we fight against his will, while we cry, “Hail, Master!” instead of crucifying our own thoughts, crucifying the Lord of our lives; our outward carriage plausible, and our inward stark naught! Do we not often regard iniquity more than God in our hearts, in a time of worship?—roll some filthy imagination as a sweet morsel under our tongues, and taste more sweetness in that than in God? Do not our spirits smell rank of earth, while we offer to heaven; and have we not hearts full of thick clay, as their “hands were full of blood?” (Isa. i. 15.) When we sacrifice, do we not wrap up our souls in communion with some sordid fancy, when we should entwine our spirits about an amiable God? While we have some fear of him, may we not have a love to something else above him? This is to worship, or swear by the Lord, and by Malcham (Zeph. i. 5). How often doth an apish fancy render a service inwardly ridiculous, under a grave outward posture; skipping to the shop, warehouse, counting‑house, in the space of a short prayer! and we are before God as a Babel, a confusion of internal languages; and this in those parts of worship which are, in the right use, most agreeable to God, profitable for ourselves, ruinous to the kingdom of sin and Satan, and means to bring us into a closer communion with the Divine Majesty. Can this be a spiritual worship?

3. How do we act our graces in worship? Though the instrument be strung, if the strings be not wound up, what melody can be the issue? All readiness and alacrity discover a strength of nature; and a readiness in spirituals discovers a spirituality in the heart. As unaffecting thoughts of God are not spiritual thoughts, so unaffecting addresses to God are not spiritual addresses. Well, then, what awakenings, and elevations of faith and love have we? What strong outflowings of our souls to him? What indignation against sin? What admirations of redeeming grace? How low have we brought our corruptions to the footstool of Christ, to be made his conquered enemies? How straitly have we clasped our faith about the cross and throne of Christ, to become his intimate spouse? Do we in hearing hang upon the lips of Christ; in prayer take hold of God, and will not let him go; in confessions rend the caul of our hearts, and indite our souls before him with a deep humility? Do we act more by a soaring love than a drooping fear? So far as our spirits are servile, so far they are legal and carnal; so much as they are free and spontaneous, so much they are evangelical and spiritual. As men under the law are subject to the constraint of “bondage all their life‑time” (Heb. ii. 15), in all their worship; so under the gospel they are under a constraint of love (2 Cor. v. 14): how then are believing affections exercised, which are alway accompanied with holy fear; a fear of his goodness that admits us into his presence, and a fear to offend him in our act of worship? So much as we have of forced or feeble affection, so much we have of carnality.

4. How do we find our hearts after worship? By an after carriage we may judge of the spirituality of it.

(1.) How are we as to inward strength? When a worship is spiritually performed, grace is more strengthened, corruption more mortified; the soul, like Samson after his awakening, goes out with a renewed strength; as the inward man is renewed day by day, that is, every day; so it is renewed in every worship. Every shower makes the grass and fruit grow in good ground where the root is good, and the weeds where the ground is naught; the more prepared the heart is to obedience in other duties after worship, the more evidence there is that it hath been spiritual in the exercise of it. It is the end of God in every dispensation, as in that of John Baptist, “to make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (Luke i. 17): when the heart is by worship prepared for fresh acts of obedience, and hath a more exact watchfulness against the encroachments of sin. As carnal men after worship sprout up in spiritual wickedness, so do spiritual worshippers in spiritual graces; spiritual fruits are a sign of a spiritual frame. When men are more prone to sin after duty, it is a sign there was but little communion with God in it; and a greater strength of sin, because such an act is contrary to the end of worship which is the subduing of sin. It is a sign the physic hath wrought well, when the stomach hath a better appetite to its appointed food; and worship hath been well performed, when we have a stronger inclination to other acts well pleasing to God, and a more sensible distaste of those temptations we too much relished before. It is a sign of a good concoction, when there is a greater strength in the vitals of religion, a more eager desire to know God. When Moses had been praying to God, and prevailed with him, he puts up a higher request to “behold his glory” (Exod. xxxiii. 13, 18): when the appetite stands strong to fuller discoveries of God, it is a sign there hath been a spiritual converse with him.

(2.) How is it especially as to humility? The Pharisees’ worship was, without dispute, carnal; and we find them not more humble after all their devotions, but overgrown with more weeds of spiritual pride; they performed them as their righteousness. What men dare plead before God in his day, they plead before him in their hearts in their day; but this men will do at the day of judgment: “We have prophesied in thy name,” &c. (Matt. vii. 21). They show what tincture their services left upon their spirits; that which excludes them from any acceptation at the last day, excludes them from any estimation of being spiritual in this day. The carnal worshippers charge God with injustice in not rewarding them, and claim an acceptation as a compensation due to them (Isa. lviii. 3): “Wherefore have we afflicted our souls, and thou takest no knowledge?” A spiritual worshipper looks upon his duties with shame, as well as he doth upon his sins with confusion; and implores the mercy of God for the one as well as the other. In Psalm cxliii. 2, the prophet David, after his supplications, begs of God not to enter into judgment with him; and acknowledges any answer that God should give him, as a fruit of his faithfulness to his promise, and not the merit of his worship: “In thy faithfulness answer me,” &c. Whatsoever springs from a gracious principle, and is the breath of the Spirit, leaves a man more humble; whereas, that which proceeds from a stock of nature, hath the true blood of nature running in the veins of it; viz., that pride which is naturally derived from Adam. The breathing of the Divine Spirit is, in everything, to conform us to our Redeemer; that being the main work of his office, is his work in every particular christian act influenced by him. Now Jesus Christ, in all his actions, was an exact pattern of all humility. After the institution and celebration of the supper, a special act of worship in the church, though he had a sense of all the authority his Father had given him, yet he “humbles himself to wash his disciples’ feet” (John xiii. 2‒4); and after his sublime prayer (John xvii.), “He humbles himself to the death, and offers himself” to his murderers, because of his Father’s pleasure. (John xviii. 1): “When he had spoken those words, he went over the brook Kedron into the garden.” What is the end of God in appointing worship, is the end of a spiritual heart in offering it; not his own exaltation, but God’s glory. Glorifying the name of God is the fruit of that evangelical worship the Gentiles were in time to give to God (Ps. lxxxvi. 9): “All nations which thou hast made shall come and worship before thee, O Lord, and shall glorify thy name.” Let us examine, then, what debasing ourselves there is in a sense of our own vileness, and distance from so glorious a Spirit. Self‑denial is the heart of all gospel grace. Evangelical, spiritual worship cannot be without the ingredient of the main evangelical principle.

(3.) What delight is there after it? What pleasure is there, and what is the object of that pleasure? Is it the communion we have had with God, or a fluency in ourselves? Is it something which hath touched our hearts, or tickled our fancies? As the strength of sin is known by the delightful thoughts of it after the commission; so is the spirituality of duty, by the object of our delightful remembrance after the performance. It was a sign David was spiritual in the worship of God in the tabernacle, when he enjoyed it, because he longed for the spiritual part of it, when he was exiled from it; his desires were not only for liberty to revisit the tabernacle, but to see the “power and glory of God in the sanctuary,” as he had seen it before (Ps. lxiii. 2): his desires for it could not have been so ardent, if his reflection upon what had past had not been delightful; nor could his soul be poured out in him, for the want of such opportunities, if the remembrance of the converse he had had with God, had not been accompanied with a delightful relish (Ps. xlii. 4). Let us examine what delight we find in our spirits after worship.

Use III. is of comfort. And it is very comfortable to consider, that the smallest worship with the heart and spirit, flowing from a principle of grace, is more acceptable than the most pompous veneration; yea, if the oblation were as precious as the whole circuit of heaven and earth without it. That God that values a cup of cold water given to any as his disciple, will value a sincere service above a costly sacrifice. God hath his eye upon them that honor his nature; he would not “seek such to worship him,” if he did not intend to accept such a worship from them; when we therefore invoke him, and praise him, which are the prime parts of religion, he will receive it as a sweet savor from us, and overlook infirmities mixed with the graces. The great matter of discomfort, and that which makes us question the spirituality of worship, is the many starts of our spirits, and rovings to other things. For answer to which,

1. It is to be confessed that these starts are natural to us. Who is free from them? We bear in our bosoms a nest of turbulent thoughts, which, like busy gnats, will be buzzing about us while we are in our most inward and spiritual converses. Many wild beasts lurk in a man’s heart, as in a close and covert wood, and scarce discover themselves but at our solemn worship. No duty so holy, no worship so spiritual, that can wholly privilege us from them; they will jog us in our most weighty employments, that, as God said to Cain, sin lies at the door, and enters in, and makes a riot in our souls. As it is said of wicked men, “they cannot sleep” for multitude of thoughts (Eccles. v. 12); so it may be of many a good man, he cannot worship for multitude of thoughts; there will be starts, and more in our religious than natural employments; it is natural to man. Some therefore think, the bells tied to Aaron’s garments, between the pomegranates, were to warn the people, and recall their fugitive minds to the present service, when they heard the sound of them, upon the least motion of the high‑priest. The sacrifice of Abraham, the father or the faithful, was not exempt from the fowls pecking at it (Gen. xv. 11). Zechariah himself was drowsy in the midst of his visions, which being more amazing, might cause a heavenly intentness (Zech. iv. 1): “The angel that talked with me, came again and awaked me, as a man is awaked out of sleep.” He had been roused up before, but he was ready to drop down again; his heart was gone, till the angel jogged him. We may complain of such imaginations, as Jeremiah doth of the enemies of the Jews (Lam. iv. 19). Our persecutors are swifter than eagles; they light upon us with as much speed as eagles upon a carcass; they pursue us upon the mountain of divine institutions, and they lay wait for us in the wilderness, in our retired addresses to God. And this will be so while,

(1.) There is natural corruption in us. There are in a godly man two contrary principles, flesh and spirit, which endeavor to hinder one another’s acts, and are alway stirring upon the offensive or defensive part (Gal. v. 17). There is a body of death, continually exhaling its noisome vapors: it is a body of death in our worship, as well as in our natures; it snaps our resolutions asunder (Rom. vii. 19); it hinders us in the doing good, and contradicts our wills in the stirring up evil. This corruption being seated in all the faculties, and a constant domestic in them, has the greater opportunity to trouble us, since it is by those faculties that we spiritually transact with God; and it stirs more in the time of religious exercises, though it be in part mortified; as a wounded beast, though tired, will rage and strive to its utmost, when the enemy is about to fetch a blow at it. All duties of worship tend to the wounding of corruption; and it is no wonder to feel the striving of sin to defend itself and offend us, when we have our arms in our hands to mortify it, that the blow may be diverted which is directed against it. The apostles had aspiring thoughts; and being persuaded of an earthly kingdom, expected a grandeur in it; and though we find some appearance of it at other times, as when they were casting out devils, and gave an account of it to their Master, he gives them a kind of a check (Luke x. 20), intimating that there was some kind of evil in their rejoicing upon that account; yet this never swelled so high, as to break out into a quarrel who should be greatest, until they had the most solemn ordinance, the Lord’s supper, to quell it (Luke xxii. 24). Our corruption is like lime, which discovers not its fire by any smoke or heat, till you cast water, the enemy of fire, upon it; neither doth our natural corruption rage so much, as when we are using means to quench and destroy it.

(2.) While there is a devil, and we in his precinct. As he accuseth us to God, so he disturbs us in ourselves; he is a bold spirit, and loves to intrude himself when we are conversing with God: we read, that when the angels presented themselves before God, Satan comes among them (Job i. 6). Motions from Satan will thrust themselves in with our most raised and angelical frames; he loves to take off the edge of our spirits from God; he acts but after the old rate; he from the first envied God an obedience from man, and envied man the felicity of communion with God; he is unwilling God should have the honor of worship, and that we should have the fruit of it; he hath himself lost it, and therefore is unwilling we should enjoy it; and being subtle, he knows how to make impressions upon us suitable to our inbred corruptions, and assault us in the weakest part. He knows all the avenues to get within us (as he did in the temptation of Eve), and being a spirit, he wants not a power to dart them immediately upon our fancy; and being a spirit, and therefore active and nimble, he can shoot those darts faster than our weakness can beat them off. He is diligent also, and watcheth for his prey, and seeks to devour our services as well as our souls, and snatch our best morsels from us. We know he mixed himself with our Saviour’s retirements in the wilderness, and endeavored to fly‑blow his holy converse with his Father in the preparation to his mediatory work. Satan is God’s ape, and imitates the Spirit in the office of a remembrancer; as the Spirit brings good thoughts and divine promises to mind, to quicken our worship, so the devil brings evil things to mind, and endeavors to fasten them in our souls to disturb us; and though all the foolish starts we have in worship are not purely his issue, yet being of kin to him, he claps his hands, and sets them on like so many mastiffs, to tear the service in pieces. And both those distractions, which arise from our own corruption and from Satan, are most rife in worship, when we are under some pressing affliction. This seems to be David’s case, Ps. lxxxvi. when in ver. 11 he prays God to unite his heart to fear and worship his name; he seems to be under some affliction, or fear of his enemies: “O free me from those distractions of spirit, and those passions which arise in my soul, upon considering the designs of my enemies against me, and press upon me in my addresses to thee, and attendances on thee.” Job also in his affliction complains (Job xvii. 11) that “his purposes were broken off;” he could not make an even thread of thoughts and resolutions; they were frequently snapt asunder, like rotten yarn when one is winding it up. Good men and spiritual worshippers have lain under this trouble. Though they are a sign of weakness of grace, or some obstructions in the acting of strong grace, yet they are not alway evidences of a want of grace; what ariseth from our own corruption, is to be matter of humiliation and resistance; what ariseth from Satan, should edge our minds to a noble conquest of them. If the apostle did comfort himself with his disapproving of what rose from the natural spring of sin within him, with his consent to the law, and dissent from his lust; and charges it not upon himself, but upon the sin that dwelt in him, with which he had broken off the former league, and was resolved never to enter into amity with it; by the same reason we may comfort ourselves, if such thoughts are undelighted in, and alienate not our hearts from the worship of God by all their busy intrusions to interrupt us.