The principal (the regulative principle--RB) is in direct opposition to that maintained by Romanists and Prelatists, and I regret to say by lax Presbyterians, that what is not forbidden in the Scriptures is permitted.
The Church of England, in her twentieth article, concedes to the church "a power to decree rites and ceremonies," with this limitation alone upon its exercise, "that it is not lawful for the church to ordain anything that is contrary to God's written word.
" The principle of the discretionary power of the church in regard to things not commanded by Christ in his Word, was the chief fountain from which flowed the gradually increasing tide of corruptions that swept the Latin church into apostasy from the gospel of God's grace.
And as surely as causes produce their appropriate effects, and history repeats itself in obedience to that law, any Protestant church which embodies that principle in its creed is destined, sooner or later, to experience a similar fate.
The same, too, may be affirmed of a church which formally rejects it and practically conforms to it.
The reason is plain.
The only bridle that checks the degenerating tendency of the church--a tendency manifested in all ages--is the Word of God: for the Spirit of grace Himself ordinarily operates only in connection with that Word.
If this restraint be discarded, the downward lapse is sure.
The words of the great theologian, John Owen--and the British Isles have produced no greater--are solemn and deserve to be seriously pondered: "The principle that the church hath power to institute any thing or ceremony belonging to the worship of God, either as to matter or manner, beyond the observance of such circumstances as necessarily attend such ordinances as Christ Himself hath instituted, lies at the bottom of all the horrible superstition and idolatry, of all the confusion, blood, persecution, and wars, that have for so long a season spread themselves over the face of the Christian world.
" In view of such considerations as these, confirmed, as they are, by the facts of all past history, it is easy to see how irrelevant and baseless is the taunt flung by high churchmen, ritualists and latitudinarians of every stripe against the maintainers of the opposite principle, that they are narrow-minded bigots who take delight in insisting upon trivial details.
The truth is exactly the other way.
The principle upon which this cheap ridicule is cast is simple, broad, majestic.
It affirms only the things that God has commanded, the institutions and ordinances that he has prescribed, and besides this, discharges only a negative office which sweeps away every trifling invention of man's meretricious fancy.
It is not the supporters of this principle, but their opponents, who delight in insisting upon crossings, genuflexions and bowings to the east, upon vestments, altars and candles, upon organs and cornets, and "the dear antiphonies that so bewitch their prelates and their chapters with the goodly echo they make;" in fine, upon all that finical trumpery which, inherited from the woman clothed in scarlet, marks the trend backward to the Rubicon and the seven-hilled mart of souls.
But whatever others may think or do, Presbyterians cannot forsake this principle without the guilt of defection from their own venerable standards and from the testimonies sealed by the blood of their fathers.
Among the principles that the Reformers extracted from the rubbish of corruption and held up to the light again, none were more comprehensive, far-reaching and profoundly reforming than this.
It struck at the root of every false doctrine and practice, and demanded the restoration of the true.
Germany has been infinitely the worse because of Luther's failure to apply it to the full.
Calvin enforced it more fully.
The great French Protestant Church, with the exception of retaining a liturgical relic of popery, gave it a grand application, and France suffered an irreparable loss when she dragooned almost out of existence the body that maintained it.
John Knox stamped it upon the heart of the Scottish Church, and it constituted the glory of the English Puritans.
Alas! that it is passing into decadence in the Presbyterian churches of England, Scotland and America.
What remains but that those who still see it, and cling to it as to something dearer than life itself, should continue to utter, however feebly, however inoperatively, their unchanging testimony to its truth? It is the acropolis of the church's liberties, the palladium of her purity.
That gone, nothing will be left to hope, but to strain its gaze towards the dawn of the millennial day.
Then--we are entitled to expect--a more thorough-going and glorious reformation will be effected than any that has blessed the church and the world since the magnificent propagation of Christianity by the labors of the inspired apostles themselves.
The Church of England, in her twentieth article, concedes to the church "a power to decree rites and ceremonies," with this limitation alone upon its exercise, "that it is not lawful for the church to ordain anything that is contrary to God's written word.
" The principle of the discretionary power of the church in regard to things not commanded by Christ in his Word, was the chief fountain from which flowed the gradually increasing tide of corruptions that swept the Latin church into apostasy from the gospel of God's grace.
And as surely as causes produce their appropriate effects, and history repeats itself in obedience to that law, any Protestant church which embodies that principle in its creed is destined, sooner or later, to experience a similar fate.
The same, too, may be affirmed of a church which formally rejects it and practically conforms to it.
The reason is plain.
The only bridle that checks the degenerating tendency of the church--a tendency manifested in all ages--is the Word of God: for the Spirit of grace Himself ordinarily operates only in connection with that Word.
If this restraint be discarded, the downward lapse is sure.
The words of the great theologian, John Owen--and the British Isles have produced no greater--are solemn and deserve to be seriously pondered: "The principle that the church hath power to institute any thing or ceremony belonging to the worship of God, either as to matter or manner, beyond the observance of such circumstances as necessarily attend such ordinances as Christ Himself hath instituted, lies at the bottom of all the horrible superstition and idolatry, of all the confusion, blood, persecution, and wars, that have for so long a season spread themselves over the face of the Christian world.
" In view of such considerations as these, confirmed, as they are, by the facts of all past history, it is easy to see how irrelevant and baseless is the taunt flung by high churchmen, ritualists and latitudinarians of every stripe against the maintainers of the opposite principle, that they are narrow-minded bigots who take delight in insisting upon trivial details.
The truth is exactly the other way.
The principle upon which this cheap ridicule is cast is simple, broad, majestic.
It affirms only the things that God has commanded, the institutions and ordinances that he has prescribed, and besides this, discharges only a negative office which sweeps away every trifling invention of man's meretricious fancy.
It is not the supporters of this principle, but their opponents, who delight in insisting upon crossings, genuflexions and bowings to the east, upon vestments, altars and candles, upon organs and cornets, and "the dear antiphonies that so bewitch their prelates and their chapters with the goodly echo they make;" in fine, upon all that finical trumpery which, inherited from the woman clothed in scarlet, marks the trend backward to the Rubicon and the seven-hilled mart of souls.
But whatever others may think or do, Presbyterians cannot forsake this principle without the guilt of defection from their own venerable standards and from the testimonies sealed by the blood of their fathers.
Among the principles that the Reformers extracted from the rubbish of corruption and held up to the light again, none were more comprehensive, far-reaching and profoundly reforming than this.
It struck at the root of every false doctrine and practice, and demanded the restoration of the true.
Germany has been infinitely the worse because of Luther's failure to apply it to the full.
Calvin enforced it more fully.
The great French Protestant Church, with the exception of retaining a liturgical relic of popery, gave it a grand application, and France suffered an irreparable loss when she dragooned almost out of existence the body that maintained it.
John Knox stamped it upon the heart of the Scottish Church, and it constituted the glory of the English Puritans.
Alas! that it is passing into decadence in the Presbyterian churches of England, Scotland and America.
What remains but that those who still see it, and cling to it as to something dearer than life itself, should continue to utter, however feebly, however inoperatively, their unchanging testimony to its truth? It is the acropolis of the church's liberties, the palladium of her purity.
That gone, nothing will be left to hope, but to strain its gaze towards the dawn of the millennial day.
Then--we are entitled to expect--a more thorough-going and glorious reformation will be effected than any that has blessed the church and the world since the magnificent propagation of Christianity by the labors of the inspired apostles themselves.
SHARE
