The Second Commandment

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The second commandment embodies the principle that God is to be worshipped only in ways prescribed in Holy Scripture and that the Holy Scripture prescribes the whole content of worship, taught by Scripture itself. Before inquiring into the Scripture warrant for the principle in question, it may be in the interest of clarity and accuracy to attempt a more precise formulation of the principle. We may first state the principle positively, then set it in contrast to other views, and then mention certain qualifications of the principle.

Our initial statement of the principle is redundant. That God is to be worshipped only in ways prescribed in Holy Scripture is implied in the statement that the Holy Scripture prescribes the whole content of worship. The principle in question may then be stated simply by the latter proposition, i.e., the Holy Scripture prescribes the whole content of worship. By this is meant that all elements or parts of worship, all ways and modes of worship, all rites and ceremonies of worship, are prescribed by God Himself in His Word. This principle has universal reference to worship performed by men since the fall. In other words, it has equal application to the Old and the New Testament. It is also universal in that it is regulative of all types of worship, whether public, family or private. It is in order to observe the universality of this principle, although our special concern is with public worship under the New Testament.

This principle has been formulated in contrast to other views, particularly to the principle that anything not expressly forbidden in the Word of God is allowable in the worship of God. Quod Scriptura non vetat, permittit, “What Scripture does not forbid, it permits.” This is the principle of the Romish Church, also of Lutherans and Anglicans embodied in Article 20 of the Church of England”The church has power to decree rites and ceremonies . . . and yet it is not lawful for the church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God’s Word written.” The doctrine of the Calvinistic churches clearly formulated in the Westminster standards is sharply opposed to this: Quod Scriptura non iubet, vetat, “What Scripture does not command, it forbids.” The silence of Scripture is as real a prohibition as a positive injunction to abstain.

We may also contrast this principle with the ambiguously-stated principle that God is to be worshipped according to His Word. Of course it is true that God is to be worshipped according to His Word, but it is also true that the civil magistrate should administer his office according to the Word. In this sense, the worship of God would not be in principle regulated by the Word more directly than the conduct of civil government. Such is not the Calvinistic view of the character of the worship of God. Neither may we say that God’s Word provides us with general principles of worship, but leaves the particulars of practice to the discretion of the Church. The whole content of worship includes the specific acts of worship as well as the broad principal basis of these acts. The Word of God, moreover, obviously prescribes specific acts of worship even in quite minute detail, in addition to laying down the general principles of worship. This principle may not be construed as admitting that Scripture itself opens up in the New Testament economy an area of liberty in the worship of God, within which area nothing is prescribed by God and everything left to the judgment of men. The admission of such an area of liberty is tantamount to asserting the un-Reformed principle that anything not expressly forbidden in Scripture is allowable in the worship of God. On the Reformed principle, no part of the content of God’s worship can be regarded as belonging to the adiaphora, to the class of actions neither required nor forbidden by divine commandment. Whatever has not been commanded is ipso facto prohibited.

That no misunderstanding may exist with respect to this principle it is necessary to make two qualifications, both of which are stated in section six of the first chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith. First, that which may be derived by good and necessary consequence from the express statements of Scripture is no less binding than an express command itself. Approved example has equal validity with a direct command, and even where approved example and express command may both be lacking or uncertain, as in the baptism of infants, necessary inference from the doctrine and commandments plainly set forth in Scripture may sufficiently warrant a practice of worship.

Secondly, there are “some circumstances concerning the worship of God . . . common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the word, which are always to be observed.” That these circumstances constitute no part of the content of worship is clear from the following quotation from George Gillespie, who, in his Dispute Against the English Popish Ceremonies (1637), writes of the conditions “requisite in such a thing as the church hath power to prescribe by her laws: 1st. It must be only a circumstance of divine worship; no substantial part of it; no sacred, significant and efficacious ceremony. For the order and decency left to the definition for the church, as concerning the particulars of it, comprehendeth no more but mere circumstances.”(1) Again he writes, “We say truly of those several and changeable circumstances which are left to the determination of the church, that, being almost infinite, they were not particularly determinable in Scripture; for the particular determination of those occurring circumstances which were to be rightly ordered in the works of God’s service to the end of the world, and that ever according to the exigency of every present occasion and different case, should have filled the whole world with books. But as for other things pertaining to God’s worship, which are not to be reckoned among the circumstances of it, they being in number neither many, nor in change various, were most easily and conveniently determinable in Scripture.”(2)

An even more precise definition of the circumstances that may be ordered by the church in connection with God’s worship is given by John Owen in his Discourse Concerning Liturgies (1662). Owen distinguishes circumstances “such as follow actions as actions” from circumstances “which do not of their own accord, nor naturally nor necessarily attend them.” The former kind of circumstances “not determined by divine institution, may be ordered, disposed of and regulated by the prudence of men. . . . As the action cannot be without them, so their regulation is arbitrary, if they come not under some divine disposition and order, as that of time in general doth. There are also some things, which men call circumstances, also that no way belong of themselves to the actions whereof they are said to be the circumstances, nor do attend them, but are imposed on them, or annexed to them, by the arbitrary authority of those who take upon them to give order and rules in such cases; such as to pray before an image or towards the east, or to use this or that form of prayer in such gospel administrations, and no other. These are not circumstances attending the nature of the thing itself, but are arbitrarily superadded to the things they are appointed to accompany. Whatever men may call such additions, they are no less parts of the whole wherein they serve than the things themselves whereunto they are adjoined. The schoolmen tell us that which is made so the condition of an action, that without it the action is not to be done, is not a circumstance of it, but such an adjunct as is a necessary part. But not to contend about the word, such additionals that are called circumstantial, are made parts of worship as are made necessary by virtue of command to be observed.”(3) The qualification with respect to circumstances, far from weakening the force of the regulative principle of worship, rather sets in the sharpest focus the position that everything properly belonging to the content of worship must be the matter of divine commandment, not of human devising.

Having attempted a precise formulation of the principle regulative of worship, we may now turn to inquire as to the Scripture warrant for this principle. Before appealing to particular texts in which the principle is asserted, we should observe that it is a principle involved in several cardinal doctrines of the Word of God. The case for this principle rests not on a string of isolated proof texts, but upon the central concepts and doctrines of the Word of God. We shall content ourselves with stating five fundamental articles of our faith, from which this principle follows as a good and necessary consequence.

First, the Scriptures are the only infallible rule of faith and practice, and are therefore sufficient for all the needs of the church.(4) It clearly follows from the accepted Reformed doctrine of the authority and sufficiency of Scripture, that Scripture is the sole and sufficient rule for worship, particularly the worship of the church. If the prescriptions of worship contained in Holy Writ are sufficient, why add ordinances of worship for which there is no need? The attempt to avoid the force of this argument, by the assertion that Scripture itself opens up an area of liberty in which it prescribes nothing as to the content of worship, is vain. Such a position is a virtual denial of the sufficiency of Scripture, and is certainly not the view of Scripture on which the Calvinistic reformation in Geneva, France, the Low Countries, and the British Isles proceeded. Just such an idea of liberty would make allowance for Romish ceremonies retained by Lutherans and Anglicans but rejected universally by the Calvinists. The Calvinistic conception of the sufficiency of Scripture, which I trust my readers are prepared to acknowledge to be the scriptural conception, thus involves the regulative principle of worship. It is no accident that the regulative principle of worship makes its first appearance in the Westminster Confession in connection with the discussion of the sufficiency of Scripture.

Second, the sole object of worship is the absolutely sovereign God. The basic conception of Calvinism, God’s absolute sovereignty, excludes worship of human devising. In anthropocentric systems of doctrine like Lutheranism, or Arminianism, the human will may be allowed to define the content of worship at least in part, even as it contributes in part to man’s salvation. But in the theocentric system of Calvinism, the autonomy of man’s will is rejected in the face of God’s absolute sovereignty. This is true at every step of the way, with respect to worship as well as to the plan of salvation. Man’s will may contribute nothing more to God’s worship than to God’s plan of salvation, and it is no accident that will-worship and rejection of the doctrine of salvation by grace alone flourish together. As Sovereign, God is the supreme Law-giver. As His sovereignty extends to His worship, so it is His sole prerogative to appoint the laws of His worship, to command of His subjects the way they ought to worship Him. Can it be anything other than presumption in a subject of the absolute Sovereign to offer as worship anything which has not been commanded? Can the inventions of the human will be set on the same level as the commands of the divine will as proper material of worship? That God shall allow worship other than what He has commanded is contrary to reason itself. Gillespie writes, “How absurd a tenet is this, which holdeth that there is some particular worship of God allowed, and not commanded? What new light is this which maketh all our divines to have been in the mist, who have acknowledged no worship of God, but that which God hath commanded? Who ever heard of commanded and allowed worship?”(5) The question raised by the Lord in Isa. 1:12 thus applies to all worship offered to Him: “When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand?”

Third, the total corruption and deceitfulness of the human heart disqualifies man from judging what is to be admitted into the worship of God. It may be that before the fall our first parents had written on their hearts the law of worship, and by looking within the depth of their own beings could read off the commandments of God. Yet even then, they were not without direct external communication of the will of Him who walked and talked with them in the garden. Since the fall, however, though the human conscience still witnesses in all men that worship is due to the Supreme Being, no information can be gained from the heart of man as to how God is to be worshipped. The idolatry and superstition, not only of the heathen in their blindness, but also of the professing Christian church enjoying the full light of God’s Word, sufficiently demonstrates this to be the case. It goes without saying that the unregenerate consciousness, blind to spiritual things, is unfit to determine matters concerning the worship of God. Worship that is the invention of the heart of men, every imagination of the thoughts of which is only evil continually, in the nature of the case cannot be acceptable to a holy God. What requires, however, to be emphasized is that the regenerate consciousness is no more fit than the unregenerate to decide what may be introduced into God’s worship. The regenerate, it must be remembered, ever groan under the burden of sin that dwells in them, and therefore should well know that their understanding and will are not to be trusted to determine what is acceptable worship before God. The enlightened understanding is content to learn God’s precepts, and the renewed will to walk in them, but the regenerate heart as such cannot desire to make the slightest addition to God’s commandments. Whenever true believers have acted inconsistently in this respect, they have invariably allowed great corruption to be introduced into God’s sanctuary.

Fourth, Christ is the sole Head and King over His body, the church. In the exercise of His headship and kingship, the Lord Jesus Christ has appointed the ordinances of His house. This applies in particular to the public worship of the New Testament church. How may a minister of Christ with a clear conscience administer any rite or ceremony of worship in the Lord’s house without warrant from his Lord and King? To add human inventions to Christ’s express commands is to usurp an authority which is not ministerial, but which is tantamount to placing the doctrines and commandments of men upon the same level as the commands of the Lord Jesus.

The pretense that the humanly invented modes of worship are optional, whereas Christ’s commands are mandatory, is to no avail. We have already noted the absurdity of distinguishing two kinds of worship, prescribed and allowed. It is also worthy of note that in practice no difference is made between the two types of worship. Hymns of human composition and divinely-inspired Psalms are sung the one after the other, as if the one were offered to God in obedience to the Lord’s appointment as much as the other. Furthermore, the people are led to feel that the one type of worship is of the same character as the other and that they are no less bound to engage in the one than in the other. Quite apart from the evil of singing the word of man alongside of God’s Word, we would now stress the inevitable binding of the conscience of the ordinary worshipper by the inventions of men, as soon as those inventions are given the same place as divine institutions which truly bind the conscience. In this connection it should be observed that the regulative principle of worship, far from abridging the scope of genuine Christian liberty, is the preeminent safeguard of Christian liberty in matters of worship. It is this principle that has again and again liberated Christ’s little flock from the impositions of man in the worship of God. Deliverance from human tyranny, and complete subjection to Christ’s commands, are involved in one another, and these two are but the negative and positive elements of Christian liberty in the worship of God.

Fifth, in the same connection the character of the church’s constitution should be kept in view. Even as the doctrine, government and discipline of the church have been prescribed by Christ, so also has its worship. May any doctrine be taught which the great Prophet has not revealed? May any new office or function be added to the government of the church that the Head of the church has not provided for? May anything be counted an disciplinary offense but that which Christ has declared to be such in His Word? So also, may anything be added to the content of His worship that He has not prescribed?

We may sum up the above argument from the central teachings of Scripture in the words of William Cunningham: “The truth of this principle, as a general rule for the guidance of the church, is plainly enough involved in what Scripture teaches, concerning its own sufficiency and perfection as a rule of faith and practice, concerning God’s exclusive right to determine in what ways He ought to be worshipped, concerning Christ’s exclusive right to settle the constitution, laws and arrangements of His kingdom, concerning the unlawfulness of will-worship, and concerning the utter unfitness of men for the function which they have so often and so boldly usurped in this matter.”(6)

We may sum up the above argument from the central teachings of Scripture in the words of William Cunningham: “The truth of this principle, as a general rule for the guidance of the church, is plainly enough involved in what Scripture teaches, concerning its own sufficiency and perfection as a rule of faith and practice, concerning God’s exclusive right to determine in what ways He ought to be worshipped, concerning Christ’s exclusive right to settle the constitution, laws and arrangements of His kingdom, concerning the unlawfulness of will-worship, and concerning the utter unfitness of men for the function which they have so often and so boldly usurped in this matter.”(6)

In adducing Scripture warrant for the regulative principle of our Reformed worship, we will not confine ourselves to inferences, as good and necessary as these inferences are. The inferences prove the principle by bringing to light that it is part and parcel of the Calvinistic system. But that system itself rests on Scripture revelation, and so also does this principle which we may defend by direct appeal to Scripture passages. Let us first consider a number of passages expressly asserting this principle, and then observe certain Scripture examples confirming it.

The first passage we may consider in this connection is the second commandment.(7) It might be said that the second commandment contains an express prohibition of idolatry and nothing more, and thus has no bearing upon the question. From the point of view of historic Presbyterianism, however, this is not the case. Our Westminster Larger Catechism states, among other rules to be observed for the right understanding of the ten commandments, “That under one sin or duty, all of the same kind are forbidden or commanded; together with all the causes, means, occasions, and appearances thereof, and provocations thereunto”.(8) The Larger Catechism further includes among the sins forbidden in the second commandment “all devising, counseling, commanding, using, and any wise approving, any religious worship not instituted by God Himself; . . . all superstitious devices, corrupting the worship of God, adding to it, or taking from it, whether invented and taken up of ourselves, or received by tradition from others, though under the title of antiquity, custom, devotion, good intent, or any other pretense whatsoever.”(9) The prohibition of idolatry is thus understood to involve the regulative principle. As John Knox expressed the matter pointedly: “All worshipping, honoring, or service invented by the brain of man in the religion of God, without his own express commandment, is idolatry.”(10) One might view the matter in the following way. Idols are the work of men’s hands. Men make them unto themselves for the worship of God as fit means for the worship of God. Deeper even than the fact that the idol is unfit to represent the invisible God is the fact that it is the product of man’s own brain and hand. And every product of man’s brain and hand introduced into God’s worship is, in the very nature of the case, an idol.

The correctness of the historic Presbyterian doctrine of the second commandment is verified by several other passages of the Mosaic law, in which the church is expressly forbidden to add anything to the commandments of God respecting His worship and service.(11) When Moses was about to make the tabernacle, he was admonished by God, “And look that thou make them after their pattern, which was shewed thee in the mount.”(12) The minuteness of detail in the divine prescriptions as to the construction of the tabernacle and as to the practice of worship to be performed in it made it perfectly plain to God’s ancient people that whatever was not commanded was forbidden. Those who, contrary to such clear light, worshipped God with their own inventions, as we shall see, became the object of the fearful vengeance of a jealous God. In this connection observe that the jealousy of God is revealed in relation to idolatrous corruptions of and superstitious additions to His worship. Meditation on this much-forgotten attribute of God should impress us with the grave importance of the purity of God’s sanctuary. The Lord will not suffer His bride to seek after her own heart and eyes, after which she is accustomed to go a whoring,(13) but visits such unfaithfulness with the severest rebukes.

A most remarkable passage bearing on the question is Jer. 7:31: “They have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart.” How clearly does this passage show that God does not view sin as does man. Man would revolt at the unnatural and inhuman cruelty of the burning of the fruit of one’s own body before an idol. But in God’s mind this is but secondary, the essential evil being that it is worship which He did not command, neither came it into His heart. Owen writes in this connection: “Moreover to testify what weight He laid on the observance of these general prohibitions, when men found out other ways of worship than what He had appointed, though the particulars were such as fell under other special interdictions, yet the Lord was pleased to place the great aggravation of their sin in the contempt of those general rules mentioned. This is that He urgeth them with, that they did things by Him not appointed; of not observing anything in religion but what He requires, that He presseth them withal. The command is general, ‘You shall add nothing to what I have instituted.’ And the aggravation of the sin pressed by Him relates not to the particular nature of it, but to the general command or prohibition, ‘You have done what I commanded you not.’ That the particular evil condemned was also against other special commands of God, is merely accidental to the general nature of the crime they were urged withal. And whereas God hath given out these rules and precepts, ‘You shall do whatever I command you, and according as I command you; you shall add nothing thereunto, nor take anything therefrom,’ can the transgression of this rule be any otherwise expressed but this, ‘They did the thing which He commanded not, nor did it ever come into his heart’?”(14) As Gillespie puts it briefly “howsoever manifold wickedness might have been challenged in that which they did, yet if any would dispute with God upon the matter, He stoppeth their mouths with this one answer: ‘I commanded it not, neither came it into my heart’.”(15)

The objection may be raised that, while it became the state of the church in the Old Testament to have all ordinances of worship prescribed even in minute detail, the New Testament economy is free from such restriction. The church, it may be said, has passed from childhood to years of maturity where it can exercise discretion and liberty in determining its own worship. In reply, it must be said that this would be contrary to the identity of the covenant of grace in both the old and the new dispensations. The principle regulating the worship of God’s people belongs to the substance of the covenant of grace. With reference to the heavenly Father, the most mature saint remains a covenant child, and the most mature state of the church itself remains subject to the ordinances imposed by the church’s Head and Lord. Notwithstanding the changes involved in abrogation of the ceremonial law, there is no change in the divine prerogative of appointing the worship to be rendered by the church. The teaching of our Lord and His apostles on this matter is quite express. In condemning the Pharisees for their tradition as to eating bread with unwashen hands, the Lord quotes the words of Isaiah: “In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men,” and comments: “For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things ye do.”(16) The Lord goes on to show that human traditions added to God’s Word have the effect of making that Word of none effect. Additions to the Word of God in worship will not allow the Word itself to stand. Professor Petticrew observes: “Laying aside the commandment of God, that they may keep their own tradition! Is there not a close likeness between this action, thus condemned by Christ, and the action of those in modern times who lay aside the divine ordinance of the singing of Psalms that they may keep their own man-appointed ordinance of the singing of uninspired hymns in the place of the Psalms?”(17)

Observe also the terms of the Great Commission: “Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.”(18) Here there is to be found authority for worship in the New Testament church by the means appointed by the church’s Lord. But there is no authority for anything besides those appointed means. Observe the Lord does not give authority to His disciples to teach man to observe what He has not forbidden, but only what He has commanded them. The charter of the New Testament church at this point is expressed in identical terms as that of the Mosaic economy, which we have seen so expressly to exclude the inventions of men from the worship of God. No addition to or subtraction from Christ’s commands may be allowed in the New Testament any more than with respect to the commands given on Mount Sinai in the Old. As we read concerning Moses again and again that he did all as the Lord commanded him, so the apostles organized the worship and government of the Christian church according to Christ’s commands. We have no more right to alter that divinely-instituted pattern of ordinances for the New Testament church, than Nadab and Abihu, Saul, Jeroboam, or any others in the Old. The apostle Paul expressly condemns will-worship, worship according to the doctrines and commandments of men.(19) The will of God, not the will of man, is the rule of the worship of the New Testament church.

The examples by which Scripture enforces this principle may occupy our attention briefly. First, we may consider the sacrifices of Cain and Abel. Though Abel was accepted as coming in true faith, which was lacking in the case of Cain, yet it would appear that Abel’s offering was also intrinsically more excellent than his brother’s. True faith will bring to God the offering of penitence and praise that He has appointed as He has appointed, while unbelief brings an offering of its own choosing in a perfunctory manner. Cain appears not to have brought the best of what he had as did Abel.(20) Equally striking is the reference to the atoning blood in Abel’s offering, for which he had the precedent of the animals slain by the Lord’s own hand to provide coats of skin to cover the nakedness of our first parents.(21) From the beginning, acknowledgment of the imputed righteousness of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world and meticulous observance of divinely-instituted methods of worship appear to be yoked inseparably.

Second, if there be doubt as to the case of Cain and Abel, there is no obscurity in the least in the instance of Nadab and Abihu.(22) The strange fire they offered before the Lord, “whereof God had given to them no charge,” was “a common fire, and not of that fire which God had commanded to burn day and night upon the altar of burnt sacrifice, which only ought to have been offered unto God.”(23) Nadab and Abihu were Aaron’s sons, priests next to himself. They seem to have had no unworthy motive in their offering, they desired no earthly gain, but only to honor God, and that in a way he had not expressly forbidden. They did nothing more than substitute fire of their own for that which the Lord had commanded Yet for this act they were instantaneously consumed by fire from the Lord. John Knox comments further: “Whereof it is plain, that neither the preeminence of the person of man that maketh or setteth up any religion, without the express commandment of God, nor yet the intent whereof he doeth the same, is accepted before God. For nothing in his religion will he admit without his own Word, but all that is added thereto doth he abhor, and punisheth the inventors and doers thereof, as you have heard in Nadab and Abihu, by Gideon and diverse other Israelites setting up something to honour God, whereof they had no express commandment.”(24) Can the Lord be pleased with the fire of strange praise on the lips of men, which He has not commanded, any more than with the strange fire offered by Nadab and Abihu? Disrespect for His command, and neglect of His own provision in the interest of our inventions, cannot but provoke His indignation. Third, as a few instances chosen from among many, reference may be made also to: Korah, Dathan and Abiram, in Numbers 16; Moses smiting the rock at Kadesh, Numbers 20; the rejection of Saul, I Samuel 13; and the handling of the ark, I Chron. 15:13.

We may conclude this discussion with the following quotation from Dr. James Begg: “The first thing necessary is to fix the principle which regulates New Testament worship. There is a tremendous emphasis in the question of the King of Moab, ‘Wherewithal shall I come before God, and bow myself before the Most High?’ To hear many speak at present, one would suppose that there was nothing less solemn than an act of worship, and that, instead of raising the question, ‘What in worship is pleasing and acceptable to God?’ they have simply to consider, ‘What is pleasing and acceptable to themselves and each other?’ They perfectly well understand that they must study the most minute rules of the court before they can dare, or be permitted to approach an earthly sovereign; but they presumptuously imagine that it is, and ought to be, the easiest thing possible to enter into the presence of the King of kings, before whose awful Majesty angels veil their faces whilst they adore. They forget that it is in connection with His own worship that God proclaims Himself in the second commandment to be ‘a jealous God,’ and that it has been in the same connection that this jealousy has most frequently flamed forth in the past history of the Church – in the case of Cain, of Korah, of Uzzah, of the buyers and sellers in the temple. Corruption here is corruption at the fountain head, fitted to cause the withdrawal of the Holy Spirit of God, and thus to leave the Church to sink under deeper and more hopeless evils; whilst, if we consider the relation of the thrice holy God to fallen sinners, the wonder is not that our mode of access into His presence is strictly regulated, but that any such access is permitted to us at all.”(25)

Notes
(1) George Gillespie, A Dispute against the English Popish Ceremonies (Edinburgh: Robert Ogle, and Oliver and Boyd, 1844), p. 130.
(2) Ibid., p. 131.
(3) John Owen, The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold (Edinburgh: Johnstone and Hunter, 1850-53), 15:35-36.
(4) II Tim. 3:16-17.
(5) George Gillespie, English Popish Ceremonies, p. 118.
(6) William Cunningham, The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1862), p. 33.
(7) Exod. 20:4-6.
(8) Question 99.
(9) Question 109.
(10) John Knox, “A Vindication of the Doctrine that the Sacrifice of the Mass is Idolatry,” in The Works of John Knox, ed. David Laing, vol. 3 (Edinburgh: James Thin, 1895), p. 34.
(11) Deut. 4:2, 12:32; cf. Prov. 30:6.
(12) Exod. 25:40; Heb. 8:5.
(13) Num. 15:39-40.
(14) Owen, Works, 15:41.
(15) Gillespie, English Popish Ceremonies, p. 136.
(16) Mark 7:7-8.
(17) Francis Petticrew, “The Scriptural Principle Regulative of the Worship of God,” in Psalm-Singers’ Conference (Belfast: Fountain Printing Works, 1903), p. 73. Petticrew (1832-1909) was Professor of Theology in Magee College, Londonderry, Ireland.
(18) Matt. 28:20.
(19) Col. 2:22-23.
(20) Gen. 4:3-5.
(21) Gen. 3:21.
(22) Lev. 10:1-7.
(23) John Knox, Works, 3:38.
(24) Ibid.
(25) James Begg, The Use of Organs and Other Instruments of Music in Christian Worship Indefensible (Glasgow: W. R. M’Phun and Son, 1866), pp. 10-12.