The Existence and Attributes of God, Volumes 1 and 2Charnock, Stephen
Religion
The Existence and Attributes of God, Volumes 1 and 2
Charnock, Stephen
God (Christianity) -- Attributes; Providence and government of God -- Christianity
upon a tomb, with eyes and hands lifted up, offers as good and true
a service; it wants only a voice, the gestures and postures are the
same; nay, the service is better; it is not a mockery; it represents
all that it can be framed to; but to worship without our spirits, is
a presenting God with a picture, an echo, voice, and nothing else;
a compliment; a mere lie; a “compassing him about with lies.”[494]
Without the heart the tongue is a liar; and the greatest zeal
a dissembling with him. To present the spirit, is to present with
that which can never naturally die; to present him only the body, is
to present him that which is every day crumbling to dust, and will at
last lie rotting in the grave; to offer him a few rags, easily torn; a
skin for a sacrifice, a thing unworthy the majesty of God; a fixed eye
and elevated hands, with a sleepy heart and earthly soul, are pitiful
things for an ever‑blessed and glorious Spirit: nay, it is so far
from being spiritual, that it is blasphemy; to pretend to be a Jew
outwardly, without being so inwardly, is, in the judgment of Christ,
to blaspheme.[495] And is not the same title to be given with as much
reason to those that pretend a worship and perform none? Such a one is
not a spiritual worshipper, but a blaspheming devil in Samuel’s mantle.
4. Spiritual worship is performed with an unitedness of heart.
The heart is not only now and then with God, but “united to fear or
worship his name.”[496] A spiritual duty must have the engagement
of the spirit, and the thoughts tied up to the spiritual object. The
union of all the parts of the heart together with the body is the
life of the body; and the moral union of our hearts is the life of any
duty. A heart quickly flitting from God makes not God his treasure; he
slights the worship, and therein affronts the object of worship. All
our thoughts ought to be ravished with God; bound up in him as in a
bundle of life; but when we start from him to gaze after every feather,
and run after every bubble, we disown a full and affecting excellency,
and a satisfying sweetness in him. When our thoughts run from God, it
is a testimony we have no spiritual affection to God; affection would
stake down the thoughts to the object affected; it is but a mouth love,
as the prophet praiseth it;[497] but their hearts go “after their
covetousness;” covetous objects pipe, and the heart danceth after them;
and thoughts of God are shifted off to receive a multitude of other
imaginations; the heart and the service staid awhile together, and
then took leave of one another. The Psalmist[498] still found his
heart with God when he awaked; still with God in spiritual affections
and fixed meditations. A carnal heart is seldom with God, either in or
out of worship; if God should knock at the heart in any duty, it would
be found not at home, but straying abroad. Our worship is spiritual
when the door of the heart is shut against all intruders, as our
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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