II. The second thing I am to show is, what spiritual worship is. In general, the whole spirit is to be employed; the name of God is not sanctified but by the engagement of our souls. Worship is an act of the understanding, applying itself to the knowledge of the excellency of God and actual thoughts of his majesty; recognizing him as the supreme Lord and Governor of the world, which is natural knowledge; beholding the glory of his attributes in the Redeemer, which is evangelical knowledge. This is the sole act of the spirit of man. The same reason is for all our worship as for our thanksgiving. This must be done with understanding: (Psalm xlvii. 7) “Sing ye praise with understanding;” with a knowledge and sense of his greatness, goodness, and wisdom. It is also an act of the will, whereby the soul adores and reverences his majesty, is ravished with his amiableness, embraceth his goodness, enters itself into an intimate communion with this most lovely object, and pitcheth all his affections upon him. We must worship God understandingly; it is not else a reasonable service. The nature of God and the law of God abhor a blind offering; we must worship him heartily, else we offer him a dead sacrifice. A reasonable service is that wherein the mind doth truly act something with God. All spiritual acts must be acts of reason, otherwise they are not human acts, because they want that principle which is constitutive of man, and doth difference him from other creatures. Acts done only by sense are the acts of a brute; acts done by reason are the acts of a man. That which is only an act of sense cannot be an act of religion. The sense, without the conduct of reason, is not the subject of religious acts; for then beasts were capable of religion as well as men. There cannot be religion where there is not reason; and there cannot be the exercise of religion where there is not an exercise of the rational faculties; nothing can be a christian act that is not a human act. Besides, all worship must be for some end; the worship of God must be for God. It is by the exercise of our rational faculties that we only can intend an end. An ignorant and carnal worship is a brutish worship. Particularly,
1. Spiritual worship is a worship from a spiritual nature. Not only physically spiritual, so our souls are in their frame; but morally spiritual, by a renewing principle. The heart must be first cast into the mould of the gospel, before it can perform a worship required by the gospel. Adam living in Paradise might perform a spiritual worship; but Adam fallen from his rectitude could not: we, being heirs of his nature, are heirs of his impotence. Restoration to a spiritual life must precede any act of spiritual worship. As no work can be good, so no worship can be spiritual, till we are created in Christ.481 Christ is our life.482 As no natural action can be performed without life in the root or heart, so no spiritual act without Christ in the soul. Our being in Christ is as necessary to every spiritual act as the union of our soul with our body is necessary to natural action. Nothing can exceed the limits of its nature; for then it should exceed itself in acting, and do that which it hath no principle to do. A beast cannot act like a man, without partaking of the nature of a man; nor a man act like an angel, without partaking of the angelical nature. How can we perform spiritual acts without a spiritual principle? Whatsoever worship proceeds from the corrupted nature, cannot deserve the title of spiritual worship, because it springs not from a spiritual habit. If those that are evil cannot speak good things, those that are carnal cannot offer a spiritual service. Poison is the fruit of a viper’s nature (Matt. xii. 34): “O generation of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” As the root is, so is the fruit. If the soul be habitually carnal, the worship cannot be actually spiritual. There may be an intention of spirit, but there is no spiritual principle as a root of that intention. A heart may be sensibly united with a duty, when it is not spiritually united with Christ in it. Carnal motives and carnal ends may fix the mind in an act of worship, as the sense of some pressing affliction may enlarge a man’s mind in prayer. Whatsoever is agreeable to the nature of God must have a stamp of Christ upon it; a stamp of his grace in performance, as well as of his mediation in the acceptance. The apostle lived not, but Christ lived in him;483 the soul worships not, but Christ in him. Not that Christ performs the act of worship, but enables us spiritually to worship, after he enables us spiritually to live. As God counts not any soul living but in Christ, so he counts not any a spiritual worshipper but in Christ. The goodness and fatness of the fruit come from the fatness of the olive wherein we are engrafted. We must find healing in Christ’s wings, before God can find spirituality in our services. All worship issuing from a dead nature is but a dead service. A living action cannot be performed, without being knit to a living root.
2. Spiritual worship is done by the influence and with the assistance of the Spirit of God. A heart may be spiritual, when a particular act of worship may not be spiritual. The Spirit may dwell in the heart, when he may suspend his influence on the act. Our worship is then spiritual, when the fire that kindles our affections comes from heaven, as that fire upon the altar wherewith the sacrifices were consumed. God tastes a sweetness in no service, but as it is dressed up by the hand of the Mediator, and hath the air of his own Spirit in it; they are but natural acts, without a supernatural assistance; without an actual influence, we cannot act from spiritual motives, nor for spiritual ends, nor in a spiritual manner. We cannot mortify a lust without the Spirit,484 nor quicken a service without the Spirit. Whatsoever corruption is killed, is slain by his power; whatsoever duty is spiritualized, is refined by his breath. He quickens our dead bodies in our resurrection;485 he renews our dead souls in our regeneration; he quickens our carnal services in our adorations; the choicest acts of worship are but infirmities without his auxiliary help.486 We are logs, unable to move ourselves, till he raise our faculties to a pitch agreeable to God; puts his hand to the duty, and lifts that up and us with it. Never any great act was performed by the apostles to God, or for God; but they are said to be filled with the Holy Ghost. Christ could not have been conceived immaculate as that “holy thing,” without the Spirit’s overshadowing the Virgin; nor any spiritual act conceived in our heart, without the Spirit’s moving upon us, to bring forth a living religion from us. The acts of worship are said to be in the Spirit, “supplication in the Spirit;”487 not only with the strength and affection of our own spirits, but with the mighty operation of the Holy Ghost, if Jude may be the interpreter;488 the Holy Ghost exciting us, impelling us, and firing our souls by his divine flame; raising up the affections, and making the soul cry with a holy importunity, Abba, Father. To render our worship spiritual, we should, before every engagement in it, implore the actual presence of the Spirit, without which we are not able to send forth one spiritual breath or groan; but be wind‑bound like a ship without a gale, and our worship be no better than carnal. How doth the spouse solicit the Spirit with an “Awake, O north wind, and come, thou south wind,”489 &c.
3. Spiritual worship is done with sincerity. When the heart stands right to God, and the soul performs what it pretends to perform; when we serve God with our spirits, as the apostle (Rom. i. 9), “God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son:” this is not meant of the Holy Ghost; for the apostle would never have called the Spirit of God his own spirit; but with my spirit, that is, a sincere frame of heart. A carnal worship, whether under the law or gospel, is, when we are busied about external rites,