ingly
come under them to teach us, who have so much need and want, to come under
them. He prayed much, he preached, he did sing and read, to teach us how
to worship, and how much need we have of prayer and preaching. This was
not the spirit Christ promised to his disciples and apostles, which spirit
did breathe most lively in the use of external ordinances all their days,
and this is not the spirit which was at that hour in which Christ spoke
"the hour is come and now is," ver. 23, in which the true worship of God
shall not be in the external Jewish ceremonies and rites, void of all life
and inward sense of piety, but the true worship of God shall be made up of
a soul and body,--of spirit and truth--of the external appointed ordinances
according to the word of truth, and the spirit of truth,--and of the spirit
and inward soul-affection and sincerity which shall quicken and actuate
that external performance. There were no such worshippers then as had no
use of ordinances. Christ was not such, his disciples were not such,
therefore it is a new gospel, which, if an angel should bring from heaven,
ye ought not to receive it.

As it is certain, then, that both soul and body must be employed in this
business, so it is sure that the soul and spirit must be the first mover
and chiefest agent in it, because it is a spiritual business, and hath
relation to the Fountain spirit, which hath the most perfect opposition to
all false appearances and external shows. That part of man that cometh
nearest God, must draw nearest in worshipping God, and if that be removed
far away, there is no real communion with God. Man judges according to the
outward appearance, and can reach no farther than the outward man, but God
is an all searching Spirit, who trieth the heart and reins, and therefore
he will pass another judgment upon your worship than men can do, because
he observes all the secret wanderings and escapes of the heart out of his
sight. He misses the soul when you present attentive ears or eloquent
tongues. There is no dallying with His Majesty, painting will not deceive
him, his very nature is contrary to hypocrisy and dissimulation; and what
is it but dissimulation, when you present yourselves to religious
exercises as his people, but within are nothing like it, nothing awaking
nothing present? O consider, my beloved, what a one you have to do with!
It is not men, but the Father of spirits, who will not be pleased with
what pleases me