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• Exclusive Psalmody 1/7 (Inspired Song vs. Uninspired Song) by Greg Price (Free SWRB MP3)

• Exclusive Psalmody 2/7 (God’s Covenant Songs in Worship) by Greg Price (Free SWRB MP3)

• Exclusive Psalmody 3/7 (Sufficiency of the Psalter) by Greg Price (Free SWRB MP3)

• Exclusive Psalmody 4/7 (Exclusive Psalmody & the Regulative Principle) by Greg Price (Free SWRB MP3)

• Exclusive Psalmody 5/7 (Exclusive Psalmody in Church History) - Second Commandment In Covenanter, Puritan & Reformation Worship by Greg Price (Free SWRB MP3)

• Exclusive Psalmody 6/7 (& the Westminster Standards) by Greg Price (Free SWRB MP3)

• Exclusive Psalmody 7/7 (Objections to Exclusive Psalmody Answered) by Greg Price (Free SWRB MP3)

• If you want to understand Reformed theology (i.e., the whole counsel of God) the Puritan Hard Drive is unsurpassed, outside the Bible itself. ... There is no other resource, outside Scripture itself, where you can find so much of God's truth as in the Puritan Hard Drive. - Pastor Greg Price (Covenanter Author and Theologian)

• As we reach the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century we find that "the same clericalism which denied the Bible to the common people eventually denied them the Psalter as well and replaced congregational singing with choral productions in a tongue unknown to the vast majority of the worshippers. As the Reformation progressed we encounter an almost complete return to exclusive Psalmody (excluding the Lutherans, who had not extended the principle of sola Scriptura to their worship)... The Scottish Reformer John Knox not surprisingly followed Calvin in this matter, and the Reformed Church as a whole followed their lead. This meant that at a stroke the Reformed Church cut itself loose from the entire mass of Latin hymns and from the use of hymnody in general, and adopted the Psalms of the Old Testament as the sole medium of Church praise. Hence forth to be a Calvinist was to be a Psalm-singer. For some two and a half centuries the Reformed churches as a rule sang nothing but the Psalms in worship... The metrical Psalter was born in Geneva where it was nurtured and cherished by all who embraced the principles of Calvinism... Psalm singing has been called the 'signature of Puritanism'... The English Puritans, being Calvinists and not Lutherans, held to the view that the only proper worship-song was that provided by God once and for all in the Book of Psalms... this was Calvin's conviction, and a metrical Psalm before and after the sermon was the usual practice at Geneva. Our Calvinistic heritage, then, is a Psalm-singing heritage, and our Reformed churches, to the extent that they have chosen to forsake that heritage, are no longer Calvinistic in their patterns of worship... A Survey of English and Scottish Psalmody would not be complete without a reference to the work of the Westminster Assembly. Since the Westminster standards still have creedal authority in some of the smaller Presbyterian bodies which, however, are no longer committed to exclusive Psalmody, it is worth pointing out here that the Westminster Divines sanctioned nothing but the use of Psalms in the religious worship of God... - Dr. Reg Barrow, Psalm Singing In Scripture and History (emphases added) — many citations from Michael Bushell's Songs of Zion: A Defense of Exclusive Psalmody included.

• Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church. - 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, KJV

• Hymns of human composition are used so commonly now in public worship by Presbyterian churches that it is difficult to believe that the practice is not a hundred years old, and that in some of the churches it is of very recent date. On the supposition that it is good and dutiful and wise to sing such hymns in worship, it is equally difficult to account for the neglect of the churches at the time of the Reformation, and for generations afterwards. What could have so blinded the reformers as to make them reject hymns and sing the Psalms alone? How could the Westminster Divines, in framing their Confession of Faith and Directory for Worship, have been so unanimous in the blunder that the service of praise is to consist of the 'singing of Psalms?' And apart from the aspect of duty, how could the Presbyterian churches, for about a hundred and fifty or two hundred years after the Westminster Assembly, have been so insensible to the power of hymns as an attractive addition to their public services? We cannot by any means understand how it was that, if it was dutiful to use hymns in worship, the reformers did not discover the Scriptural warrant for the duty, especially as hymns had been used for centuries by the Church of Rome. Nor can we understand how they rejected the hymns and used the Psalms alone, unless on the supposition that they believed the use of hymns to be part of the will-worship of Rome. If they were wrong on this point, then Rome and our modern Presbyterian churches are right. In that case, the Puritans and Covenanters were fanatics, and Romanists were truly enlightened! And most of our Presbyterian churches of the present day were fanatical too, and did not become truly enlightened and liberal till they got back to the Romish practice!" - James Dick from Hymns and Hymn Books (1883, reprinted by Still Waters Revival Books) as excerpted from The Original Covenanter magazine (Dec, 1883, vol. 3, No. 12), and on the Puritan Hard Drive

• Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. - Mark 9:23, KJV

The author in his eloquent conclusion anticipates that some will meet his arguments with sneers rather than serious discussion, which he proposes to endure with Christian composure. It is a reproach to our church, which fills us with grief, to find the prediction fulfilled in some quarters. Surely persons calling themselves Presbyterians should remember that the truths they profess to hold sacred have usually been in small minorities sneered at by the arrogant majorities. So it was in the days of the Reformers, of Athanasius, of the Apostles, and of Jesus himself.

The resort to this species of reply appears the more ill-considered, when we remember that Dr. Girardeau is supporting the identical position held by all the early fathers, by all the Presbyterian reformers, by a Chalmers, a Mason, a Breckinridge, a Thornwell, and by a Spurgeon. Why is not the position as respectable in our author as in all this noble galaxy of true Presbyterians? Will the innovators claim that all these great men are so inferior to themselves? The idea seems to be that the opposition of all these great men to organs arose simply out of their ignorant old-fogyism and lack of culture; while our advocacy of the change is the result of our superior intelligence, learning and refinement. The ignorance of this overweening conceit makes it simply vulgar. These great men surpassed all who have succeeded them in elegant classical scholarship, in logical ability, and in theological learning. Their depreciators should know that they surpassed them just as far in all elegant culture. The era of the Reformation was the Augustan age of church art in architecture, painting and music. These reformed divines were graduates of the first Universities, most of them gentlemen by birth, many of them noblemen, denizens of courts, of elegant accomplishments and manners, not a few of them exquisite poets and musicians. But they unanimously rejected the Popish Church music; not because they were fusty old pedants without taste, but because a refined taste concurred with their learning and logic to condemn it.

Dr. Girardeau has defended the old usage of our church with a moral courage, loyalty to truth, clearness of reasoning and wealth of learning which should make every true Presbyterian proud of him, whether he adopts his conclusions or not. The framework of his argument is this: it begins with that vital truth which no Presbyterian can discard without a square desertion of our principles. The man who contests this first premise had better set out at once for Rome: God is to be worshipped only in the ways appointed in his word. Every act of public cultus not positively enjoined by him is thereby forbidden. Christ and his apostles ordained the musical worship of the New Dispensation without any sort of musical instrument, enjoining only the singing with the voice of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.* Hence such instruments are excluded from Christian worship. Such has been the creed of all churches, and in all ages, except of the Popish communion after it had reached the nadir of its corruption at the end of the thirteenth century, and of its prelatic imitators.

But the pretext is raised that instrumental music was authorized by Scripture in the Old Testament. This evasion Dr. Girardeau ruins by showing that God set up in the Hebrew Church two distinct forms of worship; the one moral, didactic, spiritual and universal, and therefore perpetual in all places and ages—that of the synagogues; the other peculiar, local, typical, foreshadowing in outward forms the more spiritual dispensation, and therefore destined to be utterly abrogate by Christ’s coming. Now we find instrumental music, like human priests and their vestments, show-bread, incense, and bloody sacrifice, absolutely limited to this local and temporary worship. But the Christian churches were modelled upon the synagogues and inherited their form of government and worship because it was permanently didactic, moral and spiritual, and included nothing typical. This reply is impregnably fortified by the word of God himself: that when the Antitype has come the types must be abolished. For as the temple-priests and animal sacrifices typified Christ and his sacrifice on Calvary, so the musical instruments of David in the temple-service only typified the joy of the Holy Ghost in his pentecostal effusions.

Hence when the advocates of innovation quote such words as those of the Psalmist, "Praise the Lord with the harp," &c., these shallow reasoners are reminded that the same sort of plea would draw back human priest and bloody sacrifices into our Christian churches. For these Psalms exclaim, with the same emphasis, "Bind our sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar." Why do not our Christian aesthetics feel equally authorized and bound to build altars in front of their pulpits, and to drag the struggling lambs up their nicely carpeted aisles, and have their throats cut there for the edification of the refined audience? "Oh, the sacrifices, being types and peculiar to the temple service, were necessarily abolished by the coming of the Antitype." Very good. So were the horns, cymbals, harps and organs only peculiar to the temple-service, a part of its types, and so necessarily abolished when the temple was removed.

- From A Review Of Girardeau's Instrumental Music in the Public Worship of the Church, by R.L. Dabney

• The Early Church: Concerning the early Church, Bushell notes that, "The introduction of uninspired hymns into the worship of the Church was a gradual process, and it was not until the fourth century that the practice became widespread."6 G.I. Williamson further points out that a "second noteworthy fact is that when uninspired hymns first made their appearance, it was not among the orthodox Churches but rather the heretical groups... If the Church from the beginning had received authority from the Apostles to make and use uninspired hymns, it would be expected that it would have done so. But it did not. Rather it was among those who departed from the faith that they first appeared."7 This historical testimony raises a number of interesting questions for those who claim to adhere to the regulative principle of worship and yet maintain the use of uninspired hymns in public worship. First, if the Psalter had been insufficient, why was there no command to produce new songs for worship, only commands to sing that which was already in existence? Second, if a new manual of praise was necessary, why was it that the Apostles did not write any new songs under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? Third, why is it that we do not find even one "hymn" fragment among all the early church writings that have survived to this day. Moreover, there is not even one mention of the use of uninspired "hymns" among orthodox Christians until they began to be written in reply to the heretical "hymns," which had not surfaced until late in the second century?8 Fourth, why was there still strong opposition to the introduction of uninspired hymns well into the fifth century? The Synod of Laodicea (A.D. 343) and the Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451) both opposed the introduction of uninspired "hymns." In addition to this Bushell states that "as late as the ninth century we find appeals to the earlier Councils in support of a pure psalmody."9 - From: PSALM SINGING IN SCRIPTURE & HISTORY, by Dr. Reg Barrow

At this point those promoting uninspired songs in worship are probably protesting that I have forgotten about Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16, but such is not the case. Having come out of a "hymn-singing" tradition, these very scriptures comprised a major part of my initial protest against the position which I now hold. So let's take a look at them. Williamson is most instructive here,

• The proper interpretation of scripture terms requires that we discover, not what we mean by these terms when we use them today, but what the inspired writer meant when he used them. And it is one of the oddities of biblical interpretation that this rule is commonly observed with reference to the term 'psalms', and commonly disregarded with respect to the terms 'hymns' and 'songs'. For the fact is that all three of these terms are used in the Bible to designate various selections contained in the Old Testament Psalter. In the Greek version of the Old Testament familiar to the Ephesians and Colossians the entire Psalter is entitled 'Psalms'. In sixty-seven of the titles within the book the word 'psalm' is used. However, in six titles the word 'hymn' is used, rather than 'psalm', and in thirty-five the word 'song' appears. Even more important twelve titles use both 'psalm' and 'song', and two have 'psalm' and 'hymn'. Psalm seventy-six is designated 'psalm, hymn and song'. And at the end of the first seventy two psalms we read that 'the hymns of David the son of Jesse are ended'. (Ps. 72:20.) In other words, there is no more reason to think that the Apostle referred to psalms when he said 'psalms', than when he said 'hymns' and 'songs', for the simple reason that all three were biblical terms for psalms in the book of psalms itself. We are in the habit of using the terms 'hymns' and 'songs' for those compositions that are not psalms. But Paul and the Christians at Ephesus and Colossae used these terms as the Bible itself uses them, namely, as titles for the various psalms in the Old Testament Psalter. To us it may seem strange, or even unnecessary, that the Holy Spirit would use a variety of titles to describe His inspired compositions. But the fact is that He did so. Just as the Holy Spirit speaks of His 'commandments and his statutes and his judgments' (Deut.. 30:16, etc.), and of 'miracles and wonders and signs' (Acts 2:22), so He speaks of His 'psalms, hymns and songs'. As commandments, statutes and judgments are all divine laws in the language of scripture; as miracles and wonders and signs are all supernatural works of God in the language of scripture; so psalms, hymns and songs are the inspired compositions of the Psalter, in the language of scripture itself... The New Testament evidence sustains this conclusion. On the night of the Last Supper Jesus and His disciples sang 'an hymn' (Matt. 26:30). Bible expositors admit that this was 'the second part of the Hallel Psalms (115-118)" which was always sung at the Passover. (New Bible Commentary, p. 835.) Matthew called this psalm a 'hymn' because a psalm is a hymn in the terminology of the Bible. To the same effect is the Old Testament quotation in Hebrews 2:12, in which the Greek word 'hymn' is quoted from Psalm 22:22. In this quotation from an Old Testament psalm, the word 'hymn' is used to denote the singing of psalms because the Old Testament makes no distinction between the two. But if Scripture itself says that psalms are hymns, and that hymns are psalms, why should we make any distinction between them? If we grant that the Apostle used biblical language in a biblical sense there is no more reason to think that he spoke of uninspired hymns in these texts (Col. 3:16, Eph. 5:19) than to think that he spoke of uninspired psalms, because hymns are inspired psalms in the holy scriptures.24

Furthermore, to reject Mr. Williamson's explanation regarding these verses leads to some major problems. We have already observed that no evidence exists that any uninspired "hymns" existed during the period when these verses were written. Only the inspired Psalms (i.e. psalms, hymns and spiritual songs) were in use as public worship-songs at that time, and no Biblical command is found anywhere to produce additional songs beyond those already contained in the existing book of divine praise -- the Psalms. Is the regulative principle then in error? We think not. Why then were no new songs produced by the early church if these verses were understood to call for them? The Apostles themselves did not produce any such songs, either inspired or uninspired -- not even one that we know of. This helps demonstrate that they did not interpret these verses as modern "hymn-singers" do. Moreover, to approach these verses by importing a modern meaning into the words "hymns and spiritual songs, not only rests on very shaky ground -- leaving much room for doubt and in no way fulfilling the requirements of the regulative principle for clear Biblical warrant in worship practices -- but would also destroy the basis for Grammatico-Historical interpretation of Scripture.25 Therefore, we can see that Eph. 5:19 and Col. 3:16 cannot possibly mean what those opposing the position of exclusive Psalmody say they mean, because their interpretation does not fit any of the existing Biblical (or historical) data -- while the Psalm singers interpretation fits perfectly!

Finally and probably most importantly, Bushell has dug down to the root of the problem in the matter of human innovation in worship,

Arrogance, pride and self-assertion are at the very heart of all attempts to find a musical replacement for the Psalter. William Romaine makes some very pointed comments in this connection, to which advocates of uninspired song in worship would do well to listen: "I want a name for that man who should pretend that he could make better hymns than the Holy Ghost. His collection is large enough: it wants no addition. It is perfect, as its author, and not capable of any improvement. Why in such a case would any man in the world take it into his head to write hymns for the use of the Church? It is just the same as if he was to write a new Bible, not only better than the old, but so much better, that the old may be thrown aside. What a blasphemous attempt! And yet our hymn-mongers, inadvertently, I hope, have come very near to this blasphemy; for they shut out the Psalms, introduce their own verses into the Church, sing them with great delight, and as they fancy with great profit; although the whole practice be in direct opposition with the blessing of God." We see, therefore, that the sufficiency and divine origin of the Psalter are in themselves adequate arguments for its exclusive use in worship. As we have pointed out a number of times already, the very fact that the Bible contains a book of inspired psalms immediately places worship-song in the same category as the authoritative reading of the Scriptures in worship. The former is but the musical counterpart of the latter, and as such is incompatible with the use of uninspired hymns in worship.26

- From: PSALM SINGING IN SCRIPTURE & HISTORY, by Dr. Reg Barrow

The Regulative Principle of Worship is God's ordained law for worship... You see there is no neutrality in the way in which we approach God in worship. Either we approach the living God according to His revealed Word (i.e. the Regulative Principle of Worship), or we approach Him according to our revealed word. Someone's word is going to expressly guide us in worship. The only question is, whose word will guide us? God's or man's? - Greg Price, Foundation For Reformation: The Regulative Principle Of Worship (Free Online Book)

• (Musical instruments were) rejected and condemned by the whole army of Protestant divines. - Charles Spurgeon, Works vol. 2, pt. 1, p. 223, on the Puritan Hard Drive

• Exhorting the people only to rejoice in praising God, he maketh mention of those instruments which by God’s commandment were appointed in the old Law, but under Christ the use thereof is abolished.- Geneva Bible (1599) note on Ps. 150:3, on the Puritan Hard Drive

• Musical instruments were among the legal ceremonies which Christ at His coming abolished. - John Calvin, Lecture on Exodus 15:20, on the Puritan Hard Drive

• Musical instruments in celebrating the praises of God would be no more suitable than the burning of incense, the lighting of lamps, and the restoration of the other shadows of the law. The Papists therefore, have foolishly borrowed, this, as well as many other things, from the Jews. Men who are fond of outward pomp may delight in that noise; but the simplicity which God recommends to us by the apostles is far more pleasing to him. - John Calvin, Commentary on Psalm 33

• Instrumental Music in Public Worship: The Views of John Calvin:"To sing the praises of God upon the harp and psaltery," says Calvin, "unquestionably formed a part of the training of the law and of the service of God under that dispensation of shadows and figures, but they are not now to be used in public thanksgiving."1 He says again: "With respect to the tabret, harp, and psaltery, we have formerly observed, and will find it necessary afterwards to repeat the same remark, that the Levites, under the law, were justified in making use of instrumental music in the worship of God; it having been his will to train his people, while they were yet tender and like children, by such rudiments until the coming of Christ. But now, when the clear light of the gospel has dissipated the shadows of the law and taught us that God is to be served in a simpler form, it would be to act a foolish and mistaken part to imitate that which the prophet enjoined only upon those of his own time."2 He further observes: "We are to remember that the worship of God was never understood to consist in such outward services, which were only necessary to help forward a people as yet weak and rude in knowledge in the spiritual worship of God. A difference is to be observed in this respect between his people under the Old and under the New Testament; for now that Christ has appeared, and the church has reached full age, it were only to bury the light of the gospel should we introduce the shadows of a departed dispensation. From this it appears that the Papists, as I shall have occasion to show elsewhere, in employing instrumental music cannot be said so much to imitate the practice of God's ancient people as to ape it in a senseless and absurd manner, exhibiting a silly delight in that worship of the Old Testament which was figurative and terminated with the gospel."3 ENDNOTES: 1. On Ps. lxxi. 22. 2. On Ps. lxxxi. 3. 3. On Ps. xcii. 1. - John Calvin (emphases added) cited in Instrumental Music in the Public Worship of the Church, by John L. Girardeau -- this book is free online at https://www.covenanter.org/reformed/2015/7/27/john-l-girardeaus-book-on-instrumental-music-in-the-public-worship-of-the-church in text format, and at https://www.sermonaudio.com/go/301984 (as 5 Free SWRB MP3s) -- and both versions are also on the Puritan Hard Drive.

• Convinced by Calvin’s arguments, John Marbeck (1510-1585), former organist of St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, wrote in 1550: “But when they haunt their holy assemblies, I think that musical instruments are no more meet for the setting forth of God’s praises, than if a man shall call again sensing and lames, and such other shadows of the law. Foolishly therefore have the Papists borrowed this and many other things of the Jews. Men that are given to outward pomps delight in such noise, but God liketh better the simplicity which he commendeth to us by his Apostle…” - A Book of Notes and Common Places (1550), pp. 754-755, cited in The History of Instrumental Music in the Church

• All human inventions which are set up to corrupt the simple purity of the Word of God, and to undo the worship which he demands and approves, are true sacrileges, in which the Christian man cannot participate without blaspheming God, and trampling his honour underfoot. - John Calvin on the Puritan Hard Drive.

• Musical organs pertain to the Jewish ceremonies and agree no more to us than circumcision. - Peter Martyr Vermigli, quoted in William Ames, A Fresh Suit Against Human Ceremonies in God’s Worship, p. 405, on the Puritan Hard Drive

• The Jewish way under the law of praising the Lord was upon the timbrel, the harp, psaltery, and ten-stringed instruments, and other instruments of music that belonged to the ceremonial worship that is now abolished. Christ, who is the end of the (ceremonial - ed.) law, has torn or taken away the ceremonies of the law, and there is no warrant now to make use of the organs, as they do in the Popish Church... Oh, but we have a great advantage in being free of these! - Richard Cameron, 'Sermon on Psalm 92 (undated)' in Sermons In Times Of Persecution in Scotland, By Sufferers For the Royal Prerogatives Of Jesus Christ, ed. James Kerr (Edinburgh, 1880), p. 421, on the Puritan Hard Drive

• Instrumental music in the religious worship of the Jews, belonged to the ceremonial law, which is now abolished. - Wilhelm Zepperus (1550-1607), De Lege Mosaica, lib. iv

• Since they also are not in accord with the apostle’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 14, the organs in the great cathedral of Zurich were demolished on the 9th of December in this year of 1527. - Heinrich Bullinger, Reformationsgechichte, vol. 1, p. 418

• The early Reformers, when they came out of Rome, removed them (instruments - ed.) as the monuments of idolatry. Luther called the organ an ensign of Baal; Calvin said that instrumental music was not fitter to be adopted into the Christian Church than the incense and the candlestick; Knox called the organ a kist [chest] of whistles. The Church of England revived them, against a very strong protest, and the English dissenters would not touch them. - Mcclintock & Strong’s Encyclopedia, Vol. 6, Harper and Brothers, New York, 1894, p. 762

• Musical instruments in worship were not used in the early church and the best Reformers called the use of musical instruments in worship "the badge of Popery".This is because musical instruments in worship were part of the ceremonial law (shadows) that were abrogated with the coming of Christ (The Light). This is simply classic Apostolic and Reformed teaching, whereas the Papal Antichrist is the one who brought musical instruments into the church much later in history. See: John Girardeau, in his classic work, INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC IN THE PUBLIC WORSHIP OF THE CHURCH (free at https://www.covenanter.org/reformed/2015/7/27/john-l-girardeaus-book-on-instrumental-music-in-the-public-worship-of-the-church)

• Question 6. Is there any authority for instrumental music in the worship of God under the present dispensation? Answer. Not the least, only the singing of psalms ... was appointed by the apostles; not a syllable is said in the New Testament in favor of instrumental music nor was it ever introduced into the Church until after the eighth century, after the Catholics had corrupted the simplicity of the gospel by their carnal inventions. It was not allowed in the Synagogues, the parish churches of the Jews, but was confined to the Temple service and was abolished with the rites of that dispensation. - Questions on the Confession of Faith and Form of Government of The Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA), published by the Presbyterian Board of Publications, Philadelphia, PA (1842), p. 55

• The organ is said to have been first introduced into church music by Pop Vitalian in 666. In 757, a great organ was sent as a present to Pepin by the Byzantine Emperor, Constantine, and placed in the church St. Corneille as Compiegne. - Chambers Encyclopedia, Vol. 7, p. 112

• Sir John Hawkins, following the Romanish writers in his erudite work on the history of music, made Pope Vitalian, in A.D. 660, the first who introduced organs into the churches. But students of ecclesiastical archaeology are generally agreed that instrumental music was not used in churches till a much later date; for Thomas Aquinas [Catholic Scholar in 1250 A.D.] has these remarkable words, ‘Our church does not use musical instruments, as harps and psalteries, to praise God withal, that she may seem not to Judaize.' - McClintock & Strong’s Encyclopedia, Vol. 6, Harper and Brothers, New York, 1894, p. 762

• The history of the church during the first three centuries affords many instances of primitive Christians engaging in singing, but no mention, (that I recollect) is made of instruments. (If my memory does not deceive me) it originated in the dark ages of popery, when almost every other superstition was introduced. At present, it is most used and where the least regard is paid to primitive simplicity. - Andrew Fuller, Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, Vol. 3, P. 520, 1843, on the Puritan Hard Drive

• 5. The only other argument from the New Testament Scriptures will be derived from the condemnation which they pronounce upon "will-worship." Will-worship is that which is not commanded by God, but devised by man. We have seen that God commanded instrumental music to be employed in connection with the temple. It was, therefore, in that relation not an element of will-worship. It was of course legitimate. But had the Jew employed it in the synagogue, he would have been guilty of the sin of will-worship. Why? Because, without the divine warrant he would have asserted his own will in regard to the public worship of God. Now that the temple is gone, all that was peculiar to it is gone with it. To revive any of its defunct services, and borrow them from its ruins for the ornamentation of the Christian church, is an instance of will-worship. The general principle is enounced by Paul in the Epistle to the Colossians, although he applies it specifically to a certain class of cases. "Wherefore," says he, "if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances, (Touch not; taste not; handle not; which are all to perish with the using;) after the commandments and doctrines of men? which things have indeed a shew of wisdom in will-worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honor to the satisfying of the flesh." Instrumental music, as has been proved, was one of the rudiments of that ceremonial and typical ritual by which it pleased God to train the Israelites, as children in a preparatory school, for the manhood of the Christian dispensation with its glorious privileges and its expanded responsibilities. This was the view of even Aquinas and Bellarmin. He, therefore, who would import that effete element into the Church of the New Dispensation would impugn the wisdom of God, assert his will against the divine authority, and abandon the freedom of Christ for the bondage of Moses. - Instrumental Music in the Public Worship of the Church, By John L. Girardeau(emphases added) -- this book is free online at https://www.covenanter.org/reformed/2015/7/27/john-l-girardeaus-book-on-instrumental-music-in-the-public-worship-of-the-church in text, and at https://www.sermonaudio.com/go/301984 (5 Free SWRB MP3s) -- and both versions are also on the Puritan Hard Drive.

• There is no exercise whereunto we have more need to be stirred up, than to praise; such is our dullness, and such is the excellency and necessity of the work, as the ceremonial use of musical instruments in the pedagogy of Moses, did signify and import; the religious use whereof, albeit it be taken away with the rest of the Ceremonial Law (the natural or civil use thereof remaining still the same, both before the Ceremonial Law and after it), yet the thing signified, which is the bending all the powers of our soul and body to praise God, is not taken away. - David Dickson, commentary on Psalm 33:2-3 (emphases added), on the Puritan Hard Drive

• The scriptural argument in regard to the identification of the instrumental music in the Old Testament dispensation with the temple worship, stands thus: We find an express appointment by Divine authority of the use of musical instruments for the Temple service, and in connection with the offering of sacrifice (Numbers 10:10; 1 Chronicles 15:16, and 16:4-6), the very families being specifically named that could alone use these musical instruments (1 Chronicles 25 ff.). We find no appointment, or the least hint of the appointment, of any such instrumental music in the service of God anywhere else. In accordance, therefore, with the principle of the text, “What thing soever I command you, observe to do it; thou shalt not add thereto,” the use of instrumental music in worship, except in the Temple service was excluded. Hence the significant fact already adverted to, that since the period of the destruction of the Jewish Temple, till lately, instrumental music had been universally regarded by the Jews as unlawful in the worship of God. Since the ploughshare had passed over the ruins of that Temple, it was universally felt by them that there was no place where, in God’s worship, the loud cymbals, and cornets, and harps, could be lawfully used, any more than there was a place where an altar, for burnt offering could be reared, or sacrifice could be offered. - Alexander Hislop, The Scriptural Principles of the Solemn League and Covenant (1858), on the Puritan Hard Drive

• 1. Whatsoever in the Divine service of the people of the Jews was ceremonial, all that is abolished. Instrumental musick in the Divine service of the people of the Jews was ceremonial; as is abundantly evident by comparing the Old Testament church with the New. Therefore, &c. 2. The design and end of Church Assemblies ought to be edification and instruction, 1 Cor. 14:19, 26. By organs, or musical instruments, there is not edification or instruction; for if unknown tongues be unprofitable for that end, much more these confusedly sounding instruments. Therefore, &c. 3. Organs were first invented, and brought into the Christian Church, by Pope Vitalian, while Superstition did prevail, about the year of Christ 770. Therefore they should be hateful to us; and are again by us deservedly thrown out of the churches. - Johann Heinrich Alting (1583-1644). Syllab. Controver. p. 160

• All worshipping, honoring, or service invented by the brain of man in the religion of God, without His own express commandment, is idolatry. - John Knox cited in Greg Price, FOUNDATION FOR REFORMATION: THE REGULATIVE PRINCIPLE OF WORSHIP, free at https://www.swrb.com/newslett/actualNLs/REFORMATION-RPW-GP.htm

• The Synods of Dordt, 1578, art. 77; of Middelburg, 1581; of Gelderland, 1640, art. 3, have all dealt with terminating, when determining the place of the organ in the Church. The statement made by the Synod of Dordt, 1574, art. 50, needs our special attention; we read, ‘Concerning the use of Organs in the Congregation, we hold that according to 1 Cor. 14: 19, it should not have a place in the Church; and where it is still used when people leave the church, it is of no use but to forget what was heard before.‘ ... To know the reason why Organs should be kept out of the Church, read our learned theologians and their polemics about Organs against the Lutherans and Papists; see Faukee, about Psalm 45, p. 20. Also Lodoc. Larenus, in cap. 12 Esa, p. 47, where we find the story of the duty of Middelburg’s consistory to do away with the Organ; Hoornbeek disput. 2, de Psalmodia. thes 7; Rivet, in Exod. cap. 15 vs 12. Imprimis Gisb. Voetii. Polit. Eccl. part. 1, p. 548. Hospiniamus de Templis, p. 309. It would be better if this and other novelties were not mentioned. - Abraham Van de Velde (1614-1677), The Wonders of the Most High: A 125 Year History of the United Netherlands 1550-1675, on the Puritan Hard Drive

• Isidore of Pelusium (c. 370-449), who lived since Basil, held music was allowed the Jews by God in a way of condescension to their childishness: ‘If God,’ says he, ‘bore with bloody sacrifices, because of men’s childishness at that time, why should you wonder he bore with the music of a harp and a psaltery?’ - Ridgley, Body of Divinity, vol. 4, p. 86; Lib. 2, Epistle 176, on the Puritan Hard Drive

• To these [‘popish superstitions’] may be added consort in music in divine service, feeding the ears, not edifying the mind. (1 Corinthians 14:15) ‘What is it then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the spirit and I will sing with the understanding also.‘ Justin Martyr in his book of Christian Questions and Answers 107, ‘It is not the custom of the Churches, to sing their meters with any such kind of instruments, etc. but their manner is to use plain song.‘ - William Perkins, A Golden Chain (1597), p. 69, on the Puritan Hard Drive

• (Musical instruments) are laid aside by most of the reformed churches; nor would they be retained among the Lutherans, unless they had forsaken their own Luther, who, by the confession of Eckard, reckoned organs among the ensign of Baal. That they still continue in some of the Dutch churches, is against the minds of the Pastors. For in the National Synod at Middelburg in the year 1581, and in the Synod of Holland and Zealand, in the year 1594, it was resolved. That they would endeavour to obtain of the magistrate the laying aside of organs, and the singing with them in the churches, even out of the time of worship, either before or after sermons: so far are those Synods from bearing with them in the worship itself. - Henry Hickman, Apot. p. 139; cited in Ridgley, Body of Divinity, vol. 4, p. 87, on the Puritan Hard Drive

• Let God be praised in the dance with timbrel and harp, according to the usage of the Old Testament church very early (Exod. 15:20), where we find God praised with timbrels and dances. Those who from this urge the use of music in religious worship must by the same rule introduce dancing, for they went together, as in David’s dancing before the ark, and Judges 21:21. But, whereas many scriptures in the New Testament keep up singing as a gospel-ordinance, none provide for the keeping up of music and dancing; the gospel-canon for psalmody is to sing with the spirit and with the understanding. - Matthew Henry, comment on Psalm 149:3, on the Puritan Hard Drive

• The manner of singing, is to be holy, reverent, grace, orderly, with understanding, feeling, and comfort, to the edification of the church… Instruments of music were so annexed to the songs in the Temple, as incense to the prayers (2 Chron. 29). Such shadows are ceased, but the substance remaineth. - Henry Ainsworth, Orthodox Foundation of Religion (1653), pp. 405-406

• The Pastor loveth no music in the house of God but such as edifieth, and stoppeth his ears at instrumental music, as serving for the pedagogy of the untoward Jews under the law, and being figurative of that spiritual joy whereunto our hearts should be opened under the gospel. The Prelate loveth carnal and curious singing to the ear, more than the spiritual melody of the gospel, and therefore would have antiphony and organs in the cathedral kirks, upon no greater reason than other shadows of the law of Moses; or lesser instruments, as lutes, citherus and pipes might be [to be] used in other kirks. - David Calderwood, The Pastor and the Prelate (1628), p. 9, on the Puritan Hard Drive

• It is observed, that David’s psalms were sung formerly with musical instruments, as the harp, timbrel, and cymbal, and organs; and why not with these now? If these are to be disused, why not singing itself? I answer, these are not essential to singing, and so may be laid aside, and that continue; it was usual to burn incense at the time of prayer, typical of Christ’s mediation, and of the acceptance of prayer through it; that is now disused; but prayer being a moral duty, still remains: the above instruments were used only when the church was in its infant-state, and what is showy, gaudy, and pompous, are pleasing to children; and as an ancient writer observes, ‘these were fit for babes, but in the churches (under the gospel-dispensation, which is more manly) the use of these, fit for babes, is taken away, and bare or plain singing is left.’ As for organs…were first introduced by a pope of Rome, Vitalianus, and that in the seventh century, and not before. - John Gill, A Complete Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity, Vol. 3, ‘Of Singing Psalms As A Part of Public Worship’ (1796), p. 384, p. 9, on the Puritan Hard Drive

• It would be too tedious if I should reckon up all that have assented to these (i.e. Reformers who agreed with those he quoted rejecting musical instrumentation - ed.). I will add only the two and thirty grave learned men, which were chosen in King Edwards days, to reform Ecclesiastical laws, and observances they judged this law fitting, ‘It likes us well to have this tedious kind of musicke taken away.’ - William Ames, A Fresh Suit Against Human Ceremonies in God’s Worship, p. 405, on the Puritan Hard Drive

• Instrumental music found in the ancient Jewish Temple is merely a type or shadow of the edifying and untheatrical singing with the heart and voice approved and practiced in the New Testament. - John Cotton, Singing of Psalms a Gospel Ordinance, on the Puritan Hard Drive

• It has thus been proved, by an appeal to historical facts, that the church, although lapsing more and more into defection from the truth and into a corruption of apostolic practice, had no instrumental music for twelve hundred years; and that the Calvinistic Reformed Church ejected it from its services as an element of Popery, even the Church of England having come very nigh to its extrusion from her worship. The historical argument, therefore, combines with the Scriptural and the confessional to raise a solemn and powerful protest against its employment by the Presbyterian Church. It is heresy in the sphere of worship. - Girardeau, Instrumental Music, Instrumental Music in the Public Worship of the Church, By John L. Girardeau, p, 179 -- this book is free online at https://www.covenanter.org/reformed/2015/7/27/john-l-girardeaus-book-on-instrumental-music-in-the-public-worship-of-the-church in text, and at https://www.sermonaudio.com/go/301984 (5 MP3s) -- and both versions are also on the Puritan Hard Drive.

• Musical instruments in celebrating the praises of God would be no more suitable than the burning of incense, the lighting up of lamps, and the restoration of the other shadows of the law. The papists, therefore, have foolishly borrowed this, as well as many other things, from the Jews. Men who are fond of outward pomp may delight in that noise; but the simplicity which God recommends to us by the apostle is far more pleasing to Him. - John Calvin, Commentary on Psalms 33 and on I Samuel 18: 1-9, on the Puritan Hard Drive

• (Gisbertius) Voetius (1589-1676) argues that instrumental music “savors of Judaism, or a worship suited to a childish condition under the Old Testament economy; and there might with equal justice be introduced into the churches of the New Testament the bells of Aaron, the silver trumpets of the priests, the horns of the Jubilee, harps, psalteries and cymbals, with Levitical singers, and so the whole cultus of that economy, or the beggarly elements of the world, according to the words of the apostle in the fourth chapter of Galatians." - Voetius, Ecclesiastical Polity, 2.2.3, cited in The History of Instrumental Music in the Church (In this work, an entire section ‘De Organis et cantu Organico in Sacris‘ addresses the question of instrumental music in the public worship of God, and defends the historic Reformed doctrine and practice of unaccompanied praise).

• 77. We do not consider the use of organs in the churches to be good especially for the preaching (services). Therefore, we judged that ministers should labor, even though organs are tolerated for a time, that they be removed at the earliest and most suitable time. - National Synod of the Netherlands, German, and Walloon Churches… held at Dordrecht (1578), ibid., p. 220).

• If the apostle justly prohibits the use of unknown tongues in the church, much less would he have tolerated these artificial musical performances which are addressed to the ear alone, and seldom strike the understanding even of the performers themselves. - Theodore Beza quoted in Girardeau’s Instrumental Music, p. 166

• God’s kingdom is the place of joy (Rom. 14:17). Rejoicing belongs to the people of God (Pss. 68:3; 106:5). The music of the temple was typical, and figured the joy of the catholic (universal - ed.) church, where is the assurance of remission of sins and life eternal. - William Perkins, Commentary on Galatians (1617), Works II, p. 312, on the Puritan Hard Drive

• The Council of Laodicea (367) forbids the use of musical instruments in worship, and this has remained the policy of the Eastern Orthodox Church to the present day. In 416 the Council of Carthage addressed this issue and declared, "On the Lord's day let all instruments of music be silenced." "Ut extra psalmos vel canoni-carum Scripturarum Novi et Vctcris Tcstamenti nihil podice compositum in ecdesia psallatur.” first Council of Braga, held A. D. 563, no poetic composition be sung in the Church except the Psalms of the sacred canon. - Medieval Scholastics on Exclusive Psalmody and No Musical Instruments in Worship

• David appears to have had a peculiarly tender remembrance of the singing of the pilgrims, and assuredly it is the most delightful part of worship and that which comes nearest to the adoration of heaven. What a degradation to supplant the intelligent song of the whole congregation by the theatrical prettiness of a quartet, bellows, and pipes. We might as well pray by machinery as praise by it… ‘Praise the Lord with harp.’ Israel was at school, and used childish things to help her to learn; but in these days when Jesus gives us spiritual food, one can make melody without strings and pipes… We do not need them. That would hinder rather than help our praise. Sing unto him. This is the sweetest and best music. No instrument is like the human voice. - Charles Spurgeon, Commentary on Psalm 42, on the Puritan Hard Drive

• Gradually, over the course of the thousand years before the Reformation, the medieval church reinstituted progressively aspects of the Mosaic ceremonial cultus including the introduction of musical instruments which had been suppressed in churches until the tenth century. Their reintroduction was highly controversial… the introduction of instruments in worship accompanied the rise of sacerdotalism in medieval worship. The Reformation saw itself as recovering not only the biblical pattern of worship, but the praxis of the early post-apostolic church. The reformation of worship happened in stages. The first stage of the reformation of worship established the formal principle of the Reformation: sola scriptura. The Reformed churches applied the Scripture principle most thoroughly to the practice of worship. - R. Scott Clark, Recovering the Reformed Confession., pp. 246-7

• In the beginning of the year 1562 a meeting of the Convocation (of the Anglican Church) was held, in which the subject of further reformation was vigorously discussed on both sides. (It was proposed) that the use of organs be laid aside. When the vote came to be taken, on these propositions, forty-three voted for them and thirty-five against; but when the proxies were counted, the balance was turned, the final state of the vote being fifty-eight for and fifty-nine against. Thus, it was determined by a single vote, and that the proxy of an absent person who did not hear the reasoning that the Prayer-Book should remain unimproved, that there should he no further reformation, that there should be no relief granted to those whose consciences felt aggrieved by the admixture of human inventions in the worship of God. - William Hetherington, History of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, 1923, p 30, on the Puritan Hard Drive

• Our church does not use musical instruments, as harps and psalteries, to praise God withal, that she may not seem to Judaize. - Thomas Aquinas, Bingham’s Antiquities, vol. 3, p. 137

• It is not, therefore, strange that instrumental music was not, heard in their congregational services….. In the early church the whole congregation joined in the singing, but instrumental music did not accompany the praise. - W. D. Killen, The Ancient Church, pp. 193, 423

• There is no record in the New Testament of the use of instruments in the musical worship of the Christian church. - WYCLIFFE BIBLE DICTIONARY

• What trumpet of God is now heard – unless it is in the entertainment of the heretics? - TERTULLIAN (155-230 AD)

• The antagonism which the Fathers of the early Church displayed toward instruments has two outstanding characteristics: vehemence and uniformity. - James McKinnon, The Temple, the Church Fathers and Early Western Chant, Routledge, 1998)

• I make no question but all that kind of music was a part of the legal pedagogy. In the solemn worship of God, I do not judge it more suitable than if we should recall the incense, tapers, and other shadows of the law into use. I say again, to go beyond what we are taught is most wicked perversity. - William Ames quoting Erasmus, William Ames, A Fresh Suit Against Human Ceremonies in God’s Worship, p. 405-6, on the Puritan Hard Drive

• If any, belonging to the theater, come to the mystery of godliness, being a player upon a pipe, a lute, or an harp, let him leave it off, or be rejected. - Apostolic Constitutions 8.32; ANF 7, p. 495 (375 AD).

• Though instrumental music was much in use in the temple service as regulated by David and Solomon, yet we have no notice of its being employed in divine worship in either the antediluvian, the patriarchal, or the Mosaic periods of the church, with the exception of the chorus which Miriam and her fellow-women subjoined to the triumphal song of Moses and the Israelites on the overthrow of Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea. This is the more worthy of notice as regards the Mosaic dispensation, when we take into account the fullness and minuteness of the instructions which the great legislator gave as to religious observances under that economy. In the N.T. there is no reference to instrumental music as in use among the Christians of apostolic times. It is simply vocal music that is ever mentioned… These passages [John 4:24; 1 Cor. 14:16; Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16; James 5:18] might be proof enough that instrumental music was not in use among Christians in apostolic times; and this is conclusively confirmed by the fact, that it was not introduced into the church until ages after… Now, when we combine together these two facts, that there is no authority in the N.T. for the use of instrumental music in religious worship, and that it was not in use in the church until centuries after, this may be held to be conclusive proof that it was not in use in the apostolic churches; for though the practice of the apostolic churches might in many cases be laid aside as the church grew more corrupt, it is utterly unlikely that instrumental music, had it been in use in them, would be laid aside as the church advanced in corruption, for it is just one of those usages which are congenial to the corrupt nature of man, and which we accordingly find was brought in in the darkest age of popery. There is thus no room to say that instrumental music in Christian churches is of divine authority. There is no room to doubt that it is of human invention—an act of will worship—an attempt of man to improve or mend the work of God, as if he knew better than God what was best fitted to cherish devotional feelings in the human breast, and what would be most acceptable to himself as an act of worship… Instrumental music is often introduced into public worship under the plea that it will promote the devotional feelings of the worshipers; but we suspect the contrary of this is more commonly the result. Their minds are so apt to be taken up with and carried away by the music that devotional feelings are entirely for gotten. It often appears to degenerate into musical performances—we might even say into musical entertainments. - John Brown of Haddington (1722-1787), Dictionary of the Bible, on “praise,” pp. 452-454, on the Puritan Hard Drive

• Old School Southern Presbyterians (19th century). John L. Girardeau (1825-1898) wrote the well known definitive treatise against instruments in the church, Instrumental Music in the Public Worship of the Church (1888). Robert Louis Dabney (1820-1898) wrote a glowing review of Dr. Girardeau’s Instrumental Music in Public Worship for The Presbyterian Quarterly, July 1889. He was also an architect who intentionally designed church buildings so that church organs could not fit inside of them (cf. Architect of Orthodoxy). Girardeau also states that the Presbyterian churches had only recently in his own day begun incorporating instrumental music, and then rhetorically asks: “How is it that such men as Breckinridge and Thornwell, in the American Presbyterian Church, were hardly cold in their graves before, in the very places where they had thundered forth their contentionsfor the mighty principle which demands a divine warrant for every element of doctrine , government and worship, and where they had, in obedience to that principle, utterly refused to admit instrumental music into the church, the organ pealed forth its triumphs over their views? … What would Gillespie and Calderwood now say, what Chalmers and Candlish, Cunningham and Begg, what Mason, Breckinridge and Thornwell — what would they say, were they permitted to rise from their graves, and revisit the scenes of their labors — the churches for which they toiled and prayed? ” (p. 158 & 161). - The History of Instrumental Music in the Church

• The church, although lapsing more and more into deflection from the truth and into a corrupting of apostolic practice, had not instrumental music for 1200 years (that is, it was not in general use before this time); The Calvinistic Reform Church ejected it from its service as an element of popery, even the church of England having come very nigh its extrusion from her worship. It is heresy in the sphere of worship. - John Giradeau, Presbyterian professor in Columbia Theological Seminary, Instrumental Music, p. 179

• Dr. Girardeau has defended the old usage of our church with a moral courage, loyalty to truth, clearness of reasoning and wealth of learning which should make every true Presbyterian proud of him, whether he adopts his conclusions or not. The framework of his argument is this: it begins with that vital truth which no Presbyterian can discard without a square desertion of our principles. The man who contests this first premise had better set out at once for Rome: God is to be worshipped only in the ways appointed in his word. Every act of public cultus not positively enjoined by him is thereby forbidden. Christ and his apostles ordained the musical worship of the New Dispensation without any sort of musical instrument, enjoining only the singing with the voice of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Hence such instruments are excluded from Christian worship. Such has been the creed of all churches, and in all ages, except of the Popish communion after it had reached the nadir of its corruption at the end of the thirteenth century, and of its prelatic imitators. But the pretext is raised that instrumental music was authorized by Scripture in the Old Testament. This evasion Dr. Girardeau ruins by showing that God set up in the Hebrew Church two distinct forms of worship; the one moral, didactic, spiritual and universal, and therefore perpetual in all places and ages—that of the synagogues; the other peculiar, local, typical, foreshadowing in outward forms the more spiritual dispensation, and therefore destined to be utterly abrogate by Christ’s coming. Now we find instrumental music, like human priests and their vestments, show-bread, incense, and bloody sacrifice, absolutely limited to this local and temporary worship. But the Christian churches were modelled upon the synagogues and inherited their form of government and worship because it was permanently didactic, moral and spiritual, and included nothing typical. This reply is impregnably fortified by the word of God himself: that when the Antitype has come the types must be abolished. For as the temple-priests and animal sacrifices typified Christ and his sacrifice on Calvary, so the musical instruments of David in the temple-service only typified the joy of the Holy Ghost in his pentecostal effusions. Hence when the advocates of innovation quote such words as those of the Psalmist, "Praise the Lord with the harp," &c., these shallow reasoners are reminded that the same sort of plea would draw back human priest and bloody sacrifices into our Christian churches. For these Psalms exclaim, with the same emphasis, "Bind our sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar." Why do not our Christian aesthetics feel equally authorized and bound to build altars in front of their pulpits, and to drag the struggling lambs up their nicely carpeted aisles, and have their throats cut there for the edification of the refined audience? "Oh, the sacrifices, being types and peculiar to the temple service, were necessarily abolished by the coming of the Antitype." Very good. So were the horns, cymbals, harps and organs only peculiar to the temple-service, a part of its types, and so necessarily abolished when the temple was removed. - Girardeau's "Instrumental Music in the Public Worship of the Church." A REVIEW BY ROBERT L. DABNEY (Free Online)

• There was nothing in the past about which God was so jealous as the mode of His worship. There was nothing around which He threw guards and fences so awful as around His worship… He reserved to Himself the high prerogative of appointing the ways in which men should approach Him in His public worship, and instantly resented every invasion of that prerogative. - Instrumental Music in the Public Worship of the Church, By John L. Girardeau -- this book is free online at https://www.covenanter.org/reformed/2015/7/27/john-l-girardeaus-book-on-instrumental-music-in-the-public-worship-of-the-church in text, and at https://www.sermonaudio.com/go/301984 (5 MP3s) -- and both versions are also on the Puritan Hard Drive.

• Gradually, over the course of the thousand years before the Reformation, the medieval church reinstituted progressively aspects of the Mosaic ceremonial cultus including the introduction of musical instruments which had been suppressed in churches until the tenth century. Their reintroduction was highly controversial… the introduction of instruments in worship accompanied the rise of sacerdotalism in medieval worship. The Reformation saw itself as recovering not only the biblical pattern of worship, but the praxis of the early post-apostolic church. The reformation of worship happened in stages. The first stage of the reformation of worship established the formal principle of the Reformation: sola scriptura. The Reformed churches applied the Scripture principle most thoroughly to the practice of worship. - R. Scott Clark, Recovering the Reformed Confession, pp. 246-7, emphases added; citing Music, ibid., p. 43, 47-51, and Hughes Oliphant Old, The Patristic Roots of Reformed Worship. Cited at https://purelypresbyterian.com/2019/09/06/practical-considerations-on-a-cappella-worship/.

• "Whatsoever is not commanded is forbidden." This, the Scriptural law of worship, is the acropolis of the Church’s liberties, the palladium of her purity, and her God-given moorage. Let the Protestant Church, in creed or conduct, in profession or practice, depart from this divine principle, and she has weighed her sheet-anchor only to find its flukes sundered and herself adrift on the high seas, a craft without compass or chart or polestar, in the midnight darkness of rationalism and ritualism, with her prow pointing to ‘Rome’ as her probable landing-place. - William S. McClure, from "The Scriptural Law of Worship", Ch 4 of The Psalms in Worship, ed. by John McNaugher, 1907, on the Puritan Hard Drive

• Exclusive Psalmody 6/7 (and the Westminster Standards), by Pastor Greg Price (Free MP3)

• "It cannot be denied by any student of church history or of the Westminster Standards, that the Puritans taught Exclusive Psalmody." - Dr. Matthew McMahon, The Puritans On Exclusive Psalmody, Dr. C. Matthew McMahon (Editor and Publisher), by Thomas Ford (Westminster Divine), Cuthbert Sydenham (Presbyterian Divine), Nathaniel Holmes (Reformed Minister) and John Cotton (New England Colonist, Minister and Theologian) (412 Pages)

"Hymns of human composition are used so commonly now in public worship by Presbyterian churches that it is difficult to believe that the practice is not a hundred years old, and that in some of the churches it is of very recent date. On the supposition that it is good and dutiful and wise to sing such hymns in worship, it is equally difficult to account for the neglect of the churches at the time of the Reformation, and for generations afterwards. What could have so blinded the reformers as to make them reject hymns and sing the Psalms alone? How could the Westminster Divines, in framing their Confession of Faith and Directory for Worship, have been so unanimous in the blunder that the service of praise is to consist of the 'singing of Psalms?' And apart from the aspect of duty, how could the Presbyterian churches, for about a hundred and fifty or two hundred years after the Westminster Assembly, have been so insensible to the power of hymns as an attractive addition to their public services? We cannot by any means understand how it was that, if it was dutiful to use hymns in worship, the reformers did not discover the Scriptural warrant for the duty, especially as hymns had been used for centuries by the Church of Rome. Nor can we understand how they rejected the hymns and used the Psalms alone, unless on the supposition that they believed the use of hymns to be part of the will-worship of Rome. If they were wrong on this point, then Rome and our modern Presbyterian churches are right. In that case, the Puritans and Covenanters were fanatics, and Romanists were truly enlightened! And most of our Presbyterian churches of the present day were fanatical too, and did not become truly enlightened and liberal till they got back to the Romish practice!"

- James Dick from Hymns and Hymn Books (1883, reprinted by Still Waters Revival Books) as excerpted from The Original Covenanter magazine (Dec, 1883, vol. 3, No. 12)

"The Assembly of Divines having received from this Honourable House an order, bearing date October 7,1645, to read over and judge of two Books of David's Psalms, composed in English metre, by Mr. William Barton, and thereupon to return their judgment to this Honorable House, do humbly certify, That they had long before received an order from the Honorable House of Commons, bearing date November 20,1643, to give their judgment touching the Psalms composed in metre by Mr. Rouse, a Member of that House; and that thereupon there was a Committee appointed by this Assembly to consider of these Psalms; and that the same Committee had with much care perused, and with great diligence concurred with the same Learned Gentleman, to amend and perfect his copy, and had fully finished the Work, before they received the said order from the Honorable House of Lords; and withal that the greatest part of this version was sent to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and there put into the hands of a Committee, and by that Committee, so far as they have examined it, very well approved; yet, in obedience to the order of this Honorable House, they appointed a Committee to consider thereof; and, upon the whole matter, do find reason to certify this Honorable House, That albeit the said Mr. Barton hath taken very good and commendable pains in his Metphrase, yet the other version, so exactly perused and amended by the said Mr. Rouse and the Committee of the Assembly with long and great labor, is so closely framed according to the Original Text, as that we humbly conceive it will be useful for the edification of the Church" (cited from The Letters and Journals of Robert Baillie).

"Ordered, That the Book of Psalms, set forth by Mr. Rous, and perused by the Assembly of Divines, be forthwith printed in sundry volumes: And that the said Psalms, and none other, shall, after the first of January next, be sung in all Churches and Chapels within the Kingdom of England, Dominion of Wales, and Town of Berwick-upon-Tweede; and that it be referred to Mr. Rous, to take care for the true printing thereof" (Cited from The Letters and Journals of Robert Baillie, 3:539).

"The Commission of the General Assembly having with great diligence considered the Paraphrase of the Psalms in Meter, sent from the Assembly of Divines in England by our Commissioners, whilst they were there, as it is corrected by former General Assemblies, Committees from them, and now at last by the Brethren deputed by the late Assembly for that purpose: And having exactly examined the same, do approve the said Paraphrase, as it is now compiled; And therefore, according to the power given them by the said Assembly, do appoint it to be printed and published for public use: Hereby authorizing the same to be the only Paraphrase, of the Psalms of David to be sung in the Kirk of Scotland: and discharging the old Paraphrase and any other than this new Paraphrase, to be made use of in any congregation or family after the first day of May in the year 1650; And for Uniformity in this part of the Worship of God, do seriously recommend to Presbyteries to cause make public intimation of this Act, and take special care that the same be tymeously [i.e. timely--GLP] put to execution, and duly observed" (Cited from The Letters and Journals of Robert Baillie, 3:548).

"The Committee of Estates having considered the English Paraphrase of the Psalms of David in Meter, presented this day unto them by the Commission of the General Assembly, together with their Act and the Act of the late Assembly, approving the said Paraphrase, and appointing the same to be sung through this Kirk. Therefore, the Committee doth also approve the said Paraphrase, and interpone their authority for the publishing and practicing thereof; hereby ordaining the same, and no other to be made use of throughout this Kingdom, according to the tenor of the said Acts of the General Assembly and their Commissioners" (Cited from The Letters and Journals of Robert Baillie, 3:548,549).

• 1. Exclusive Psalmody 1/7 (Inspired Song vs. Uninspired Song)

• 2. Exclusive Psalmody 2/7 (God's Covenant Songs in Worship) 

• 3. Exclusive Psalmody 3/7 (Sufficiency of the Psalter)

• 4. Exclusive Psalmody 4/7 (Exclusive Psalmody and the Regulative Principle of Worship) 

• 5. Exclusive Psalmody 5/7 (Exclusive Psalmody in Church History) 

• 6. Exclusive Psalmody 6/7 (and the Westminster Standards)

• 7. Exclusive Psalmody 7/7 (Objections to Exclusive Psalmody Answered)

• History of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, by William Hetherington (13 Free MP3s, Free Book, etc.)

• The History of the Service of Song: Real Reformation, Faithful Worship And Praising The Lord Jesus Christ Through Songs, by Dr. Steven Dilday (Free MP3s)

• PASTOR GREG L. PRICE ON THE PURITAN HARD DRIVE

• Musical instruments in celebrating the praises of God would be no more suitable than the burning of incense, the lighting of lamps, and the restoration of the other shadows of the law. The Papists therefore, have foolishly borrowed, this, as well as many other things, from the Jews. Men who are fond of outward pomp may delight in that noise; but the simplicity which God recommends to us by the apostles is far more pleasing to him. - John Calvin, Commentary on Psalm 33

• Musical instruments in worship were not used in the early church and the best Reformers called the use of musical instruments in worship "the badge of Popery". This is because musical instruments in worship were part of the ceremonial law (shadows) that were abrogated with the coming of Christ (The Light). This is simply classic Apostolic and Reformed teaching, whereas the Papal Antichrist is the one who brought musical instruments into the church much later in history. See: John Girardeau, in his classic work, INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC IN THE PUBLIC WORSHIP OF THE CHURCH (and free as text at https://www.covenanter.org/reformed/2015/7/27/john-l-girardeaus-book-on-instrumental-music-in-the-public-worship-of-the-church)

• What are the signs of the times in the sphere of Worship? I confess that upon this subject I scarcely dare trust myself to speak. The movement of our times strikes me with astonishment. There was nothing in the past about which God was so jealous as the mode of His worship. There was nothing around which He threw guards and fences so awful as around His worship. His wrath leaped forth as a vehement flame against those who asserted their wills in His worship. He reserved to Himself the high prerogative of appointing the ways in which men should approach Him in His public worship, and instantly resented every invasion of that prerogative. But all that is now changed, we are told. We have passed under the milder sanctions of the New Testament dispensation, and more discretionary power is granted to the church. Hold! Did not Christ enjoin it upon His apostles to teach the church to observe all things whatsoever He had commanded? And does not that necessarily imply that they were to teach the church to abstain from all things whatsoever He had not commanded? To do nothing which He had not commanded? Did not the apostles organize the church according to His will? Did they not appoint her whole order, including her public worship? And are we not bound by Christ’s will thus expressed? Did the apostolic church know anything of instrumental music in public worship, of liturgies, of the decorations of church edifices? How come we to know them except by breaking with the apostolic order and the will of our King? Hearken, men and brethren! Let us take just one of these elements of innovation upon the primitive order of worship and rapidly trace its history. For 1,200 years the Christian church knew nothing of instrumental music in her public worship. In the thirteenth century its proposed introduction into the Church of Rome — corrupt as it then was — was ineffectually resisted by some of her most eminent theologians. At the reformation the Swiss Protestant Church cast it out; the French Protestant Church cast it out; the Dutch Church cast it out; the Scotch Church cast it out; the English Puritans cast it out; and the Church of England came very nigh casting it out. At its first planting, the American Evangelical Church refused to adopt it. What do we now behold? Its use by nearly all the leading churches of Protestantism, in opposition to the Scriptures and the venerable precedents which have just been recited. What a change! What a blazing sign in the sky of the Protestant Church! What is to stop the tendency? The beginning is the mother of the end. What end? The full orchestra of Rome. - John L. Girardeau (on the Puritan Hard Drive)

• All human inventions which are set up to corrupt the simple purity of the Word of God, and to undo the worship which he demands and approves, are true sacrileges, in which the Christian man cannot participate without blaspheming God, and trampling his honour underfoot. - John Calvin on the Puritan Hard Drive.

• "All worshipping, honoring, or service invented by the brain of man in the religion of God, without His own express commandment, is idolatry." - John Knox cited in Greg Price, FOUNDATION FOR REFORMATION: THE REGULATIVE PRINCIPLE OF WORSHIP, free at https://www.swrb.com/newslett/actualNLs/REFORMATION-RPW-GP.htm

• "Instrumental music, which, as much as the offering of sacrifice, was identified with it, and which was not used in the service of the synagogue, was equally abrogated. ... We have statements from uninspired men, coming down to the end of the third century, and even later, in regard to Christian worship and psalmody; and, even till then, there is evidence that there was no such thing as instrumental accompaniments to the praise. Of course, I do not adduce the evidence of these early Christian writers, as if their authority was any proof of the right or the wrong on this question; but only as bearing testimony in regard to a matter of fact, about which they could not be mistaken; and which, once admitted to be a fact, can be accounted for only on the supposition, that the instrumental music of the Jewish worship fell with the "worldly sanctuary " of Judaism. ... If any one says, "But what great harm, after all, can there be in this?" I answer, "There is all the harm of 'will-worship,' which the Lord so emphatically condemns." If there was no such thing as an organ, or any instrument of music, used in the worship of the Apostolic Church, and if it be supposed that instrumental music is really helpful to the devout feelings of a Gospel-worshipper, then see what is the inevitable inference: Either the Apostles, who were commissioned to teach the churches "ALL things whatsoever" that Christ had "commanded them," failed in their duty, and omitted a very important part of their instructions; in which case, the very men on whose testimony the truth of the Gospel narrative essentially depends, are found unfaithful, and consequently, may have been "false witnesses of God:" or, the Lord Jesus, himself, was so deficient in wisdom, or in kindness, as to omit an instruction which was indispensable to the happiness and spiritual improvement of his people, and which it was left for the Papacy, in the dark ages, to discover! In every case, "will-worship" is of a most malignant influence, and most presumptuous in its very nature." - Alexander Hislop (on the Puritan Hard Drive)

• While many who employ [the organ] consider themselves the very champions of Protestantism, it will be long, long indeed, before they uproot Popery by this regulator of choirs; and while nothing has ever proved more annoying to Papists than the singing of Psalms in a congregational manner, the playing of all the heretical organs in Christendom causes to them comparatively little sorrow. On the contrary, the cross surmounting a Protestant meeting house, and the swelling tones of the organ within, give to her sons the hope that “holy mother” may yet receive these errorists, who are, at least, so far rejoicing under her shadow, and becoming familiar with her "image and superscription." - Alexander Blaikie, The Philosophy of Sectarianism, emphases added

• The use of singing with instrumental music was not received in the Christian churches as it was among the Jews in their infant state, but only the use of plain song ... Musical organs pertain to the Jewish ceremonies and agree no more to us than circumcision. - Justin Martyr

• It was only permitted to the Jews, as sacrifice was, for the heaviness and grossness of their souls. God condescended to their weakness, because they were lately drawn off from idols: but now instead of organs, we may use our own bodies to praise him withal. - Chrysostom

• The Council of Laodicea (367) forbids the use of musical instruments in worship, and this has remained the policy of the Eastern Orthodox Church to the present day. In 416 the Council of Carthage addressed this issue and declared, "On the Lord's day let all instruments of music be silenced."

The Popish (Christ Denying, Arminian Affirming) Heresy of Instrumental Music in Public Worship, By John L. Girardeau

"Let us pause a moment to notice the fact, supported by a mass of incontrovertible evidence, that the Christian church did not employ instrumental music in its public worship for 1200 years after Christ."

With reference to the time when organs were first introduced into use in the Roman Catholic Church, let us hear Bingham:1

"It is now generally agreed among learned men that the use of organs came into the church since the time of Thomas Aquinas, Anno 1250; for he, in his Summs, has these words: 'Our church does not use musical instruments, as harps and psalteries, to praise God withal, that she may not seem to Judaize."...

Mr. Wharton also has observed that Marinus Sanutus, who lived about the year 1290, was the first who brought the use of wind-organs into churches, whence he was surnamed Torcellus, which is the name for an organ in the Italian tongue....

Let us pause a moment to notice the fact, supported by a mass of incontrovertible evidence, that the Christian church did not employ instrumental music in its public worship for 1200 years after Christ....

It deserves serious consideration, moreover, that notwithstanding the ever-accelerated drift towards corruption in worship as well as in doctrine and government, the Roman Catholic Church did not adopt this corrupt practice until about the middle of the thirteenth century....

When the organ was introduced into its worship it encountered strong opposition, and made its way but slowly to general acceptance. These assuredly are facts that should profoundly impress Protestant churches. How can they adopt a practice which the Roman Church, in the year 1200, had not admitted...

Then came the Reformation; and the question arises, How did the Reformers deal with instrumental music in the church?...

Zwingle has already been quoted to show instrumental music was one of the shadows of the old law which has been realized in the gospel. He pronounces its employment in the present dispensation "wicked pervicacity." There is no doubt in regard to his views on the subject, which were adopted by the Swiss Reformed churches...

Calvin is very express in his condemnation of instrumental music in connection with the public worship of the Christian church... In his homily on 1 Sam. xviii. 1-9, he delivers himself emphatically and solemnly upon the subject:

"In Popery there was a ridiculous and unsuitable imitation [of the Jews]. While they adorned their temples, and valued themselves as having made the worship of God more splendid and inviting, they employed organs (emphasis added), and many other such ludicrous things, by which the Word and worship of God are exceedingly profaned, the people being much more attached to those rites than to the understanding of the divine Word..."

Whatever may be the practice in recent times of the churches of Holland, the Synods of the Reformed Dutch Church, soon after the Reformation, pronounced very decidedly against the use of instrumental music in public worship. The National Synod at Middleburg, in 1581, declared against it, and the Synod of Holland and Zealand, in 1594, adopted this strong resolution;

"That they would endeavor to obtain of the magistrate the laying aside of organs, and the singing with them in the churches...." The Provincial Synod of Dort also inveighed severely against their use...

... Charles H. Spurgeon, ...upholds an apostolic simplicity of worship. The great congregation which is blessed with the privilege of listening to his instructions has no organ "to assist" them in singing...

The non-prelatic churches, Independent and Presbyterian, began their development on the American continent without instrumental music. They followed the English Puritans and the Scottish Church, which had adopted the principles of the Calvinistic Reformed Church...

It has thus been proved by an appeal to historical facts, that the church, although lapsing more and more into defection from the truth and into a corruption of apostolic practice, had no instrumental music for twelve hundred years; and that the Calvinistic Reformed Church ejected it from its services as a element of Popery, even the Church of England having come very nigh to its extrusion from her worship.

The historical argument, therefore, combines with the scriptural and the confessional to raise a solemn and powerful protest against its employment by the Presbyterian Church. IT IS HERESY IN THE SPHERE OF WORSHIP.

ENDNOTES: 1. Works, Vol. iii., p. 137, ff. FROM: INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC IN THE PUBLIC WORSHIP OF THE CHURCH, By John L. Girardeau (Still Waters Revival Books, [1888] 2000), "Historical Argument" pp. 158, 159, 161, 165, 170, 179, on the Puritan Hard Drive (in both printed book and audio formats).

- Instrumental Music in the Public Worship of the Church, By John L. Girardeau -- this book is free online at https://www.covenanter.org/reformed/2015/7/27/john-l-girardeaus-book-on-instrumental-music-in-the-public-worship-of-the-church in text, and at https://www.sermonaudio.com/go/301984 (5 MP3s) Emphases added above.

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• "The Regulative Principle of Worship declares that God alone is sovereign in worship. The Regulative Principle of Worship simply applies the principles of Calvinism (i.e. God's sovereign Lordship) to worship, whereas the view that what God doesn't forbid in worship is permitted is applying the principles of Arminianism (i.e. man's sovereign lordship) to worship. Just as fallen man naturally seeks to impose his will in salvation (e.g. "I can cooperate with God in salvation",or "I have a natural freedom to choose Christ"), so fallen man naturally seeks to impose his will in worship ("I can cooperate with God in worship by adding what I desire so long as God doesn't specifically forbid it"). But just as God condemns a man-centered salvation, so God condemns a man-centered worship (Col. 2:23 specifically condemns all will-worship i.e. all worship instituted by man)." - Greg Price, Foundation for Reformation: The Regulative Principle of Worship (FREE ONLINE BOOK).

• The Regulative Principle of Worship is God's ordained law for worship... You see there is no neutrality in the way in which we approach God in worship. Either we approach the living God according to His revealed Word (i.e. the Regulative Principle of Worship), or we approach Him according to our revealed word. Someone's word is going to expressly guide us in worship. The only question is, whose word will guide us? God's or man's? - Greg Price, Foundation For Reformation: The Regulative Principle Of Worship (Free Online Book)

• John Calvin: "God here cuts off from men every occasion for making evasions, since he condemns by this one phrase, "I have not commanded them," whatever the Jews devised. There is then no other argument needed to condemn superstitions, than that they are not commanded by God: for when men allow themselves to worship God according to their own fancies, and attend not to his commands, they pervert true religion. And if this principle was adopted by the Papists, all those fictitious modes of worship, in which they absurdly exercise themselves, would fall to the ground. It is indeed a horrible thing for the Papists to seek to discharge their duties towards God by performing their own superstitions. There is an immense number of them, as it is well known, and as it manifestly appears. Were they to admit this principle, that we cannot rightly worship God except by obeying his word, they would be delivered from their deep abyss of error. The Prophet's words then are very important, when he says, that God had commanded no such thing, and that it never came to his mind; as though he had said, that men assume too much wisdom, when they devise what he never required, nay, what he never knew." - John Calvin on the Puritan Hard Drive

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• "If it be inquired, then, by what things chiefly the Christian religion has a standing existence amongst us, and maintains its truth, it will be found that the following two not only occupy the principal place, but comprehend under them all the other parts, and consequently the whole substance of Christianity: this is, a knowledge, first, of the mode in which God is duly worshipped; and, secondly, of the source from which salvation is to be obtained. When these are kept out of view, though we may glory in the name Christians, our profession is empty and vain. After these come the sacraments and the government of the church." - John Calvin, The Necessity of Reforming the Church, Presbyterian Heritage Publications, 1544, reprinted 1995, p. 15, free online at https://www.swrb.com/newslett/actualnls/NRC_ch00.htm.

• "The idea of millions of years came from the belief that the fossil record was built up over a long time. As soon as people allow for millions of years, they allow for the fossil record to be millions of years old. This creates an insurmountable problem regarding the gospel. The fossil record consists of the death of billions of creatures. In fact, it is a record of death, disease, suffering, cruelty, and brutality. It is a very ugly record. The Bible is adamant though, that death, disease, and suffering came into the world as a result of sin. God instituted death and bloodshed because of sin so man could be redeemed. As soon as Christians allow for death, suffering, and disease before sin, then the whole foundations of the message of the Cross and the Atonement have been destroyed. The doctrine of original sin, then, is totally undermined. If there were death, disease, and suffering before Adam rebelled -- then what did sin do to the world? What does Paul mean in Romans 8 when he says the whole of creation groans in pain because of the Curse? How can all things be restored in the future to no more death and suffering, unless the beginning was also free of death and suffering? The whole message of the gospel falls apart if one allows millions of years for the creation of the world." - The Necessity for Believing in Six Literal Days by Ken Ham. Also hear Six Day Creation and The Eisegesis Problem by Ken Ham (Free MP3) and "The Doctrine Of Original Sin (26 Free MP3s) by Jonathan Edwards.

• By all which, you see where the idolatry of worship lies. The instituting of any, though the smallest part of worship, in and by our own authority, without scripture-warrant, makes it idolatrous, as well as if we worshipped an idol (Ex: 20:5). - John Flavel, The Works of John Flavel, Vol, 4. p. 527 (on the Puritan Hard Drive)

• All things considered, certainly it is no small condemnation of us to behold what an ardent zeal the holy martyrs had in the past, especially in comparison with the nonchalance we demonstrate. For as soon as a poor man of that time got so much as a little taste of the true knowledge of God, he did not hesitate to expose himself to the danger involved in confessing his faith. He would have preferred to be burned alive than to go so far as to commit some outward act of idolatry. - John Calvin on the Puritan Hard Drive

• Some one will therefore ask me what counsel I would like to give to a believer who thus dwells in some Egypt or Babylon where he may not worship God purely, but is forced by the common practice to accommodate himself to bad things. The first advice would be to leave [i.e. relocate - GB] if he could... If someone has no way to depart, I would counsel him to consider whether it would be possible for him to abstain from all idolatry in order to preserve himself pure and spotless toward God in both body and soul. Then let him worship God in private (at home - ed.), praying him to restore his poor church to its right estate. - John Calvin,Come Out From Among Them, The Anti-Nicodemite Writings of John Calvin, Protestant Heritage Press, "A Short Treatise," pp. 93-94. John Calvin quote (above) cited in Appendix G in The Covenanted Reformation Defended, by Greg Barrow (Free Online Book)

• For God is not worshiped of us, but when it is his will to accept our worship: and it is not his will to accept our worship, but when it is according to his will. - William Perkins, Puritan (on the Puritan Hard Drive)

• Now, if you will prove that your ceremonies proceed from faith, and do please God, you must prove that God in expressed words has commanded them; or else you shall never prove that they proceed from faith, nor yet that they please God; but they are sin, and do displease him, according to the words of the apostle, "Whatsoever is not of faith is sin". - John Knox, Works, Vol. 1 of 6, pp 195-196, (on the Puritan Hard Drive)

• The human mind is, so to speak, a perpetual forge of idols. - John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book One, Chapter 11.8, Beveridge Edition

• But the acceptable way of worshipping the true God is instituted by himself, and so limited by his own revealed will, that he may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visble representation, or any other way not prescribed in the holy Scripture. - Westminster Confession of Faith, 21:1 (on the Puritan Hard Drive)

• So let us hold to this rule, that all human inventions which are set up to corrupt the simple purity of the word of God, and to undo the worship which he demands and approves, are true sacrileges, in which the Christian man cannot participate without blaspheming God, and trampling his honour underfoot. - John Calvin, "The First Sermon, On Psalm 16:4", cited in Come Out From Among Them: The Anti-Nicodemite Writings of John Calvin, Reed, ed., p. 141 (on the Puritan Hard Drive)

• The Regulative Principle of Worship declares that God alone is sovereign in worship. The Regulative Principle of Worship simply applies the principles of Calvinism (i.e. God's sovereign Lordship) to worship, whereas the view that what God doesn't forbid in worship is permitted is applying the principles of Arminianism (i.e. man's sovereign lordship) to worship. Just as fallen man naturally seeks to impose his will in salvation (e.g. "I can cooperate with God in salvation", or "I have a natural freedom to choose Christ"), so fallen man naturally seeks to impose his will in worship ("I can cooperate with God in worship by adding what I desire so long as God doesn't specifically forbid it"). But just as God condemns a man-centered salvation, so God condemns a man-centered worship (Col. 2:23 specifically condemns all will-worship, i.e. all worship instituted by man). - Greg Price, Foundation for Reformation: The Regulative Principle of Worship (Free Online Book), p. 10, or on the Puritan Hard Drive

• God here cuts off from men every occasion for making evasions, since he condemns by this one phrase, "I have not commanded them," whatever the Jews devised. There is then no other argument needed to condemn superstitions, than that they are not commanded by God: for when men allow themselves to worship God according to their own fancies, and attend not to his commands, they pervert true religion. And if this principle was adopted by the Papists, all those fictitious modes of worship, in which they absurdly exercise themselves, would fall to the ground. It is indeed a horrible thing for the Papists to seek to discharge their duties towards God by performing their own superstitions. There is an immense number of them, as it is well known, and as it manifestly appears. Were they to admit this principle, that we cannot rightly worship God except by obeying his word, they would be delivered from their deep abyss of error. The Prophet's words then are very important, when he says, that God had commanded no such thing, and that it never came to his mind; as though he had said, that men assume too much wisdom, when they devise what he never required, nay, what he never knew. - John Calvin on the Puritan Hard Drive

• Take heed of all occasions of idolatry, for idolatry is devil-worship. Psalm 106: 37. If you search through the whole Bible, there is not one sin that God has more followed with plagues than idolatry. The Jews have a saying, that in every evil that befalls them, there is uncia aurei vituli, an ounce of the golden calf in it. Hell is a place for idolaters. 'For without are idolaters.' Rev 22: 15. Senesius calls the devil a rejoicer at idols, because the image-worshippers help to fill hell. - Thomas Watson, The Ten Commandments on the Puritan Hard Drive

• When the Lord brought the testimony of his witnesses out of obscurity in Piedmont, Bohemio, &c., by the ministry of Luther, his contemporaries and successors; then the psalms were restored to their place in the churches of the Reformation. Luther was skilled in music, himself composed many hymns; but he carefully distinguished between the Psalms and his hymns. An old lady in eastern Pennsylvania is said to have in her possession 'a German Psalm-book, published by Luther himself.' The book closes with a collection of Luther's hymns; but the old lady says that in her young days in Germany, 'its directions were rigidly obeyed, and in public worship they sang only the Psalms of David.' The same order, as is well known,prevailed in all the other reformed churches of Europe and the British Isles. - Cited in: David Steele, "Psalms and Hymns," The Original Covenanter Magazine (Vol. 3:1-3:16, March 1881 to Dec. 1884), p. 41 (on the Puritan Hard Drive)

• It is the duty of Christians to praise God publicly, by singing of psalms together in the congregation. - The Directory For The Publick Worship Of God, "Of Singing of Psalms" emitted by the Westminster Assembly (on the Puritan Hard Drive)

• If you want to understand Reformed theology (i.e., the whole counsel of God) the Puritan Hard Drive is unsurpassed, outside the Bible itself. ... There is no other resource, outside Scripture itself, where you can find so much of God's truth as in the Puritan Hard Drive. - Pastor Greg Price (Covenanter Author and Theologian)

• But what Augustine says is true, that no one can sing things worthy of God, unless he has received them from Himself [i.e. from God-GLP]. Therefore, after we have sought on every side, searching here and there, we shall find no songs better and more suitable for our purpose than the Psalms of David, dictated to him and made for him by the Holy Spirit. . . . it should accustom itself hereafter to sing these divine and heavenly songs with good King David - John Calvin, Opera, VI:171, cited in Bushell, Songs of Zion, pp.181,182.

• If it be inquired, then, by what things chiefly the Christian religion has a standing existence amongst us, and maintains its truth, it will be found that the following two not only occupy the principal place, but comprehend under them all the other parts, and consequently the whole substance of Christianity: this is, a knowledge, first, of the mode in which God is duly worshipped; and, secondly, of the source from which salvation is to be obtained. When these are kept out of view, though we may glory in the name Christians, our profession is empty and vain. After these come the sacraments and the government of the church. - John Calvin, The Necessity of Reforming the Church, Presbyterian Heritage Publications, 1544, reprinted 1995, p. 15 (on the Puritan Hard Drive)

• JOHN KNOX, ON THE REGULATIVE PRINCIPLE OF WORSHIP, WRITES: "The matter is not of so small importance, as some suppose. The question is, whether God or man ought to be obeyed in matters of religion? In mouth, all do confess that only God is worthy of sovereignty. But after many - by the instigation of the devil, and by the presumptuous arrogance of carnal wisdom and worldly policy - have defaced God's holy ordinance, men fear not to follow what laws and common consent (mother of all mischief) have established and commanded. But thus continually I can do nothing but hold, and affirm all things polluted, yea, execrable and accursed, which God by his Word has not sanctified in his religion. God grant you his Holy Spirit rightly to judge." - John Knox, Works VI:14, cited in John Knox, True and False Worship (Free Online Book) and the Puritan Hard Drive

• Instrumental Music in Public Worship: The Views of John Calvin: "To sing the praises of God upon the harp and psaltery," says Calvin, "unquestionably formed a part of the training of the law and of the service of God under that dispensation of shadows and figures, but they are not now to be used in public thanksgiving."1 He says again: "With respect to the tabret, harp, and psaltery, we have formerly observed, and will find it necessary afterwards to repeat the same remark, that the Levites, under the law, were justified in making use of instrumental music in the worship of God; it having been his will to train his people, while they were yet tender and like children, by such rudiments until the coming of Christ. But now, when the clear light of the gospel has dissipated the shadows of the law and taught us that God is to be served in a simpler form, it would be to act a foolish and mistaken part to imitate that which the prophet enjoined only upon those of his own time."2 He further observes: "We are to remember that the worship of God was never understood to consist in such outward services, which were only necessary to help forward a people as yet weak and rude in knowledge in the spiritual worship of God. A difference is to be observed in this respect between his people under the Old and under the New Testament; for now that Christ has appeared, and the church has reached full age, it were only to bury the light of the gospel should we introduce the shadows of a departed dispensation. From this it appears that the Papists, as I shall have occasion to show elsewhere, in employing instrumental music cannot be said so much to imitate the practice of God's ancient people as to ape it in a senseless and absurd manner, exhibiting a silly delight in that worship of the Old Testament which was figurative and terminated with the gospel."3 ENDNOTES: 1. On Ps. lxxi. 22; 2. On Ps. lxxxi. 3; 3. On Ps. xcii. 1. - FROM: INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC IN THE PUBLIC WORSHIP OF THE CHURCH, By John L. Girardeau (Still Waters Revival Books, [1888] 2000), pp. 63, 64, or as a Free Online Book or Free Online Audio Book (Free MP3s) or Free Video or on the Puritan Hard Drive

• Dr. Girardeau has defended the old usage of our church with a moral courage, loyalty to truth, clearness of reasoning and wealth of learning which should make every true Presbyterian proud of him, whether he adopts his conclusions or not. The framework of his argument is this: it begins with that vital truth which no Presbyterian can discard without a square desertion of our principles. The man who contests this first premise had better set out at once for Rome: God is to be worshipped only in the ways appointed in His Word. Every act of public cultus not positively enjoined by Him is thereby forbidden. Christ and His apostles ordained the musical worship of the New Dispensation without any sort of musical instrument, enjoining only the singing of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Hence such instruments are excluded from Christian worship. Such has been the creed of all churches, and in all ages, except for the Popish communion after it had reached the nadir of its corruption at the end of the thirteenth century, and of its prelatic imitators. - R.L. Dabney's Review of Girardeau's Instrumental Music in Public Worship (1889) Excerpted from The Presbyterian Quarterly (July, 1889, no. 9)

• Christmas was not celebrated by the apostolic church. It was not celebrated during the first few centuries of the church. As late as A.D. 245, Origen (Hom. 8 on Leviticus) repudiated ...the idea of keeping the birthday of Christ, "as if he were a king Pharaoh." By the middle of the 4th century, many churches in the Latin west were celebrating Christmas. During the 5th century, Christmas became an official Roman Catholic holy day. In A.D. 534, Christmas was recognized as an official holy day by the Roman state.The reason that Christmas became a church holy day has nothing to do with the Bible. The Bible does not give the date of Christ's birth. Nowhere in the Bible are we commanded to celebrate Christmas. Christmas (as well as many other pagan practices) was adopted by the Roman church as a missionary strategy. - The Regulative Principle of Worship and Christmas, by Brian Schwertley (Free Online Book), or on the Puritan Hard Drive

• In 1899, the General Assembly of the PCUS was overtured to give a "pronounced and explicit deliverance" against the recognition of "Christmas and Easter as religious days." Even at this late date, the answer came back in a solid manner: There is no warrant in Scripture for the observance of Christmas and Easter as holydays, rather the contrary (see Gal. 4:9-11; Col. 2:16-21), and such observance is contrary to the principles of the Reformed faith, conducive to will-worship, and not in harmony with the simplicity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. - From: Kevin Reed, Christmas: An Historical Survey Regarding Its Origins and Opposition To It (Free Online Book)

• The Regulative Principle of Worship is God's ordained law for worship... You see there is no neutrality in the way in which we approach God in worship. Either we approach the living God according to His revealed Word (i.e. the Regulative Principle of Worship), or we approach Him according to our revealed word. Someone's word is going to expressly guide us in worship. The only question is, whose word will guide us? God's or man's? - Greg Price, Foundation For Reformation: The Regulative Principle Of Worship, free online book.

• Hymns of human composition are used so commonly now in public worship by Presbyterian churches that it is difficult to believe that the practice is not a hundred years old, and that in some of the churches it is of very recent date. On the supposition that it is good and dutiful and wise to sing such hymns in worship, it is equally difficult to account for the neglect of the churches at the time of the Reformation, and for generations afterwards. What could have so blinded the reformers as to make them reject hymns and sing the Psalms alone? How could the Westminster Divines, in framing their Confession of Faith and Directory for Worship, have been so unanimous in the blunder that the service of praise is to consist of the 'singing of Psalms?' And apart from the aspect of duty, how could the Presbyterian churches, for about a hundred and fifty or two hundred years after the Westminster Assembly, have been so insensible to the power of hymns as an attractive addition to their public services? We cannot by any means understand how it was that, if it was dutiful to use hymns in worship, the reformers did not discover the Scriptural warrant for the duty, especially as hymns had been used for centuries by the Church of Rome. Nor can we understand how they rejected the hymns and used the Psalms alone, unless on the supposition that they believed the use of hymns to be part of the will-worship of Rome. If they were wrong on this point, then Rome and our modern Presbyterian churches are right. In that case, the Puritans and Covenanters were fanatics, and Romanists were truly enlightened! And most of our Presbyterian churches of the present day were fanatical too, and did not become truly enlightened and liberal till they got back to the Romish practice! - James Dick, Hymns and Hymn Books (1883), emphases added, on the Puritan Hard Drive

• G.I. Williamson further points out that a "second noteworthy fact is that when uninspired hymns first made their appearance, it was not among the orthodox Churches but rather the heretical groups... If the Church from the beginning had received authority from the Apostles to make and use uninspired hymns, it would be expected that it would have done so. But it did not. Rather it was among those who departed from the faith that they first appeared."

• B. Leviticus 10:1-3: Then Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it, put incense on it, and offered profane fire before the LORD, which He had not commanded them. So fire went out from the LORD and devoured them, and they died before the LORD. Then Moses said to Aaron, "This is what the LORD spoke, saying: 'By those who come near Me I must be regarded as holy; and before all the people I must be glorified'" (emphasis added). Carefully note that the nature of the sin committed by Nadab and Abihu was that they offered profane fire before the Lord "which He had not commanded them." God did not say they offered profane fire "which was forbidden them." The fact that He had not commanded the use of the strange fire meant it was forbidden (God's silence in the matter meant an express prohibition of all profane fire). According to Leviticus 16:12 it would appear that the coals for the incense offering were to come from the fire on the altar of burnt offering. The priest then brought the coals from the altar of burnt offering into the Tabernacle, and on the altar of incense he spread the coals out mixing the coals and the incense which then filled the Holy Place. Apparently in a rather spontaneous act of worship (with perhaps "good intentions" cf. Lev. 9:22-24) they took fire from another source to praise God. God had just consumed the burnt offering by a miraculous display of fire, and all the people were in an enthusiastic state of shouting and falling on their faces before the Most High God. Leviticus 10:1 immediately follows with "Then." It may be that in all of the excitement, Nadab and Abihu, quite overcome by the demonstration of God's awesome power took fire from the quickest and nearest source available to them and immediately went into the Tabernacle to offer incense to the Lord God. They took liberties in worship which God had not given them, and they were slain. They added to the worship of God an act that was not specifically authorized by God. They brought their own man-made worship into the house of God, and His anger burned against them. - FOUNDATION FOR REFORMATION: THE REGULATIVE PRINCIPLE OF WORSHIP, by Greg Price (Free Online Book About Sola Scriptura and the Regulative Principle of Worship) 

• John Calvin: "God here cuts off from men every occasion for making evasions, since he condemns by this one phrase, "I have not commanded them," whatever the Jews devised. There is then no other argument needed to condemn superstitions, than that they are not commanded by God: for when men allow themselves to worship God according to their own fancies, and attend not to his commands, they pervert true religion. And if this principle was adopted by the Papists, all those fictitious modes of worship, in which they absurdly exercise themselves, would fall to the ground. It is indeed a horrible thing for the Papists to seek to discharge their duties towards God by performing their own superstitions. There is an immense number of them, as it is well known, and as it manifestly appears. Were they to admit this principle, that we cannot rightly worship God except by obeying his word, they would be delivered from their deep abyss of error. The Prophet's words then are very important, when he says, that God had commanded no such thing, and that it never came to his mind; as though he had said, that men assume too much wisdom, when they devise what he never required, nay, what he never knew." - John Calvin on the Puritan Hard Drive

• John Calvin wrote, "If it be asked, then, by what things chiefly the Christian religion has a standing amongst us, and maintains its truth, it will be found that the following two not only occupy the principal place, but comprehend under them all the other parts, and consequently the whole substance of Christianity, viz., a knowledge first, of the right way to worship God; and secondly of the source from which salvation is to be sought. When these are kept out of view, though we may glory in the name of Christians, our profession is empty and vain." - Cited in, Carlos Eire, War Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship, p. 198, citing John Calvin's great book, On the Necessity of Reforming the Church (FREE ONLINE)

• "All human inventions which are set up to corrupt the simple purity of the Word of God, and to undo the worship which he demands and approves, are true sacrileges, in which the Christian man cannot participate without blaspheming God, and trampling his honour underfoot." - John Calvin

• "The human mind is, so to speak, a perpetual forge of idols." - John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book One, Chapter 11.8, Beveridge Edition

• John Calvin on the Regulative Principle of Worship: "...which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart." "...God here cuts off from men every occasion for making evasions, since he condemns by this one phrase, "I have not commanded them," whatever the Jews devised. There is then no other argument needed to condemn superstitions, than that they are not commanded by God: for when men allow themselves to worship God according to their own fancies, and attend not to his commands, they pervert true religion. And if this principle was adopted by the Papists, all those fictitious modes of worship, in which they absurdly exercise themselves, would fall to the ground. It is indeed a horrible thing for the Papists to seek to discharge their duties towards God by performing their own superstitions. There is an immense number of them, as it is well known, and as it manifestly appears. Were they to admit this principle, that we cannot rightly worship God except by obeying his word, they would be delivered from their deep abyss of error. The Prophet's words then are very important, when he says, that God had commanded no such thing, and that it never came to his mind; as though he had said, that men assume too much wisdom, when they devise what he never required, nay, what he never knew." - John Calvin, Commentary on Jeremiah 7:31

• Some one will therefore ask me what counsel I would like to give to a believer who thus dwells in some Egypt or Babylon where he may not worship God purely, but is forced by the common practice to accommodate himself to bad things. The first advice would be to leave [i.e. relocate - GB] if he could... If someone has no way to depart, I would counsel him to consider whether it would be possible for him to abstain from all idolatry in order to preserve himself pure and spotless toward God in both body and soul. Then let him worship God in private (at home - ed.), praying him to restore his poor church to its right estate. - John Calvin, Come Out From Among Them, The Anti-Nicodemite Writings of John Calvin, Protestant Heritage Press, "A Short Treatise," pp. 93-94, emphases added. Calvin quote (above) cited in Appendix G in The Covenanted Reformation Defended by Greg Barrow (Free Online) and on the Puritan Hard Drive.

• But such is the corrupt nature of man, that there is scarce any thing whereabout men have been more apt to contend with God from the foundation of the world. That their will and wisdom may have a share (some at least) in the ordering of his worship, is that which of all things they seem to desire. Wherefore, to obviate their pride and folly, to his asserting of his own prerogative in this matter, he subjoins severe interdictions against all or any man's interposing therein, so as to take away any thing by him commanded, or to add any thing to what is by him appointed. This also the testimonies recited fully express. The prohibition is plain, "Thou shalt not add to what I have commanded." - John Owen, Concerning Liturgies and Their Imposition on the Puritan Hard Drive

• "The Regulative Principle of Worship declares that God alone is sovereign in worship." - Greg Price

• We glorify God by believing. Rom 4:20. 'Abraham was strong in faith, giving glory to God.' Unbelief affronts God, it gives him the lie; 'he that believeth not, maketh God a liar.' 1 John 5:10. But faith brings glory to God; it sets to its seal that God is true. John 3:33. He that believes flies to God's mercy and truth, as to an altar of refuge; he engarrisons himself in the promises, and trusts all he has with God. Ps. 31:5. 'Into thy hands I commit my spirit.' This is a great way of bringing glory to God, and God honours faith, because faith honours him. It is a great honour we do to a man when we trust him with all we have, when we put our lives and estates into his hand; it is a sign we have a good opinion of him. The three children glorified God by believing. 'The God whom we serve is able to deliver us, and will deliver us.' Dan 3:17. Faith knows there are no impossibilities with God, and will trust him where it cannot trace him. - Thomas Watson, A Body of Divinity, p.12 (on the Puritan Hard Drive), emphases added. This quotation was located using the Master Search Index on the Puritan Hard Drive, during a search for word "unbelief."

• Faith imbued with zeal for the honour of Christ and the glory of God will have no sympathy with the defeatism which is, after all, but disguised fatalism. He who is head over all things is head over all things to his body the Church. He has all authority in heaven and in earth. And he is the Lord of the Spirit. Implicit in the prayer he taught his disciples to pray, 'thy will be done as in heaven so in earth,' is the prayer that the whole earth should be filled with his praise. Nothing less is the measure of the believer's desire. 'And blessed be his glorious name for ever; and let the whole earth be filled with his glory' (Psalm 72:19). - Prof. John Murray, Collected Writings, Vol. 2, p. 350, emphases added

• There will come a time when in this world holiness shall be more general, and more eminent, than ever it hath been since Adam fell in paradise. - Thomas Brooks, 1608-1680, The Crown and Glory of Christianity, Complete Works Vol. 4, on the Puritan Hard Drive (all Thomas Brooks Works al on the Puritan Hard Drive).

• Hope is one of the principle springs that keep mankind in motion. It is vigorous, bold, and enterprising. It causes men to encounter dangers, endure hardships, and surmount difficulties innumerable, in order to accomplish the desired end. In religion it is of no less consequence. It makes a considerable part of the religion. Of those that truly fear God ... - Andrew Fuller (on the Puritan Hard Drive), first Secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society, in a circular letter to the Churches of the Northamptonshire Association on The Excellency and Utility of the Grace of Hope, 1782

• "And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it." (Isa. 2:2, KJV)

• Now, Christians, the more great and glorious things you expect from God, as the downfall of antichrist, the conversion of the Jews, the conquest of the nations to Christ, the breaking of all yokes, the new Jerusalem's coming down from above, the extraordinary pouring out of the Spirit, and a more general union among all saints, the more holy, yea, the more eminently holy in all your ways and actings it becomes you to be. - Thomas Brooks, The Crown and Glory of Christianity, 1662, Complete Works (on the Puritan Hard Drive), 1867, p. 444

• "I have had the privilege of being one of the first who received the Puritan Hard Drive from its initial production. Over the last 9 months, we have read and listened to so many Puritan, Reformed and Baptist books and sermons that we constantly thank the Lord for putting into our hands resources which are "far above rubies." We use the Puritan Hard Drive (PHD) material throughout the day for personal bible study, family worship, home schooling, Lord's Day preparation, and redeeming our time while traveling (listening to the MP3 resources). All the glory to God for the gifted men of yesteryear and for this treasure storehouse produced by decades of tireless effort by Still Waters Revival Books. - Michael Caughran (Kamiah, Idaho)

• This is what the Bible teaches: "According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will... In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will." - Eph. 1:4,5,11 (KJV).

• "It is no novelty, then, that I am preaching; no new doctrine. I love to proclaim these strong old doctrines that are called by nickname Calvinism, but which are truly and verily the revealed truth of God as it is in Christ Jesus. By this truth I make my pilgrimage into the past, and as I go, I see father after father, confessor after confessor, martyr after martyr, standing up to shake hands with me ... Taking these things to be the standard of my faith, I see the land of the ancients peopled with my brethren; I behold multitudes who confess the same as I do, and acknowledge that this is the religion of God's own church." - Charles Spurgeon, Spurgeon's Sovereign Grace Sermons, Still Waters Revival Books, p. 170

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• Charles Spurgeon: "What is the heresy of Rome, but the addition of something to the perfect merits of Jesus Christ--the bringing in of the works of the flesh, to assist in our justification? And what is the heresy of Arminianism but the addition of something to the work of the Redeemer? Every heresy, if brought to the touchstone, will discover itself here. I have my own private opinion that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him crucified, unless we preach what nowadays is called Calvinism. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else. I do not believe we can preach the gospel, if we do not preach justification by faith, without works; nor unless we preach the sovereignty of God in His dispensation of grace; nor unless we exalt the electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable, conquering love of Jehovah; nor do I think we can preach the gospel, unless we base it upon the special and particular redemption of His elect and chosen people which Christ wrought out upon the cross; nor can I comprehend a gospel which lets saints fall away after they are called, and suffers the children of God to be burned in the fires of damnation after having once believed in Jesus. Such a gospel I abhor." (C. H. Spurgeon, The New Park Street Pulpit, Vol. 1, 1856)

• "To the predestined ones before all ages, that is, before the world began, united and elect in a true passion, by the eternal will of the Father."- Ignatius of Antioch, Martyr and Student of John the Apostle