[Taken, with subtitles added, from an address given by Rev H M Cartwright to the Inverness Branch of the Scottish Reformation Society, 14 February 2000, The Regulative Principle.]
1. To promote reformation and return the Church to its apostolic origins.
The Regulative Principle of Worship has significant work to do in promoting reformation and bringing the Church back to its apostolic origins as these are found in the Scriptures which are our norm. In Cunningham’s words [The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation, pp. 36, 37]:
We find plainly enough indicated in Scripture a great comprehensive principle, suited to the dignity and importance of the great subject to which it relates, the right administration of the church of Christ, – a principle “majestic in its own simplicity”. We apply this principle to the mass of paltry stuff that has been devised for the purpose of improving and adorning the church, and thereby we sweep it all away.
2. To promote unity
The Regulative Principle of Worship has significant work to do in the promotion of unity. This is seen with regard to the worship of God, that most important function of the Church. The Psalms belong to the universal Church. Hymns are sectarian and divisive. As Cunningham says again of the principle in general:
If all the Protestant churches had cordially adopted and faithfully followed this simple but comprehensive and commanding principle, this would certainly have prevented a fearful amount of mischief, and would, in all probability, have effected a vast amount of good. There is good ground to believe that, in that case, the Protestant churches would have been all along far more cordially united together and more active and successful in opposing their great common enemies, Popery and Infidelity, and in advancing the cause of their common Lord and Master.
3. To secure Christian liberty
The Regulative Principle of Worship has also significant work to do in securing the liberty of the people of God from the impositions of men, whether in church government or worship. Calvin [Institutes, IV. 8. 1] says:
If we concede unreservedly to men all the power which they think proper to assume, it is easy to see how soon it will degenerate into a tyranny which is altogether alien from the Church of Christ.
4. To preserve the Church from unhealthy subjectivism
The Regulative Principle of Worship has a significant work to do in preserving the Church from unhealthy subjectivism in doctrine and experience and in the exercise of church authority. There are objective Biblical standards to which appeal may and must be made in all these areas. Pastor David Fountain, who has defended Isaac Watt’s pioneering work in introducing hymns, notes that things have gone to what he calls another extreme: “We are going back to the Middle Ages when every device imaginable was used to popularise Christianity, and the effect then was to alter the message and lose its power”. William Young makes the following points:
The regulative principle when applied provides objectivity in worship . . . conformity to the law of God as opposed to . . . subjectivism in worship . .. worship arising not from the revealed will of the Lord but from the desires, inclinations, imaginations and decisions of men . . . precisely what the Reformers and Puritans termed will-worship. [The Puritan Principle of Worship, pp. 16-17].
5. To honour God with submission to His authority
It is, finally, honouring to God in that it bears testimony to the fact that the Church recognises His authority in everything. Why do we do this or that? Because we really want God’s will to be done on earth as it is done in heaven.
If we are out of line with the rest of ‘Christendom’ let us remember that almost universal departure from what was the general Reformed position on one particular principle does not invalidate the principle nor should it silence criticism of the abandonment of it. Criticism of something defective in the worship of others does not involve denial of the reality of worship defectively offered nor does it imply that the purity of our outward form makes us oblivious to the defectiveness of our own worship in other respects. The aim must be worship that is both in Spirit and in truth. Let us all examine ourselves.