Make His Praise Glorious, by Roy Mohon, published by Truthzone, paperback, 91 pages, £6.00, obtainable from the F P Bookroom.
This book is intended as “a defence of the Book of Psalms as the God-given manual of praise in response to The Praises of God in Psalms, Hymns & Spiritual Songs by Dr Kenneth Dix”. Pastor Dix was attempting to justify the use of uninspired hymns in public worship; Mr Mohon rightly disagrees. He emphasises the validity of the Regulative Principle – that nothing should form part of public worship unless it is commanded in the Word of God. This principle is brought out in Answer 51 of The Shorter Catechism: “The Second Commandment forbiddeth the worshipping of God by images, or any other way not appointed in His Word“. As Dr Dix denies the authority of this principle, his arguments are flawed from the start.
Naturally Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16, both of which refer to “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs”, are important in this discussion. Mr Mohon’s conclusion is that “the biblical and historical evidence points decisively to the fact that the understanding of hymning and hymns at the time that Paul was writing (AD 60-63) was not of uninspired compositions but overwhelmingly they are applied to the Biblical Psalter”. God has given the Psalter to the Church to use in His worship; we therefore have no right to go beyond it.
Objectors such as Dr Dix suggest that the Psalms lack the language of redemption, but as Mr Mohon shows at some length, the Book of Psalms takes in a large number of biblical doctrines, including “the Redeemer and His saving work”. Mr Mohon takes issue with Dr Dix’s Appendix, where he states that “words and phrases not in the AV . . . have been added in the
Psalter to produce a metrical form”. But Mr Mohon points out that the comparison should not be with an English translation but with the original Hebrew. He takes up some of Dr Dix’s examples and shows that these verses are indeed appropriate translations of the Hebrew.
Mr Mohon’s book, besides being an effective answer to Dr Dix’s work, is in its own right a useful addition to the literature on this important subject.
Protestant View
The Papal Offensive Against Protestant Britain
It is an indication of God’s righteous displeasure against our nation that in this four-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the Scottish Reformation, the Pope was permitted to set foot on our soil. He came primarily as the Sovereign of the Vatican City State – the only absolute monarch in Europe. His visit is being hailed as a great success for the Papacy and a personal triumph for himself. The Vatican feared their campaign would be jeopardised by negative reporting in the media, but in fact they were tremendously assisted by the press, radio and television. The Catholic Herald declared, “The BBC was at its excellent best”.
But thousands of people protested in the streets against his visit; and many young Protestants, some from our own Church, used the opportunity to distribute gospel tracts peacefully and speak to Roman Catholics on the streets of Edinburgh and London. The press has dismissed the opposition as irrelevant, but the Lord of the harvest can bless such sowing of the good seed.
In launching his offensive against our Protestant faith and the Protestant constitution of the throne, the Pope chose to use the anniversary of the Reformation as a ripe opportunity to call the people back to “their Catholic roots” (although the primitive Christian Church in our land was not Roman Catholic). He also employed the beatification of J H Newman as a weapon to weaken further the ailing Church of England and induce dissentient Anglican priests to pervert to Rome.
Among the honours accorded him as a head of state was a meeting with the Queen at Holyrood House, addressing parliamentary and other civil leaders at Westminster Hall, and taking part with the Primate of the national Church of England in conducting evening prayer in Westminster Abbey (he was the first pope ever to enter the Abbey). In each of these situations he explicitly and adroitly advanced the cause of Rome.
Addressing the Queen in Edinburgh, he greeted “in a special way First Minister Salmond and the Scottish Government” – not surprising when the
Scottish Government facilitated the visit and Mr Salmond audaciously stated before the visit: “It is fitting to celebrate what the Catholic Church has contributed to Scotland over the centuries. Indeed without the Church, there would have been no Scotland as a country in its own right.” The Pope also praised past monarchs, singling out Edward the Confessor and the arch-Romanist, Margaret of Scotland. It has saddened many of the Queen’s Protestant subjects that she told the Pope: “I am pleased that your visit will also provide an opportunity to deepen the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and the established Church of England and the Church of Scotland”.
The Vatican regards Scotland as “the Special Daughter of the Roman Church”, who must be brought back into the family. This is a fact that Dundee Free Church minister, Rev David Robertson, seems to ignore. In a BBC phone-in programme about the Pope’s visit he stated, to the amazement of the interviewer and the shock of many listeners, “I would like to welcome him to Scotland. I’d like to welcome him as a religious leader; I’d like to welcome him as a fellow Christian. Personally I’d love to meet him and hear him . . . overall I think it’s a good thing that he’s here.” How contrary to his solemn ordination vows, in which he assented and subscribed to the Westminster Confession of Faith, which states that the Pope “is that Antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalteth himself, in the Church, against Christ and all that is called God” (25:6).
In London, the Pope stated to our civil leaders: “The fundamental questions at stake in Thomas More’s trial continue to present themselves in ever-changing terms as new social conditions emerge. . . . By appeal to what authority can moral dilemmas be resolved?” Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England, persisted in putting loyalty to papal supremacy before allegiance to his monarch and nation, and was therefore executed for treason. Rome still requires her followers to give civil allegiance primarily to herself – not to their monarch or their nation.
The day of the Pope’s visit to Westminster Abbey, the seat of English Protestantism, was “the day that shook the foundations of Britain’s Protestant myth”, “a day of unthinkable events” – the triumphant claims of one zealous Roman Catholic journalist, who gloatingly commented that Protestants can only “watch in horror as the Pope of Rome processes into the church where Protestant monarchs are crowned, declares unambiguously that he is the successor of St Peter with responsibility for the unity of Christendom, and then walks out again to hearty applause”. But the godly know well that by grace they can do more, even pray and not faint – and shall not God avenge his own elect who cry day and night unto Him though they may wait long for His answer?
In his last speech, the Pope told his bishops in England, Scotland and Wales: “I asked you to be generous in implementing the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus“. (This is the papal document of last November, in which Rome allows Anglican clergy, and even whole dioceses, to enter into full communion with her while retaining their traditions and liturgical practices.) “This should be seen”, continued the Pope, “as a prophetic gesture that can contribute positively to the developing relations between Anglicans and Catholics”. One Daily Telegraph journalist perceptively comments, “Those who hope that this visit will somehow thaw the frosty relations between Rome and Canterbury should see the Popemobile as proof of their delusion: there’s only room for one”.
The Pope has come, he has seen, but has he conquered? His Scripture-laced speeches and apparently pious demeanor cannot mask the fact that he continues to promulgate the anti-scriptural and blasphemous errors of the system of which he is head. Apart from divine restraint, he will militantly march on and gain more ground, to the deepening of the spiritual darkness descending on our nation. Our cry to heaven must be: “Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old” (Is 51:9). NMR