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A36257 A treatise concerning the lawfulness of instrumental musick in holy offices by Henry Dodwell ... ; to which is prefixed, a preface in vindication of Mr. Newte's sermon concerning the lawfulness and use of organs in the Christian church, &c. ... Dodwell, Henry, 1641-1711. 1700 (1700) Wing D1821; ESTC R14256 104,935 234

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at present to follow this Argument as far as it would lead me It suffices now to observe that this Hypothesis seems generally alluded to in the Sacred Writers especially of the New Testament and therefore cannot indeed be thought so precarious as our Adversaries might otherwise conceive if they will suffer themselves to be led away with popular Prejudices without examining it The New Testament plainly enough distinguishes the Gift of Healing which Cured Diseases not caus'd by Devils directly from the Curing Infirmities caus'd by Devils which were sufficiently Cured by casting out the Devils that caus'd them And I think also that they mention no Aylings of the latter sort which may not be accounted for by their Power allow'd them by God on the Parts now mention'd However this Difference between Divine Prophecy and Diabolical Enthusiasm seems to have been generally agreed on that Prophecy requir'd Imagination but perfected and duly subordinated to the Nobler Faculties but Enthusiasm went no farther than the Imagination and therefore disorder'd and hindred the Understanding and the immaterial Faculties depending on it And our Adversaries must be very difficult indeed in their Concessions if they can doubt whether Instrumental Musick can affect the Imagination so as to Compose or Disorder it Yet this alone is sufficient for disabling Devils to Influence it if their Power be confined by Providence to disposed Matter and Musick may indispose the Imagination for their Influences and it be not withal in their Power to make or hinder Dispositions BUT our Adversaries have a strange XIII Such a Notion of the Spiritualness of our Religion as makes uncapable of Sensible Assistances is fundamentally inconsistent with the Doctrine of the Apostolical Age. Notion of the Spiritualness of our Christian Religion as if all Bodily and External Assistances were now perfectly useless and inconsistent with the Nature of our present Dispensation On this account they are averse to all Assistances of our Senses as well as this of Instrumental Musick But why should God have Instituted Sacraments for Assisting our Senses if the whole kind of such Assistances had been so derogatory to the Nature of his new Establishment Why should he have allow'd even Vocal Musick if even our Senses could contribute nothing to the raising of the Devotion of our Spirits I know our Adversaries are more willing to impute this Usefulness of Instrumental Musick rather to the extraordinary Interposition of God seconding his own Institution But why should they think it derogatory to the Providence of God that he should make use of the Power himself has given to the Natures of Things Or why should they deny the Experience of so many Heathens who tho' they regarded not the Institutions of the God of the Jews yet receiv'd the same Practice of Instrumental Musick on account of the Devotion they pretended to feel rais'd in themselves by it in their several false Religions This could be imputable to nothing but the Natures of the things themselves But where have they learned such a Notion of the Spiritualness of the Christian Religion that should exclude the Use or even the Necessity of Corporeal Assistances The Scripture is not more express in requiring a Spiritual Worship than it is in requiring that also of the Body Our Bodies are Temples of the Holy Ghost and we are accordingly requir'd to Glorifie God in our Bodies as well as our Spirits which are his 1 Cor. vi 19 20. The unmarried Woman is so to care for the things of the Lord that she may be Holy both in Body and in Spirit vii 34. We are to present our Bodies a living Sacrifice holy acceptable to God which is our reasonable Service Rom. xii 1. And our whole Spirit and Soul and Body are to be preserved Blameless unto the Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ 1 Thes. v. 23. If Service be expected from the Body as well as the Spirit How can it be disagreeable to the Nature of our Spiritual Religion that such Parts of Bodily Worship may be retain'd or introduc'd as may in their own Nature contribute to the Worship of the Spirit There was indeed near the Apostles times an Opinion introduc'd among the Philosophers Numenius perhaps may be the first that brought it in from whom Porphyry owns Plotinus to have borrowed what he has to this purpose That the Soul alone was the Man and that the Body was no part of the Man but a Prison to the Soul and therefore preternatural to it and to be avoided by it that it might be qualified for a perfect State And these did indeed so insist on the Spiritual Nature of Religion as to discharge the Body from any share in it The Good Man with them was the only Priest the Soul it self the only acceptable Temple the Devotion of the Mind the pleasing Sacrifice And the the way to union with God was to alienate themselves as much as was possible from the Body and from the external Societies of Men and to enure themselves to abstracted Operations of the Mind in order to the Cultivating of the Spirit which was the only Power that they thought capable of an Union with the Supreme Being This is that Philosophical Religion so much Celebrated by Plotinus Porphyry himself and Hierocles and several other of the later Philosophers Porphyry particularly was very much pleas'd with it as appears from his Sentences and his Books de Abstinentiâ but especially from his Epistle to Anebo where he does by these Principles undermine all Obligation to the Externals of the Heathen as well Ap. Jambli de myst Egypt Porphy vit Plotin as the Christian Religion This put him on Starving himself in his Lilybaean Retirement if his Master Plotinus whom he follow'd in these Opinions had not reclaim'd him This seems to be the Original of all that Enthusiasm that has decry'd the external Ordinances and Sacraments even of Christ himself upon Pretences to greater Perfection and several Fancies of the old Monks relating this way in Anastasius Sinaita of the Popish Mystical Divinity and Quietism of the Familists and Quakers of the Bourignonists and Philadelphians c. It is strange our Presóyterian Adversaries who dislike these Consequences in others so destructive of their own Discipline are notwithstanding insensible of the advantage they have given to others of justifying Separation from themselves by these Pretences of the Spiritual Nature of the Evangelical Worship by which themselves defended their own Separation from their own Superiours This might at least have warned them to a more accurate Examination of the Principle when they found they could not justifie the Consequences which followed from it For us it is abundantly sufficient that this Doctrine tho' taught by the Adversaries of the Apostles Age was notwithstanding perfectly different from the Sense of the Apostolical Church it self The Hereticks by this means evaded the Resurrection of the Body pretending the Resurrection promis'd was already past in their mystical Resurrection
from Sin For the rising of the Body could not be thought a Reward if the being in the Body was preternatural and a State of Punishment Thence also it proceeded that so many of those first Hereticks defiled the Flesh as not belonging to them and condemn'd Marriage as contributing to confine Souls to Bodies upon this very Pretence of being themselves Spiritual and being therefore for a more Spiritual way of Worship But it is as certain that this Doctrine was different from the Doctrine of the Apostles as it is certain the Apostles were for the Holy Treatment and Resurrection of the Body and that they Condemn'd those for Hereticks who Reason'd from this Principle insisted on by our Adversaries of which they had otherwise no better means of Information How therefore can our Adversaries Reason loosly for the Reformation of Christianity from that same Principle which we see was contrary to the very Foundations of truly Primitive Apostolical Christianity Which was the Foundation of most of those Heresies which were then Condemn'd by that Unquestionable Authority FOR my part I can see no Difference XIV The same Reasons that prov'd Bodily worship useful in the Mosaick Discipline prove it so still in this particular between the Old and the New Peculium We have Bodies as well as they and of the same frail Make and Constitution as theirs were Our Souls are also of the same Kind as dependent on our Bodies as theirs and as apt to be Influenc'd by them Providence has impos'd no new Rules that we know of for the Influences of Good and Evil Spirits from what were impos'd then What then should hinder but that still our Minds should be Influenc'd by the Good and Evil Dispositions of our Bodies as much as formerly And that in order to the receiving the Influences of both sorts of Spirits And certainly they cannot think that Musick has lost any of that Influence on our Bodies that it had formerly How can they therefore doubt but that it might still have the same effect on the like Bodies alike Influencing the same kind of Souls The Church is still as much a Body as it was then and as much oblig'd to Worship God in Assemblies tho' not confin'd to one particular Nation as it was then And the Apostle requires that all Acts of the Worship in Assemblies were to be perform'd with a design of Edifying the whole Assemblies He permits no Exercise of Gifts even of the Divine Spirit there but such as were for common Edification But the Edification of Assemblies is not otherwise performable than by Sensible and Corporeal Significations These are the only means by which the whole Body can Communicate in the Devotion of every particular by which they can mutually give and receive Edification It is therefore still as impossible to signifie a great Honour for the Deity Ador'd in such Assemblies but by Signs greatly affecting the very Senses And what is done in the Name of the whole Body ought to be suited to the Dignity of the Body represented That must be by Signs by which Bodies usually signifie their great Respect by the Customs of such Bodies But Bodies do not usually signifie their great Respect in their Worldly intercourse otherwise than by Pomp and Magnificence They cannot therefore signifie it in Affairs of Religion by Signs mean and ordinary Especially if their Design be to signifie it to the Senses and for the Edification of others For certainly Signs which signifie a mean or no Respect on other occasions cannot be thought to signifie a great one in the Affairs of Religion It is on the contrary taken as an Affront to Honour excellent Persons in a way unsuitable to their Character tho' the same Significations might justly be reputed Honourable if perform'd to an inferiour Person to whom they had been proportionable This Consideration must make all Significations short of the utmost that can be done dishonourable when paid to an Infinitely Perfect Being The Magnificence therefore of the Worship of God ought to be such as it us'd to signifie the greatest Respect to the Senses of the Spectators if the Respect be to be signified Sensibly I know not how our Adversaries can deny any part of this Reasoning on the Principles now mentioned BUT I know they do pretend Authority XV. The VVorship of God in Spirit not oppos'd to that which is Sensible Corporeal but to the Literal Sense of the Law of Moses for this way of Arguing God is a Spirit says our Saviour and they that Worship him must Worship him in Spirit and in Truth St. Joh. iv 24. This is spoken with relation to the Worship of the Jews at Jerusalem and the Samaritans on Mount Gerizim and therefore must signifie something Spiritual in the Christian Religion which was not so in the Worship of the Jews and the Samaritans But this might very well be true without making external Worship inconsistent with the spiritual Nature of the Christian Religion The true Account of this Matter I take to be this That in what was common to the Jews and the Samaritans there were two Parts the Sensible and the External Part which was proper to themselves and which the Christians were not concern'd in and the Mystical and Spiritual which was principally design'd by God which was thenceforward to obtain as the peculiar Glory of the Christian Religion So the New Testament is oppos'd to the Old that it is not of the Letter as the Old was but of the Spirit 2 Cor. iii. 6. that is that the New Testament is really the same with the Old the same thing in the Spiritual Sense which was prefigur'd by the Literal Sense of what was enjoyn'd on the Jews then Thus the Letter and Circumcision are taken for Circumcision in the Literal Sense Rom. ii 27. by a known Hendiadis and Circumcision of the Heart is said to be in the Spirit not in the Letter v. 29. So the Service in newness of the Spirit is oppos'd to that which had been in the oldness of the Letter Rom. vii 6. And when the Jews understood our Saviour's Discourse concerning Eating his Flesh and Drinking his Blood in a Carnal Sense he Corrects their Mistake by telling them That the Words he had spoken to them were Spirit and Life St. Joh. vi 63. that is by warning them that his Words were to be understood not Literally but Mystically Life is join'd with Spirit in our Saviour's Words exactly as it is by the Apostle when he also tells us that the Letter killeth but the Spirit giveth Life 2 Cor. iii. 6. intimating that the Life promis'd by Moses when he set Life and Death before the Israelites was not to be expected from the Observation of the Literal Sense of the Mosaical Law but the Mystical which was a strong Obligation to the New Peculium Because the Mystical Sense even of the old Law which was the principal Sense design'd by God was suppos'd to be the