The Rule and Songs of Puritan Worship

When we build on the foundation of the Gospel in our worship, what rule should govern our building? By “rule” I mean what controls, regulates, and fills what we say and do in worship. Again, to appreciate the Puritan stance on the rule of worship, we must begin not with the Puritans but with the Reformation. Though Luther had allowed practices to remain in the church so long as they did not seem to contradict the Bible, the Reformed movement taught that worship must only include that which the Word of God authorizes and warrants.

Worship is service given to the King of kings for His pleasure and honor. Christ alone is King of the Church; all our worship is obedience to His Word. Calvin taught that the Church has one King, our Savior Jesus Christ, and He is “the sole lawgiver of his own worship.”[i] For the Puritans, too, cleaving to Christ as our Lord means submitting to the rule of His Word in our worship, and opposing humanly-devised worship.[ii]

This idea today is called the regulative principle. Robert Godfrey writes, “In its simplest terms the regulative principle holds that the Word of God alone regulates, directs, and warrants all elements of worship. . . . We may worship God only as he has commanded us to do in the Bible.”[iii] As the Puritans saw it, the basic form of biblical worship was three-fold: Word, sacraments, and prayer. Each of the three elements can be divided into two parts: the Word (read and preached), the sacraments (baptism and the Lord’s Supper), and prayer (spoken and sung).[iv] Read More

Also See:
The Roots of Puritan Worship
The Foundation of Puritan Worship

The link in this article to the earlier article, "The Roots of Puritan Worship," will take you to an index of Reformation 21 articles. The link on this page will take you directly the article. Some Anglican writers claim that Anglicanism, like Lutheranism, follows the normative principle. My own research suggests that in Anglicanism a tension exists between the regulative principle and the normative principle. The English Reformers applied the regulative principle in primary matters while applying the normative principle in secondary matters. This may be described as a two-tiered approach.