Instrumental Music in the Public Worship of the Church 3 of 5 (Second Commandment In Covenanter, Puritan & Reformation Worship)

This message is Chapter 3 from this Girardeau's book, titled the "Argument from the New Testament."

John Calvin writes, '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.'

This book, as well as other books about purity in worship, is available on Reformation Bookshelf CD volume 19. This Reformation CD & 29 others are at the 'Outside Web Link' below.

This collection of 62 CDs is a truly astounding accomplishment. There is nothing like this available to the ordinary Christian on the whole face of the earth.

• Dr. Jonathan D. Moore, Cambridge, UK.
  (Scholar of 16th & 17th century Calvinistic literature.)