ON THE USE OF INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC IN DISSENTING CHAPELS.
To the Editor of the Baptist Magazine.
Two pieces have lately appeared in your excellent periodical on this subject. Though the former considered the use of Instrumental Music, in Dissenting Chapels, inconsistent with the simplicity of our worship, the ground is fairly open, I conceive, for further investigation. Believing that truth is promoted by free discussion, and that your magazine is friendly to both, I also rely upon your candour, for the admission of the following observations on the impropriety of Instrumental Music in the worship of God.
It is, in my opinion, opposed to the spirituality of the New Testament worship. When the Christian dispensation took the place of the Jewish, it swept away the load of carnal rites and ceremonies with which that nation was burdened. Of these carnal ordinances it is universally agreed that Instrumental Music was a part: with them, therefore, it is finally abolished; nor do I see how we can reinstate it in the worship of God, without violating his kingly prerogative, and impairing the spirituality of his worship, by the introduction of grosser materials, which he has, by direct appointment, excluded.
Instrumental music appears to me to be a departure from the practice of the primitive church, as well as a soil upon the spirituality of the New Testament worship. It has, from time immemorial, been the custom of innovators upon divine worship to construe the silence of the scriptures, concerning their innovations, into consent. Every one who understands the principles of Protestant Dissenters knows thattheir silence in such a case is a loud condemnation. No better reason, I believe, can be assigned for banishing any thing from the worship of the sanctuary, than the fact, that it is not sanctioned by the command of the apostles, nor by the example of the early Christians. Where, allow me to ask, is Instrumental Music sanctioned in the worship of the Christian dispensation? The apostle Paul exhorts us to "teach and admonish one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs." The same apostle, when in jail with Silas at Phillippi, "prayed and sang praises unto God." Pliny, in his celebrated letter to Trajan, A. D. 106, or 107, says of the Christians in his time, that they were "accustomed, on a stated day, to assemble before sunrise, and to join together in singing hymns to Christ, as to a deity."
But where have the apostles sanctioned Instrumental Music, by precept or example? When and where did the primitive Christians employ it in the worship of God? The truth is, as all who are acquainted with ecclesiastical records know, Instrumental Music is a piece of popish tinsel and show; and moreover a comparatively recent invention of popery itself. That musical Instruments were not used, says the author of the Biblical Cyclopædia, even in the Popish Church, in Thomas Aquinas's time, about the year 1250, appears from the passage in his questions: "In the old law, God was praised both with musical instruments and human voices; but the Christian church does not use instruments to praise him, lest she should seem to judaize."
If, Mr. Editor, there is any justness in these observations; if instrumental music is an inroad upon the spirituality of the New Testament worship, and a departure from the example of the primitive church; then it is not its "tendency to create a unison of voices, which must tend so materially to produce a unity of feeling;" nay, it is nothing less than the direct command of God that can authorize its introduction into his worship.
Some may think this paper attaches too much importance to Instrumental Music, especially when discreetly and soberly used, in divine worship. But the use of it at all, involves a dangerous principle; and if the church of Christ allows one erroneous form to encrust itself upon her, that will soon attract to itself other evils of the same kind, until the whole is degenerated into one common mass of corruption.
Anti Musicus.