Works, Book 1 · Discourse 12
DISCOURSE XII.
S. IOHN 4. 23.
But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in Spirit and Truth: For the Father seeketh such to worship him.
THEY are the words of our Blessed Saviour to the Woman of Samaria, who perceiving him by his discourse to be a Prophet, desired to be resolved by him of that great controverted point between the Iews and Samaritans, Whether Mount Garizim, by Sichem, (where the Samaritans sacrificed) or Ierusalem, were the true place of worship. Our Saviour tells her, that this Question was not now of much moment: Iud. 9. 7. The Evangelist here calls it S…har, ver. 5 alias Shechem, or Sichem.For that the hour or time was near at hand, when they should neither worship the Father in Mount Garizim, nor at Ierusalem. But that there was a greater difference between the Iews and them than this of Place; namely, even about That which was worshipped: For ye (saith he) worship that ye know not; but we (Iews) worship that we know. Then follow the words premised, But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in Spirit and Truth.
It is an abused Text, being commonly alledged to prove that God now in the Gospel either requires not,Iohn 4. 23. or regards not External worship, but that of the Spirit only: and this to be a characteristical difference between the worship of the Old Testament and the New. If at any time we talk of external decency in rites and bodily expressions as sit to be used in the service of God, this is the usual Buckler to repel whatsoever may be said in that kind. It is true, indeed, that the worship of the Gospel is much more spiritual than that of the Law: But that the worship of the Gospel should be only spiritual and no external worship required therein, (as the Text according to some meus sense and allegation thereof would imply,) is repugnant not only to the practice and experience of the Christian Religion in all Ages, but also to the express Ordinances of the Gospel it self. For what are the Sacraments of the New Testament? are they not Rites wherein and wherewith God is served and worshipped? The consideration of the holy Eucharist alone will consute this Gloss: For is not the commemoration of the Sacrifice of Christ's death upon the Cross unto his Father, in the Symbols of Bread and Wine, an external worship? And yet with this Rite hath the Church in all Ages used to make her solemn address of Prayer and Supplication unto the Divine Majesty, as the Iews in the Old Testament did by Sacrifice. When I say, in all Ages, I include also that of the Apostles: For so much S. Luke testifieth of that first Christian society, Acts 2. 42. foreign, They continued in breaking of Bread, and in Prayers.
As for bodily expressions by gestures and postures, as standing, kneeling, bowing, and the like; our Blessed Saviour himself lift up his sacred eyes to heaven when he prayed for Lazarus; fell on his face, when he prayed in his agony.Eph. 3. 14. S. Paul (as himself saith) bowed his knees to the Father of our Lord Iesus Christ: He and S. Peter, and the rest of the Believers, do the like more than once in the Acts of the Apostles. What was Imposition of hands but an external gesture in an act of invocation for conferring a blessing? and that perhaps sometimes without any vocal expression joyned therewith. Besides, I cannot conceive any reason why, in this point of Evangelical worship, Gesture should be more scrupled at than Voice. Is not confessing, praising, praying, and glorifying God by Voice, an external and bodily worship, as well as that of Gesture? why should then the one derogate from the worship of the Father in Spirit and Truth, and not the other? To conclude, There was never any society of men in the world that worshipped the Father in such a manner as this interpretation would imply: and therefore cannot this be our Saviour's meaning, but some other. Let us see if we can find out what it is.
There may be two senses given of these words; both of them agreeable to Reason and the analogy of Scripture: let us take our choice. The one is, That to worship God in Spirit and Truth, is to worship him not with Types and shadows of things to come, as in the Old Testament, but according to the verity of the things exhibited in Christ; according to that, The Law was given by Moses, but Grace and Truth came by Iesus Christ. Iohn 1. 17.Whence the Mystery of the Gospel is elsewhere by our Saviour, in this Evangelist, termed Truth, as Chap. 17. ver. 17. and the Doctrine thereof, by S. Paul, the word of Truth: See Ephes. Chap. 1. ver. 13. Rom. 15. 8. The time therefore is now at hand, said our Saviour, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father no longer with bloudy Sacrifices, and the Rites and Ordinances depending thereon; but in and according to the verity of that which these Ordinances figured. For all these were Types of Christ, in whom, being now exhibited, the true worshippers shall henceforth worship the Father.
This sense hath good warrant from the state of the Question between the Iews and Samaritans, to which our Saviour here makes answer: which was not about worship in general, but about the kind of worship in special, which was confessed by both sides to be tied to one certain place only; that is, of worship by Sacrifice and the appendages; in a word, of the Typical worship proper to the first Covenant, of which see a description Heb. 9. This Iosephus expresly testifies, Lib. 12. Antiq. cap. 1. speaking of the Iews and Samaritans which dwelt together at Alexandria: *foreign, &c.They lived, saith he, in perpetual discord one with the other, whilst each laboured to maintain their Country customs: those of Ierusalem affirming their Temple to be the sacred place whither sacrifices were to be sent; the Samaritans, on the other side, contending they ought to be sent to Mount Garizim. For otherwise, who knows not that both Iews and Samaritans had other places of worship besides either of these? namely their Proseucha's and Synagogues, wherein they worshipped God, not with internal only, but external worship; though not with Sacrifice, which might be offered but in one place only. And this also may seem to have been a Type of Christ as well as the rest, namely, that he was to be that one and only Mediator of the Church, in the Temple of whose sacred body we have access unto the Father, and in whom he accepts our service and devotions: according to that, Destroy this Temple, and I will rear it up again in three days: He spake, saith the Text, of the Temple of his Body. Iohn 2. 19, 21.This sense divers of the Ancients hit upon. Eusebius Demon. Evang. Lib. 1. Cap. 6. foreign. Not by Symbols and Types, but, as our Saviour saith, in Spirit and Truth. Not that in the New Testament men should worship God without all external services: For the New Testament was to have external and visible services as well as the Old, but such as should imply the verity of the promises already exhibited, not be Types and shadows of them yet to come. We know the Holy Ghost is wont to call the figured Face of the Law the Letter, and the Verity thereby signified, the Spirit. As for foreign, in Spirit and Truth, both together, they are foreign, but once found in holy Writ; to wit, only in this place: and so, no light can be borrowed by comparing of the like expression any where else to expound them. Besides, nothing hinders but they may be here taken one for the exposition of the other; namely, that to worship the Father foreign, is the same with to worship him foreign.
But howsoever this exposition be fair and plausible, yet, methinks, the reason which our Saviour gives in the words following should argue another meaning. God (saith he) is a Spirit; therefore they that worship him, must worship in Spirit and Truth: Verse 24.But God was a Spirit from the beginning: If therefore for this reason he must be worshipped in Spirit and Truth, he was so to be worshipped in the Old Testament as well as in the New.
Let us therefore seek another meaning: For the finding whereof, let us take notice that the Samaritans, at whom our Saviour here aimeth, were the off-spring of those Nations which the King of Assyria placed in the Cities of Samaria, when he had carried away the Ten Tribes captive. These, as we may read in the*Chap. 17. second Book of the Kings, at their first coming thither worshipped not the God of Israel, but the gods of the Nations from whence they came: wherefore he sent Lions amongst them, which slew them. Which they apprehending, either from the information of some Israelite, or otherwise, to be because they knew not the worship of the God of the Country, they informed the King of Assyria thereof, desiring that some of the captiv'd Priests might be sent unto them, to teach them the manner and rites of his worship; which being accordingly done, they thenceforth (as the Text tells us) worshipped the Lord, yet feared their own Gods too, and so did foreign, as S. Chrysostome speaks, mingle things not to be mingled.
In this medley they continued about three hundred years, till toward the end of the Persian Monarchy. At what time it chanced that Manasse, brother to Iaddo the High Priest of the returned Iews, married the daughter of Sanballat then Governour of Samaria: for which being expelled from Ierusalem by Nehemiah, he fled to Sanballat his Father in Law; and after his example many other of the Iews of the best rank, having married strange wives likewise, and loth to forgo them, betook themselves thither also. Sanballat willingly entertains them, and makes his son-in-Law Manasse their Priest. For whose greater reputation and state, when Alexander the Great subdued the Persian Monarchy, he obtained leave of him to build a Temple upon Mount Garizim, where his son-in-Law exercised the office of High Priest. This was exceedingly prejudicious to the Iews, and the occasion of a continual Schism, whilst those that were discontented or excommunicated at Ierusalem were wont to betake themselves thither: Yet by this means the Samaritans (having now one of the sons of Aaron to be their Chief Priest, and so many other of the Iews, both Priests and others, mingled amongst them) were brought at length to cast off all their false gods, and to worship the Lord the God of Israel only. Yet so, that howsoever they seemed to themselves to be true worshippers, and altogether free from Idolatry; nevertheless they retained a smack thereof, inasmuch as they worshipped the true God under a visible representation, to wit, of a Dove, and circumcised their Children in the name thereof, as the Iewish Tradition tells us;foreign, id est, Culius externus; sic Idololatriam appellant. who therefore always branded their worship with foreign or spiritual Fornication: Iust as their predecessors, the Ten Tribes, worshipped the same God of Israel under the similitude of a Cals.
This was the condition of the Samaritan Religion in our Saviour's time: and if we weigh the matter well, we shall find his words here to the woman very pliable to be construed with reference thereunto. You ask, saith he, of the true place of worship, whether Mount Garizim, or Ierusalem: which is not now greatly material; forasmuch as the time is at hand when men shall worship the Father at neither. But there is a greater difference between you and us than of Place, though you take no notice of it; namely, even about the Object of worship it self: For ye worship what ye know not, but we (Iews) worship what we know. How is that? Thus; Ye worship indeed the Father, the God of Israel, as we do; but you worship him under a corporeal representation; wherein you shew you know him not: But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in Spirit and Truth. In Spirit, that is, conceiving of him no otherwise than in Spirit; and in Truth, that is, not under any corporeal or visible shape: For God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in Spirit and Truth; foreign, not fancying him as a Body, but, as indeed he is, a Spirit. Ier. 3. 10.For those who worship him under a corporeal similitude, do beli… him: according as the Apostle speaks, Rom. 1. 23. of such as changed the glory of the Incorruptible God into an Image made like to corruptible Man, Birds or Beasts; They changed, saith he, the truth of God into a lie, and served the creature, foreign, juxta Creatorem, as or with the Creator who is blessed for ever, v. 25. Hence Idols in Scripture are termed Lies; as Amos 2. 4. Their Lies have caused them to erre, after which their Fathers walked: The Vulgar hath, Seduxerunt eos Idola ipsorum, Their Idols have caused them to erre. And Esay 28. 15. We have made Lies our refuge. And Ier. 16. 19, 20. The Gentiles shall come from the ends of the earth, and shall say, Surely our Fathers have possessed (the Chaldee hath foreign have worshipped) a lie; vanity, wherein there is no profit. Shall a man make Gods unto himself, and they are no Gods?
This therefore I take to be the genuine meaning of this place,See the Homily against the peril of Idolatry. p. 3 where the Text is peculiarly applied against worshipping of God in an Image. and not that which is commonly supposed against external worship; which I think this Demonstration will evince: To worship what they know, (as the Iews are said to do) and to worship in Spirit and Truth, are taken by our Saviour for one and the same thing, (else the whole sense will be inconsequent:) But the Iews worshipped not God without Rites and Ceremonies, (who yet are supposed to worship him in Spirit and Truth:) Ergo, To worship God without Rites and Ceremonies, is not to worship him in Spirit and Truth, according to the meaning here intended.