The Regulative Principle of Worship

Background

Reformed worship had been structured by what later writers would call the regulative principle: only what God commands in Scripture (by precept, approved example, or good and necessary consequence) may be used in his worship. Calvin's *Necessity of Reforming the Church* (1543) had argued the case against the Roman accretions of the medieval Mass. The contrasting normative principle (whatever is not forbidden is permitted) had been Lutheran (the Augsburg Confession), Anglican (Hooker's *Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity* Book V), and Roman Catholic. The Westminster divines were unanimous on the regulative side but had to draft language that would walk the line between strict prescriptionism (which would forbid even sensible circumstances) and the looser normative reading.

The Assembly’s handling

WCF XXI.1 is the classical statement of the regulative principle: 'The acceptable way of worshipping the true God is instituted by himself, and so limited by his own revealed will, that he may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representation, or any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scripture.' WCF I.6 had earlier handled the question of 'circumstances concerning the worship of God…common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature, and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word.' The combination gives the regulative principle in substance (only commanded worship is acceptable) with circumstantial latitude (the time of services, the posture, the language). The Directory for Public Worship (1645) is the applied liturgical document, replacing the Book of Common Prayer.