7. Holiness of Places, or Consecrating of Churches

To discover the vanity of this superstition, consider, that inherent holiness which is in persons, is a thing which places are no way capable of: but the only holiness that is or can be pretended for them, is a relative holiness, upon the account of some thing without them, in respect and relation whereto, they are denominated and reputed holy. Hence one that writes for it has described it thus, A state of relation of peculiarity to Godwards. Now in the time of the Old Testament, we find two sorts of holy places upon this account of relation to the holy God.

1. Where God was pleased to afford the visible and extraordinary appearances and manifestations of his glory to the very eyes of his servants, such places were holy during the time of those manifestations. As when the Lord appeared to Moses in the burning bush (Exodus 3:5), the place whereon you stand is holy ground. So to Joshua (chapter 5:15). Hence Mount Sinai might not be touched (Exodus 19). And upon this account the mount where Christ was transfigured is called the holy mount (2 Peter 1:18), but this holiness continued only while that extraordinary presence continued, there is no more holiness in Mount Sinai, or in Mount Tabor now, than there is in any other place, therefore the Apostle so calls it from what it was, not that it is so still; neither is any other place in these times privileged with such an extraordinary visible presence and appearance of God: and therefore this neither is nor can be pretended for our meeting-places. But

2. There was a stated holiness in the time of the Law in some places. And thus some have observed, that we find but three places that were holy in this respect, the land of Canaan, called the holy land (Zechariah 2:12), the city of Jerusalem, called the holy city (Matthew 5:4 and 27:53), and the Temple, frequently therefore called the holy temple (Jonah 2:4). And these places were perpetually holy, as long as the Old Testament dispensation continued. But if we enquire into the nature, and into the grounds and reasons of this holiness, we shall find that it is wholly ceased in these gospel-times, and that no place is holy now upon any such account. For

1. These places were holy, because in them were the standing signs and symbols of God's presence, which is therefore called his symbolical presence, to distinguish it from his extraordinary presence before-mentioned, and from his spiritual presence, which is not tied to any place. Hence he is said to choose Jerusalem, and Mount Sion, and the Temple, to dwell there, and to put his name there (Psalms 76:2 and 87:2), and to dwell between the Cherubims (Psalms 80:1). The Temple itself was a sign of his presence, and the altar, the ark, the mercy-seat, cherubims, sacrifices, and almost all the ordinances of those times were affixed by God's appointment to those places, to be observed and celebrated there, namely in the Temple, and in Jerusalem: but there is no place that is now privileged with this symbolical presence. There are no such standing signs and tokens of his presence annexed to any place. God has given his ordinances to his Church, but he has not tied them to any place. He dwells not in temples made with hands (Acts 17:24).

2. These places under the Law were holy, by reason of their typical respect to Christ, and the good things that were to come by him. Canaan the holy land was a type of the Church on earth, and of the kingdom of heaven, the heavenly Canaan: they sought another country, a better country, that is, an heavenly (Hebrews 11:14, 16). Your eyes shall see the land that is very far off (Isaiah 33:17). Jerusalem also was a type of the Church, and of Jerusalem above (Galatians 4:26; Revelation 21:2), and so the Temple (Psalms 15:1), and it was a type also of Christ's body (John 2:21; Colossians 2:9). Hence some have well observed, that the more nearly and lively that any of these places did typify Christ, so the difference and degree of holiness did arise; as the Temple was more holy, because it typified the body of Christ, in whom the Godhead dwelt bodily (Colossians 2:9), as God did dwell symbolically in the Temple. But Christ the substance being come, and all the types and shadows therefore done away, there are not, there cannot be typical places, or typical holiness in places in these times.

3. Those places of old were holy by virtue of God's institution, who did appoint and sanctify them to be parts of his worship, and ordinances of a very high nature; for the Lord appointed them to be the ways and means of communion between himself and his people: There will I meet you, and I will commune with you from above the mercy-seat, from between the two Cherubims, which are upon the ark of the testimony (Exodus 25:22; Numbers 7:89). And they did sanctify both the worshippers, and the worship performed in them, the altar sanctified the gift, the Temple sanctified the gold (Matthew 23:18, 19), insomuch that the places were principal, and the duties less principal, as divines observe. The Temple and the altar being types of Christ, were of an higher worth and excellency than the services and sacrifices offered in them, and did bring acceptance to them, and therefore they were to pray towards the Temple, to offer upon the altar, etc. (Deuteronomy 12:5, 6; 1 Kings 8:29). There will I accept them (Ezekiel 20:40). And it was a profaning of the Temple to use it for civil employments, being consecrated and appropriated by God to holy uses: and therefore Christ would not suffer them to buy or sell, or to carry vessels through it (Mark 11:15, 16).

But there is no word of institution in the New Testament to sanctify any one place more than another, but on the contrary it lays all places level in regard of holiness. When the woman of Samaria pleaded, Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship; Jesus said to her, Woman, believe me, The hour comes, and now is, when you shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father, but the true worshippers shall worship him in spirit and in truth (John 4:21, 23). He turns her eyes and thoughts away from the difference of places, to look at the spirituality of the worship: for as God is no respecter of persons, so he is no respecter of places; but wherever, for that indefinite [where] is equivalent to an universal, Wherever two or three are gathered together in my Name, there am I in the midst of them (Matthew 18:20). I will that men pray every where, [〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉], in every place (1 Timothy 2:8). The Church of Troas met in an upper chamber to break bread, and for preaching and other ordinances (Acts 20:8), therefore all places are alike.

Our public meeting-places for worship in these gospel-times, do not succeed in the stead of the Jewish Tabernacle or Temple, because they are not privileged with that extraordinary visible presence of God in them, which was in the Temple at some times, neither have they that symbolical presence, and residence of God in them, which was in the Temple at all times, neither have they that typical respect to Christ, neither has God sanctified them, and set them apart to himself as his own peculiar: but they are of the same nature with the Jewish Synagogues, which were the places of the public moral worship of God in those times, and were without question every whit as holy as our churches, but yet we find that the Synagogues were not appropriated to holy uses only, though the Temple was, but they kept courts, and had civil assemblies in them about civil matters (Matthew 23:34). Some of them shall you scourge in your Synagogues, which suppose it were not meant of the executing and inflicting of the punishment upon them, but only as some would have it, of passing the sentence, yet this will not help them, for still it was a civil and secular use of the place, where they met for the public worship of God.

I may therefore here apply that of Isaiah 27:9: By this therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged, and this is all the fruit, to take away his sin: when he makes all the stones of the Altar as chalk-stones, that are beaten asunder, the Groves and Images shall not stand up. God will never purge away the iniquity of Ireland, nor take away the sins of England, till the stones of the Altar be as chalk-stones, till people be convinced that there is no more holiness in a church, I mean the meeting-place of wood and stones, than in a dwelling house, nor in an altar more than in chalk-stones. There have been some Episcopal men, Episcopal at least in some other things, who yet have been much above this gross superstitious conceit of the difference of places. Doctor Usher in his Body of Divinity, speaking against the private administration of the Sacraments, he has these words; In times of persecution the godly did often meet in barns, and such obscure places, which were indeed public, because of the Church of God there, the house or place availing nothing to make it public or private, even as wherever the Prince is, there is the court, although it were in a poor cottage.

It is true, there is a spiritual presence of God in our public meeting-places, when his people are there assembled to worship him in the beauties of holiness, but he does not afford his presence with respect to the place, but to the persons; he is not present with them for the place's sake, but present in the place at that time for their sakes. And therefore this spiritual presence of God does not make any place properly holy, for then all places should be holy, wherever holy persons meet to enjoy the spiritual presence of God in holy duties: as the primitive churches met in private chambers (Acts 1:13 & 20:8), and by the same reason all the dwelling-houses where there are family-duties, and daily worshipping of God in the family, and in secret, are holy places also. No, the fields, the streets, and sometimes prisons, and dungeons, and gibbets, and all places where the saints come, and enjoy communion with God in their spirits, are holy places. And so by their own argument they lay all places level, the Lord having many precious saints that walk with him, who are dispersed and scattered up and down almost in every corner of the land.

Churches I confess are holy things, but the word Church is very improperly, and catachrestically used concerning the material church of wood and stones, by a metonymy; but the Scripture knows no other church but the church of saints. That place (1 Corinthians 11:22) is much abused, and misinterpreted, Have you not houses of your own to eat and drink in? or despise you the Church of God? It is not meant of those improper metonymical churches, neither does the opposition inforce any such thing: for there be many other things which may be opposed to their own houses, besides the public meeting-place. There are in logic not only Contraria, quorum unum uni, but also Disparata quorum unum multis pariter opponitur: the Apostle's argument is this, that it is a contempt of the Church or saints of God, to carry themselves so disorderly in their presence.

And yet it does not follow, that the public meeting-places must be pulled down, for the consecrating of them is an abuse of things necessary, and not of things indifferent. The Scripture mentions it as a good work to build them, He loveth our Nation, and has built us a Synagogue (Luke 7:5), and as an act of great profaneness to pull them down (Psalm 74:8), They have burnt up all the Synagogues of God in the Land, which yet had no more holiness in them than our meeting-places. And the thing it self speaks, for if there ought to be public assemblies for the worship of God, if this be a duty, it is necessary that there be places to meet in. It is true, the Lord commanded the Jews to demolish the Heathen Temples of the Canaanites (Deuteronomy 12:2, 3), but these were built for Idols, and therefore might justly be accounted mere monuments of Idolatry; but our meeting-places were built for Christian churches and assemblies to worship God in, among whom the essentials of a church-estate and worship were preserved, even under the Apostacy of Antichrist, for the Woman was fed and nourished all the 1260 days (Revelation 12:6, 14). Therefore some fundamental ordinances were preserved, though both the worship and the places have been much defiled with superstition: but yet as we do not therefore reject the worship of God, because of those abuses, so neither need we reject the places, but should reform and retain both the one and the other, the worship and ordinances being necessary by virtue of God's institution, and the places needful for the performance of the worship. And the superstitious abuse of them has been taken off by public authority. For the Great Parliament has thus declared: As no place is capable of any holiness, under pretence of whatever dedication or consecration, so neither is it subject to such pollution by any superstition formerly used, and now laid aside, as may render it unlawful or inconvenient for Christians to meet together therein for the public worship of God; and therefore we hold it requisite, that the places of public assembling for worship among us, should be continued, and employed to that use. Neither indeed can they be destroyed without great and manifest hinderance and prejudice to the public worship of God, unless new ones be first built. And if they that plead for it will first erect new meeting-places, that are every way better, and stronger, and more comely, and more capacious to contain large and numerous assemblies, and more conveniently situated for the accommodation of all the people, I say, when this is done, they shall have my free consent to do what they please with the old ones. But if they will needs demolish them before new and better be built in their stead, the least that can be said to them in such a case, is that their milk boyles over: if they have any true zeal against superstition, they had need take heed lest they run out of one extreme into another, and lest they be acted by the spirit of the Mystery of Iniquity, and by the subtilty and cunning craft of Satan into gross profaneness, upon pretence of avoiding superstition.