Instrumental Music

John Chrysostom (c.347-407)

It was permitted to the Jews, as sacrifice was, for the heaviness and grossness of their souls. God condescended to their weakness, because they were lately drawn off from idols; but now, instead of instruments, we may use our bodies to praise Him withal. Again, let no man deceive you, these appertain not to Christians; these are alien to the Catholic Church; all these things do the nations of the world seek after.

(From: Unknown)

John Calvin (1509-1564)

Instrumental Music is not fitter to be adopted into the public worship of the Christian Church than the incense, the candlestick, and the shadows of the Mosaic law....In Popery, a ridiculous and unsuitable imitation of the Jews, they employed organs and such other ludicrous things, by which the word and worship of God are exceedingly profaned, the people being much more attached to these rites than to the understanding of the Divine Word....We know that our Lord Jesus has abolished these legal shadows....For instruments of music in Gospel times, we must not have recourse to these, unless we wish to destroy the evangelical perfection, and to obscure the meridian light which we enjoy in Christ our Lord.

I consider that musical instruments agree nothing better with the singing of God’s praises than incense, lighted candles, and such-like shadows of the law, supposing some one were to bring these back into use. Stupidly, therefore, have the Papists borrowed this, as they have many other things, from the Jews. Men enslaved to outside appearances, such noisy din will captivate, but God is better pleased with that simplicity which He commends to us by His own Apostle.

(From: Unknown)

William Dunlop (1692-1720)

We celebrate the goodness of God who carried our Reformation to such a high pitch of perfection with respect to our government and worship, and delivered them from all that vain pomp which darkened the glory of the Gospel service, and the whole of these superstitious and insignificant inventions of an imaginary decency and order which sullied the Divine beauty and lustre of that noble simplicity that distinguished the devotions of Apostolical times. We are sensible that it is a necessary consequence of the nature of our Reformation, that there is nothing left in our worship which is proper to captivate the senses of mankind or amuse their imaginations. We have no magnificence or splendour of devotion to dazzle the eye, nor harmony of instrumental music to enliven our worship and soothe the ears of the assembly. The devotions of Christians stand in no need of the outward helps afforded to the Jews. The powers and glories of an immortal life, as represented under the Gospel, are nobler springs of devotion than the meaner helps afforded under the law, the costliness of Pontifical garments, the ceremony of worship, and the power of music.

(From: Unknown)

Robert S. Candlish (1806-1873)

I believe that it is a question which touches some of the highest and deepest points of Christian theology. Is the temple destroyed? Is the temple worship wholly superseded? Have we, or have we not, priests and sacrifices among us now? Is the temple or synagogue the model on which the Church of the New Testament is formed? Does the Old Testament itself point to anything but the fruit of the lips, as the peace-offering or thank-offering of Gospel times? Is there a trace in the New Testament of any other mode of praise? For my part, I am persuaded that, if the organ be admitted, there is no barrier in principle against the sacerdotal system in all its fulness–against the substitution in our whole religion of the formal for the spiritual, the symbolical for the real.

(From: Unknown)

John L. Girardeau (1825-1898)

Those of us who protest against this revolution in Presbyterian worship are by some pitied, by others ridiculed, and by others still denounced as fanatics. If we are, we share the company of an innumerable host of fanatics extending from the day of Pentecost to the middle of the nineteenth century. We refuse not to be classed, although consciously unworthy of the honour, with apostles, martyrs and reformers. But neither were they mad, nor are we. We “speak the words of truth and soberness.” (Acts 26:25) Mindful of the apostolic injunction, “Prove all things,” (1 Thess. 5:21) we submit arguments derived from Scripture, from the formularies of our church and from the consensus of Christ’s people, and respectfully invoke for them the attention of our brethren.

(From: Unknown)