In the book, The Coming Evangelical Crisis, by John H. Armstrong, John MacArthur has a chapter on the Regulative Principle of Worship, entitled, "How Shall We Then Worship?"

 

He writes,

"How does the sufficiency of Scripture apply to worship? The Reformers answered that question by applying sola Scriptura to worship in a tenet historically called the regulative principle. John Calvin was one of the first to articulate it succinctly:

 

We may not adopt any device [in our worship] which seems fit to ourselves, but look to the injunctions of him who alone is entitled to prescribe. Therefore, if we would have him approve our worship, this rule, which he everywhere enforces with the utmost strictness, must be carefully observed. . . . God disapproves of all modes of worship not expressly sanctioned by his word.

 

"Calvin supported this principle with a number of relevant biblical texts, including 1 Samuel 15:22: 'To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams.' He also appealed to Matthew 15:9, which says, 'In vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.'

 

"An English Reformer and a contemporary of Calvin, John Hooper, stated the same principle in this way: “Nothing should be used in the Church which has not either the express Word of God to support it, or otherwise is a thing indifferent in itself, which brings no profit when done or used, but no harm when not done or omitted.” And nineteenth-century Scottish church historian William Cunningham defined the regulative principle in these terms: “It is unwarrantable and unlawful to introduce into the government and worship of the church anything which has not the positive sanction of Scripture.”

 

"The Reformers and Puritans applied the regulative principle against formal ritual, priestly vestments, church hierarchy, and other remnants of medieval Roman Catholic worship. The regulative principle was often cited, for example, by English Reformers who opposed elements of high-church Anglicanism that had been borrowed from Catholic tradition. It was the Puritans’ commitment to the regulative principle that caused hundreds of Puritan pastors to be ejected by decree from Church of England pulpits in 1662.

 

"Furthermore, the simplicity of worship forms in Presbyterian, Baptist, Congregational, and other evangelical traditions is the result of applying the regulative principle. Evangelicals today would do well to recover their spiritual ancestors’ confidence in sola Scriptura as it applies to worship and church leadership. A number of harmful trends that are gaining momentum these days reveal a diminishing evangelical confidence in the sufficiency of Scripture. On the one hand, there is, as we have noted, almost a circus atmosphere in some churches, where pragmatic methods that trivialize what is holy are being employed to boost attendance. On the other hand, growing numbers of former evangelicals are abandoning simple worship forms in favor of high-church formalism. Some are even leaving evangelicalism altogether and aligning with Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism."