XVI. Our opinion concerning the force and virtue which such places have is, I trust, without any blemish or stain of heresy. Churches receive as every thing else their chief perfection from the end whereunto they serve. Which end being the public worship of God, they are in this consideration houses of greater dignity than any provided for meaner purposes. For which cause they seem after a sort even to mourn, as being injuried and defrauded of their right, when places not sanctified as they are prevent them unnecessarily in that preeminence and honour. Whereby also it doth come to pass, that the service of God hath not then itself such perfection of grace and comeliness, as when the dignity of place which it wisheth for doth concur.
Again, albeit the true worship of God be to God in itself acceptable, who respecteth not so much in what place, as with what affection he is served; and therefore Moses in the midst of the sea, Job on the dunghill, Ezechias in bed, Jeremy in mire, Jonas in the whale, Daniel in the den, the children in the furnace, the thief on the cross, Peter and Paul in prison, calling unto God were heard, as St. Basil noteth1: manifest notwithstanding it is, that the very majesty and holiness of the place, where God is worshipped, hath in regard of us great virtue, force, and efficacy, for that it serveth as a sensible help to stir up devotion, and in that respect no doubt bettereth even our holiest and best actions in this kind. As therefore we every where exhort all men to worship God, even so for performance of this service by the people of God assembled, we think not any place so good as the church, neither any exhortation so fit as that of David, “O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness2.”
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Footnotes
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Exhort. ad Bap. et Pœnitent. [The passage does not appear in the Greek copies of St. Basil, but it may be seen in the Latin edition of Musculus, p. 447, having been interpolated, as afterwards appeared, from a Homily on the Woman of Canaan, ascribed to St. Chrysostom, and published as his by Sir H. Savile, tom. v. p. 188. It stands as follows in the Benedictine edition, t. iii. p. 442. Οὐ ζητει̑ται τόπος, ἀλλ’ αρχὴ τρόπου. Ὁ Ἱερεμίας ἐν βορβόρῳ ἠ̑ν, καὶ τὸν Θεὸν ἐπεσπάσατο· ὁ Δανιὴλ ἐν λάκκῳ λεόντων, καὶ τὸν Θεὸν ἐξευμενίσατο· οἱ παι̑δες οἱ τρει̑ς ἐν τῃ̑ καμίνῳ ἠ̑σαν, καὶ Θεὸν ὑμνου̑ντες ἐδυσώπησαν· ὁ λῃστὴς ἐσταυρώθη, καὶ οὐκ ἐκώλυσεν ὁ σταυρὸς, ἀλλὰ παράδεισον ἤνοιξεν· ὁ Ἰὼβ ἐν κοπρίᾳ ἠ̑ν, καὶ τὸν Θεὸν ἵλεων κατεσκεύασεν· ὁ Ἰωνα̑ς ἐν τῃ̑ κοιλίᾳ του̑ κήτους, καὶ τὸν Θεὸν ὑπήκοον ἔσχε… . . ὄπισθεν οἱ Αἰγύπτιοι ἐδίωκον, ἔμπροσθεν ἡ θάλασσα, μέση ἡ εὐχή.] ↩
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Psal. xcvi. 9. ↩