Heart Work and Liturgical Fidgets

preachingBut we neglect to prepare our hearts; for, as the Puritans would have been the first to tell us, thirty seconds of private prayer upon taking our seat in the church building is not time enough in which to do it. It is here that we need to take ourselves in hand. What we need at the present time to deepen our worship is not new liturgical forms or formulae, nor new hymns and tunes, but more preparatory ‘heart-work’ before we use the old ones. There is nothing wrong with new hymns, tunes, and worship styles—there may be very good reasons for them—but without ‘heart-work’ they will not make our worship more fruitful and God-honouring; they will only strengthen the syndrome that C.S. Lewis called ‘the liturgical fidgets’. ‘Heart-work’ must have priority or spiritually our worship will get nowhere.

JI Packer, Quest for Godliness, 257

On Middle Ways

“[U]sually such Men that are for middle Ways in Points of Doctrine, have a greater Kindness for that Extream (sic) they go half Way to, than that which they go half Way from.”

Robert Traill, A Vindication of the Protestant Doctrine of Justification, 2nd Ed. (1730), 4.