George Herbert: How to Behave in Worship

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When we say in our creeds that we believe in the communion of saints, we mean not only that we read Scripture alongside and in conversation with those walked in Christ before us, but also that we are gathered by the Spirit in worship alongside them. In other words, in the mystery of eternal life, Grandma and Grandpa are watching when we worship, and so, too, are our unborn great-great- grandchildren! For that reason, it is helpful from time to time to remember what our forbears would expect of us as they watch us learn together what it means to be the Household of God, the Body of Christ, and the Temple of the Holy Spirit. The great Anglican divine, George Herbert, reminds us how to behave when we pray:

[The parson], having often instructed his people how to carry themselves in divine service, exacts of them all possible reverence, by no means enduring either talking or sleeping, or gazing, or leaning, or half-kneeling, or any undutiful behaviour in them, but causing them when they sit, or stand, or kneel, to do all in a straight and steady posture, as attending to what is done in the Church; and every one, man and child, answering aloud both Amen and all other answers which are on the clerk's and people's part to answer, which answers also are to be done not in a huddling or slubbering fashion, gaping, or scratching the head, or spitting even in the midst of the answer, but gently and pausably, thinking what they say, so that while they answer, "As it was in the beginning, etc...." they meditate as they speak, that God hath ever had his people that have glorified him as well as now, and that he shall have so for ever. And the like in other answers. This is that which the Apostle calls a reasonable service (Romans 12), when we speak not as parrots, without reason, or offer up such sacrifices as they did of old, which was of beasts devoid of reason; but when we use our reason, and apply our powers to the service of him that gives them." 

-- George Herbert in The Country Parson, His Character, and Rule of Holy Life