I recommend listening to this address by Carl Bogue on the RPW, and how this doctrine is being set aside in his denomination:

SermonAudio.com - Regulative Principle Important

After listening to this, I can honestly say that I have more respect for people who clearly say that they do not believe the RPW, as opposed to those who claim to subscribe to WCF 21, yet totally ignore it in practice.

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Daniel Ritchie
Saintfield, Northern Ireland - Queen's University, Belfast:History/Politics
Member of Dromara Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland (Covenanter)

This little essay was one the first papers I read on the RPW and it's a good one:

The Scriptural Law of Worship by Carl W. Bogue

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Andrew Myers
Husband of Jessica, Father of Jackson, Katie and Samuel
Member, Presbyterian Reformed Church of Northern Virginia
Warrenton, VA USA
Editor, The Matthew Poole Project

"Let your Morning Thoughts, and your last Evening Thoughts, be what shall become of you to all Eternity." -- Matthew Poole

A question worth considering is if Confessional Presbyterians tolerate the virtual anarchy in worship that Rev. Bogue describes in this address, then can they really be surprised when people in these denominations openly go against the WCF's teaching on the doctrines of the gospel (i.e. Federal Visionism etc.)?

After all, there is little point complaining that FVers do not adhere to the WCF when other office bearers do not adhere to WCF 21, despite the fact that they pretend to.

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Daniel Ritchie
Saintfield, Northern Ireland - Queen's University, Belfast:History/Politics
Member of Dromara Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland (Covenanter)

Dr. Bogue's tract has served as an introduction to the RPW for 20 years now.

In 1988, Dr. Carl Bogue, long-time pastor of Faith Presbyterian Church (PCA), Akron, Ohio, wrote The Scriptural Law of Worship for Presbyterian Heritage Publications. This is a standard, traditional defense of the regulative principle, which subsequently has served many as a succinct introductory tract on the topic. The booklet deals with the nature of worship, the Scriptural law of worship, a specific example from the Bible of the principle (Nadab and Abihu), and results when the principle has been violated.109

109. Carl W. Bogue, The Scriptural Law of Worship (Dallas, Tex.: Presbyterian Heritage Publications, 1988); later reprinted, with slight modification and additions, as Scriptural Worship (Dallas, Tex.: Blue Banner Books, 1993).

As for the RPW and Confessionalism, he wrote this in a later piece.

When I was a seminary student in the UPC [United Presbyterian Church], the conservatives were distressed by the blatant liberalism among the faculty. Here were men who had taken vows and subscribed to the creedal standards of the church, while in the classroom they would mock and ridicule such doctrines as the substitutionary atonement, the unique authority of the Bible, Christ as the only way of salvation, and other such issues…. And yet I submit to you that it is the same question of integrity which we face in our current struggle. Though the doctrinal error is not so extreme, the question of integrity is the same. When we promise to “receive and adopt” the Westminster Standards, only to turn around and worship God in ways He has not commanded, how may we not question a person’s integrity?110

110. Carl W. Bogue, “Does the Regulative Principle Matter to the PCA?” The Presbyterian Advocate, ed. David C. Lachman, 3.3–4 (April–May 1993) 10.

Text from Frank J. Smith, Ph.D., D.D. with Chris Coldwell, "The Regulative Principle of Worship:Sixty Years in Reformed Literature Part One (1946–1999)." The Confessional Presbyterian 2 (2006) 129.

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Chris Coldwell, Lakewood Presbyterian Church (PCA), Member
• Naphtali Press: Presbyterian & Reformed Books
• The Confessional Presbyterian Journal
• The Blue Banner Archive

The Regulative Principle: Samuel Miller gives a succinct statement of this principle when he writes that since the Scriptures are the “only infallible rule of faith and practice, no rite or ceremony ought to have a place in the public worship of God, which is not warranted in Scripture, either by direct precept or example, or by good and sufficient inference.”

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I think this is a revised version that was published in the Blue Banner: Scriptural Worship

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Chris
OPC member
Now attending Grace Community Baptist Church
Mandeville, LA

"Faith alone saves, but it is a faith that works." - S. Lewis Johnson