The Early Church
“Together they pray, together prostrate themselves, together perform their fasts; mutually teaching, mutually exhorting, mutually sustaining…Between the two echo psalms and hymns” — Tertullian, To My Wife (AD 200)
“Discharge our office in your own houses. A bishop is called from hence, because he superintends, because he takes care and attends to others. To every man then, if he is the head of his own house, ought the office of the Episcopate to belong, to take care how his household believe, that none of them fall into heresy, neither wife, nor son, nor daughter, nor even his slave, because he has been bought at so great a price…Do not neglect then the least of those belonging to you, look after the salvation of all your household with all vigilance.” — Augustine, Sermon 44
“Let us take all this to heart, then, dearly beloved, and on returning home let us serve a double meal, one of food and the other of sacred reading; while the husband reads what has been said, let the wife learn and the children listen, and let not even servants be deprived of the chance to listen. Turn your house into a church; you are, in fact, even responsible for the salvation both of the children and of the servants. Just as we are accountable for you, so too each of you is accountable for your servant, your wife, your child.” – John Chrysostom, Eight Sermons on the Book of Genesis, 105.
The Confessions
“God is to be worshipped everywhere in spirit and truth; as in private families daily, and in secret each one by himself”
(WCF 21.6) [Deut 6:6–7; Job 1:5; Acts 10:2]
“Q. Is the Word of God to be read by all?
A. Although all are not to be permitted to read the Word publicly to the congregation, yet all sorts of people are bound to read it apart by themselves, and with their families: to which end, the holy Scriptures are to be translated out of the original into vulgar languages.”
(WLC 156) [Ps. 78:5–7]
Where did Family Worship go?
Further Reading
A Church in the House— Matthew Henry
Family Worship— Joel Beeke (or Don Whitney)
