Latta's appeal to heavenly worship in Revelation: 'Worthy is the Lamb that was slain'

Context

Latta argues that Christians should model their worship on the hymns recorded in the book of Revelation, which explicitly celebrate Christ’s redemptive work. He quotes from Revelation 4-5 to show that heavenly worship focuses on Christ’s atoning sacrifice - content absent from the Psalms of David.

Extract

“In the revelation of St. John we have feveral Hymns recorded, which the Church of the firft born fing to God and to his Chrift, and we cannot form our devotions from a better copy, than that which they have fet us.-In the fourth chapter the four and twenty elders fall down before him that liveth for ever and ever, and caft their crowns before the throne, faying, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power, for thou haft created all things, and for thy pleafure they are, and were created. Here you fee plainly that the adoration paid to God the Father is founded upon his being the Creator of all things.-Look a little farther into the next chapter, and you will find the fame perfons praifing and adoring Chrift Jefus, faying, Thou art worthy to take the book and to open the feals thereof, for thou waft flain, and haft redeemed us to God by thy blood, out of every kindred and people and nation, and haft made us unto our God kings and priests, and we fhall reign on earth. Here you as plainly fee, the worſhip paid to Chrift to be founded in this, that he was flain and did by his blood redeem us. Nay the very choir of angels fing praifes to him in the fame ftrain, faying, Worthy is the Lamb that was flain to receive power and riches and wifdom and ftrength and honor and glory and bleffing.”

Significance

This passage presents a powerful argument from heavenly precedent. Latta argues that:

1. The hymns in Revelation are explicitly about Christ’s redemptive work (“thou wast slain”)
2. These heavenly hymns provide the pattern (“a better copy”) for earthly worship
3. Both angels and the redeemed sing hymns celebrating the accomplished atonement

The argument is strategically significant because exclusive psalmody advocates could not claim Revelation’s hymns were merely “uninspired human compositions.” These were canonical Scripture. Yet their content - celebrating Christ’s death and redemption explicitly - was exactly what Watts’s hymns contained and what the Psalms of David lacked.

By appealing to Revelation, Latta positioned gospel hymnody as the truly “scriptural” and even “heavenly” form of worship, while confining exclusive psalmody to an Old Testament shadow that heaven itself has moved beyond.