Col. iii. 5. Paul speaketh, who profess to know God, (that is, Tit. i. 16. who in words and outward pretence acknowledge him,) but in works deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and to every good work reprobate. Likewise, if we frame in our fancy an idea untrue, disagreeable unto, or unworthy of, that one most excellent Being, and to such a phantasm of our own creation do yield our highest respects and best affections, we break this law, and have another God to ourselves. If upon any creature (whether ourselves or any other thing) we impart our chief esteem or affection, or employ our most earnest care and endeavour, or chiefly rely upon it, or most delight in it, that thing we make a god unto us, and are guilty of breaking this law. Hence St. Paul more than once calls the covetous (or wrongful) Eph. v. 5. person an idolater; and our Lord calls the immo- Matt.vi.24. derate pursuit of riches, the serving (or worshipping) of Mammon; and St. Paul speaketh of some persons who were pianovos μãλλov ĥ piλóbeo, lovers of plea- 2 Tim. iii.4. sure rather than lovers of God; of whom otherwhere he says, that their God was their belly: we Phil. iii. 19. meet with those in the scripture, who put their Psal. xx. 7. trusts in their horses and their chariots; with those, who sacrifice to their net, and burn incense Hab. i. 16. to their drag; with them, who trust in man, and Jer. xvii. 5. make flesh their arm; (men of Mezentius's faith, ready to say with him, Dextra mihi Deus est, et Virg. Æn. telum quod missile libro ;) with those, whose heart Ezek. is lifted up, (as the prince of Tyre in Ezekiel,) and xxviii. 2. who say they are gods: these, and whoever practise in like manner, are so many transgressors of this covenant in short, whoever chiefly regards and affects, seeks and pursues, confides and delights 10. Isa. x. 13. II. Commandment. in wealth, or honour, or pleasure; wit, wisdom, Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven THE first commandment determined the final object of our religion; this doth limit the manner of exercising and expressing it; as to the chief intent of it, interdicting that mode, which in the practice of ancient times had so generally prevailed, of representing the deities (apprehended so) in some corporeal shape, and thereto yielding such expressions of respect, as they conceived suitable and acceptable to such deities. I cannot stand to declare the rise and progress of such a practice; how the Devil's malice, and some men's fraud conspiring with other men's superstitious ignorance and fondness, prevailed so far to impose upon mankind; I shall only observe, that men naturally are very prone to comply with suggestions to such guises of religion: for as the sense of want, and pain, and manifold inconvenience, not to be removed or remedied by any present sensible means, doth prompt men to wish and seek for help from otherwhere; and this disposes them to entertain any hopes propounded to them (with how little soever ground of probability) of receiving it from any absent or invisible power; as it also consequently engageth them to undertake any conditions required by those who propound such hopes, as needful for obtaining thereof; whence the ordinary sort of men are very apt to embrace any way of religion suggested to them, especially by persons of credit, and au των νόμος. thority for knowledge; so also, when the proposition thereof doth come attended with circumstantial appearances, and shows, gratifying their senses, or humouring their passions, or delightfully amusing their fancies, it most easily allures and takes them; as likewise, on the other side, when abstraction of mind and restraint of passion are required, and sense or fancy are little entertained thereby, men are somewhat averse from such proposals of religion, and are not so easily brought heartily to like, or earnestly to embrace them: wherefore since the propounding of images and sensible representations, (relating to somewhat not immediately discerned, from whence men are promised the supply of their needs, or relief from the inconveniences which they endure,) by their magnificency, beauty, curiosity, strangeness, or even by their sensibility itself, do make so facile and Kos pleasant impressions upon the dull and low conceits Max. Tyr. of men; it is the less wonderful, that men commonly Where he have been so easily inveigled into such idolatrous defendeth superstitions, so unreasonable in themselves, and of so mischievous consequence. For what can be more senseless, than to imagine, that that Being, which in wisdom and power is sufficient to overrule nature, and thereby to afford us the assistance we need, may be resembled by any of these corporeal things, the best of which we cannot, without debasing ourselves, esteem superior to ourselves? how unreasonable is it to conceit thus, how unworthy is it, and unsuitable to the dignity of our nature, derived from heaven, to crouch unto such mean representations! It is St. Paul's discourse; Being, saith he, the offspring of Acts xvii. God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art diss. 38. idolatry. 29. and man's device. How injurious also to that most excellent nature must it be to frame, and expose to view, such, not only homely and mean, but, in respect of the divine nature, most foul and ugly, portraitures of him, which cannot but tend to vilify him in men's conceit! He that should form the image of a serpent, or a toad, and exhibit it as the similitude of a king, would surely derogate much from his majesty, and beget very mean and unbeseeming conceits of his person in their minds whom he should persuade to take it for such; and infinitely more must he detract from the dignity, and diminish the reverence due to that immense, almighty, all-wise, most pure and perfect Being, who shall presume to present any sensible, any finite, any corruptible thing, as a reRom. i. 23. semblance of him; changing, as St. Paul expresseth it, the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things; as the IsPš. cvi. 20. raelites are said to have changed their glory (that is, their glorious God) into the similitude of an ox, that eateth grass: no wonder it was, that they, who used such expressions of their religion, had so low opinions concerning those supposed deities whom they worshipped; that they supposed them liable to such passions, fathered such actions upon them, described them as vile in their dispositions and their doings, as they represented them in their shape: most rea с • Εξευτελίζει τὴν τοῦ Θεοῦ σεμνότητα ἡ ἐν ἑτοίμῳ τῆς ὄψεως συνήθεια, καὶ τὴν νοητὴν οὐσίαν δι ̓ ὕλης σεβάζεσθαι ἀτιμάζειν ἐστὶν αὐτὴν δι' αἰσθήσεως. Clem. Strom. v. p. 408. The being ordinarily exposed to view doth, saith Clemens Alexandrinus, extenuate the venerability of God; and to worship the intelligible nature by matter doth vilify it through the sense. sonable therefore is this prohibition of making any resemblance, of what kind soever, (by picture, sculpture, or fusion,) in order to religious adoration; and yielding to them any such signification of respect, which the custom or consent of men hath appropriated to religion; as bowing, falling down, lying prostrate before them, or the like: most reasonable, I say; for since there is but one proper and allowable object of our worship, as the first commandment declares and enacts, the making an image of any other existent in nature, or devised by our own fancy in order to the worship thereof, is but a pursuance of that unreasonable, unhandsome, and unjust superstition there forbidden; adding some absurdity in the manner to the pravity in the substance of such worship. And as for that one true object of our devotion, the eternal, immense, and all-perfect God; the glorious excellency of whose nature doth infinitely transcend our comprehension, and consequently of whom we cannot devise any resemblance not infinitely beneath him, unlike to him, unworthy of him; (whereby we shall not disparage him, and expose him to irreverent apprehensions, especially with the gross vulgar; whereby indeed we shall not cloud his true, inimitable perfections, and affix imperfections to him; blending inexpressible truth with apparent falsehood;) it must be therefore a profane folly to pretend the representing him by any image; and the doing of it is upon such accounts in many places of scripture forbidden; and that it is so here, according to the intent of this precept, is plain by that place in Deuteronomy, where Moses reports the ground of this prohibition; Take ye therefore, saith he, good Deut. iv.15. |