appoint the crucifix to be adored, but in form declare, that divine adoration is due to it. And accordingly they petition it, in so many words, expressly directed to the very wood, as their only hope, to increase the joy and grace of the godly, and blot out the sins of the wicked*.

But let us suppose them to pay only an inferior honour to images, and to worship the Holy Trinity and the saints by them. Having no ground, or permission, to pray at all to saints departed, they certainly have none to use images for enlivening their prayers. If any words can forbid the worship of God, his Son, and Spirit, by images, this commandment forbids it. And if any excuses or distinctions will acquit the papists of transgressing it, the same will acquit the ancient Jews and Heathens also. For if many of the former mean only, that their adoration should pass through the image, as it were, to the person, for whom it was made; so did many of the Pagans plead, that their meaning was just the same†: and yet the Scripture accuses them all of idolatry. And if great numbers of the Pagans did absolutely pray to the image itself; so do great numbers of the papists too: and some of their own writers honestly confess and lament it.

But farther had they little or no regard, as they sometimes pretend, to the image; but only to the person represented by it; why is an image, of the blessed virgin suppose, in one place, so much more frequented than another in a different place, and the

* See Dr. Hickes's Collection of Controversial Discourses, vol. i.

p. 47.

+ See a remarkable proof of this produced in an Epistle to Mr. Warburton, concerning the Conformity of Rome Pagan and Papal : printed for Roberts, 1748, 8vo. p. 21.

prayers made before it thought to have so much more efficacy?

Upon the whole, therefore, they plainly appear to be guilty of that image-worship, which reason and Scripture condemn. Nor do they so much as alledge either any command or express allowance for it. And yet they have pronounced a curse upon all who reject it.

But let us go on, from the prohibition, to the reasons given for it in the commandment. The first is a very general, but a very awful one. For the Lord thy God is a jealous God: not jealous for himself, lest he should suffer for the follies of his creatures: that cannot be but jealous for us, for his spouse the church; lest our notions of his nature and attributes, and consequently of the duties which we owe to him, being depraved, and our minds darkened with superstitious persuasions, and fears, and hopes, we should depart from the fidelity which we have vowed to him, and fall into those grievous ímmoralities, which St. Paul, in the beginning of his Epistle to the Romans, describes as the consequences of idolatry*, and which have been its consequences in all times and places.

The second reason for this prohibition is more particular: that God will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate him. For, observe, worshipping him irrationally, or in a manner which he hath forbidden, he interprets to be hating him: as it must proceed, wholly or in part, from a dishonourable opinion of him, and tend to spread the like opinion amongst others. Now we are not to understand by this threatening, that God will ever, on account of the sins of parents, punish children, in the strict sense of

*Rom. i. 21-32.

the word punish when they deserve it not*. But in the course of things, established by his providence, it comes to pass, that the sins of one person, or one generation, lead those, who come after, into the same, or other, perhaps greater sins; and so bring upon them double sufferings, partly the fruits of their predecessors' faults, partly of their own. And when successive ages follow one another in crimes, besides the natural bad effects of them, which punish them in some measure, God may justly threaten severer additional corrections, than he would else inflict for their personal transgressions †: both because it may deter men from propagating wickedness down to their posterity; and because, if it doth not, inveterate evils demand a rougher cure. Accordingly here the Israelites are forewarned, that if they fell into idolatry, they and their children would fall, by means of it, into all sorts of abominations: and not only these would of course produce many mischiefs to both, but God would chastise the following generations with heavier strokes, for not taking warning, as they ought to have done, by the misbehaviour and sufferings of the former. Denouncing this intention beforehand must influence them, if any thing could because it must give them a concern, both for themselves, and their descendants too; for whom, next to themselves, if not equally, men are always interested. And therefore visiting sins upon them to the third and fourth generation seems to be mentioned; because either the life, or however the solicitude, of a person, may be supposed to extend thus far, and seldom further.

• Against this wrong imagination, Cotta in Cic. de Nat. Deor. 1. 8. 6. §. 38. inveighs vehemently.

+ See Sherlock on Providence, p. 382–390.

This threatening therefore was not only just, but wise and kind, on the supposition, which in general it was reasonable to make, that in such matters children would imitate their wicked progenitors. And whenever any did not; either their innocence would avert the impending evils; or they would be abundantly rewarded in a future life for what the sins of others had brought upon them in the present.

But if God hath threatened to punish the breach of this precept to the third and fourth generation, he hath promised to shew mercy unto thousands, that is, so long as the world shall endure, to them that love him and keep his commandments. To the Jews he fulfilled this engagement, as far as they gave him opportunity, by temporal blessings. And amongst Christians there is ordinarily a fair prospect, that a nation, or a family, pious and virtuous through successive ages, will be recompensed with increasing happiness in every age: which is a powerful motive both for worshipping God in purity ourselves, and educating those, who are placed under our care, to do so too. Yet it must be acknowledged, that neither the rewards foretold, nor the punishments denounced, in this commandment, are so constantly distributed on earth under the gospel dispensation, as they were under that of the law.. But still our Maker as certainly requires, as ever he did, since he is a Spirit, to be worshipped in spirit and in truth*: and the inducement to it is abundantly sufficient, that the idolaters, amongst other sinners, shall have their part in the lake, which burneth with fire and brimstone †. Not that we are to be forward in applying so dreadful a sentence to the case of those, whether Christians or others, who, in this or any respect, offend through * John iv. 24. + Rev. xxi. 8.

such ignorance or mistake, as, for aught we can tell, is excusable. May our heavenly Father forgive them: for they know not what they do*. But we should be very thankful to him for the light, which he hath caused to shine upon us; and very careful to walk in it as becomes the children of light, having no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness †.