them governed the world, and were fit objects of devotion. To these, as their own fancy, or the folly or fraud of others led them, they ascribed more or less both of power and goodness; attributed to several of them the vilest actions that could be; supposed them to preside, some over one nation or city, some over another; worshipped a few or a multitude of them, just as they pleased; and that with a strange variety of ceremonies, absurd and impious-immoral and barbarous. Amidst this crowd of imaginary deities, the real one was almost entirely forgotten; false religion, and irreligion, divided the world between them; and wickedness of every kind was authorised by both. The cure for these dreadful evils must plainly be, restoring the old true notion of one only God, ruling the world himself; which, therefore, was the first great article of the Jewish faith, as it is of ours.

Christians can hardly, in words, profess a plurality of gods; but in reality they do, if they supthe divine nature common to more than one pose being; or think our Saviour, or the Holy Spirit, mere creatures, and yet pay them divine honours. But, besides these, we apprehend the Church of Rome to sin against the present commandment, when they pray to angels, to the holy Virgin, and the saints, as being able every where to hear them; and having not only temporal relief, but grace and salvation in their power to bestow. Nay, were the plea which they sometimes make, a true one, that they only pray to them to intercede with God, yet it would be an insufficient one. For there is no reason to believe that they have any knowledge of such prayers; or if they had, as there is one God," so there is "one mediator between God "and man."6 And we have neither precept, nor

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(6) 1 Tim. ii. 5.

allowance, nor example, in the whole Bible, of applying to any other, amongst all the inhabitants of the invisible world.

one.

But there are several ways more of transgressing this commandment. If we ascribe things which befal us, to fate, or to chance, or to nature; and mean any thing real by these words, different from that order which our Maker's providence hath appointed; we set up, in effect, other gods besides him. If we imagine the influence of stars, the power of spirits, in short, any power whatever, to be independent of him, and capable of doing the least matter, more than he judges proper to permit that it should; this, also, is having more gods than If we set up ourselves, or others, above him and obey, or expect any one else to obey, man rather than God; here, again, is in practice, though not in speculation, the same crime. If we love or "trust in uncertain riches," more than "the living God;"7 this is that "covetousness, "which is idolatry."8 If we pursue unlawful sensual pleasures, instead of delighting in his precepts; this is making a "god of our own belly." In a word, if we allow ourselves to practise any wickedness whatever, we serve, by so doing, the false "god of the world," instead of the true God of heaven, besides whom we ought not to have any other; and, therefore, to whom alone be, as is most due, all honour and obedience, now and for ever. Amen.

(7) 1 Tim. vi. 17.

(8) Col. iii. 5. (1) 2 Cor. iv. 4.

(9) Phil. ii. 19.

LECTURE XIX.

Second Commandment.

We are now come to the Second Commandment, which the Church of Rome would persuade men is only part of the first. But they plainly relate to different things. The first appoints, that the object of our worship be only the true God; the next that we worship him not under any visible resemblance or form. And besides, if we join these two in one, there will be no tenth left; though the Scripture itself hath called them ten :i to avoid which absurdity, the Romanists have committed another, by dividing the tenth into two. And they might as well have divided it into six or seven; as I shall show you in discoursing upon it. For these reasons, the oldest and most considerable, both of the Jewish and Christian writers, who distinguish the Commandments by their number, distinguish them in the same manner that we do. Perhaps it may seem of small consequence, how that before us is counted, provided it be not omitted. And we must own, that some persons before the rise of Popery, and some Protestants* since the Reformation, have, without any ill design, reckoned it as the Papists do. But what both the former have done by mere mistake, these last endeavour to defend out of policy; well knowing, that when once they have got the second to be considered as only a part of the first, they can much more easily pass it over, as a part of no great separate meaning, or importance, than if it were thought a distinct precept. And, accordingly, in some of their small books of devotion, they pass

(1) Exod. xxxiv. 28. Deut. iv. 13. x. 4.

it over, and leave it out entirely. But it deserves, as I shall now show you, another sort of regard.

is not.

The Prophet Isaiah very justly put the ques tion: "To whom will ye liken God? or what "likeness will ye compare unto him ?" He is an invisible spirit; therefore representing him in a visible shape, is representing him to be such as he He is every where present; therefore a figure, confined by its nature to a particular place, must incline persons to a wrong conception of him. He is the living, wise, and powerful governor of the world; therefore to express him by a dead lump of matter, must be doing him dishonour. We are unable indeed, at best, to speak or think worthily of him; and we cannot well avoid using some of the same phrases, concerning him and his actions, which we do concerning the parts and motions of our own bodies. But we can very well avoid making visible images of him; and the plainest reason teaches, that we ought to avoid it; because they lower and debase men's notions of God; lead the weaker sort into supersitious and foolish apprehensions and practices; and provoke those of better abilities, from a contempt of such childish representations, to disregard and ridicule the religion into which they are adopted.

Therefore, in the early ages of the world, many of the heathens themselves had no images of the Deity. Particularly, the ancient Persians had none. Nor had the first Romans; Numa, their second king, having, as the philosopher Plutarch, himself a Roman magistrate, though a Greek by birth, tells us, "forbidden them to represent God "in the form, either of a man or any other animal.

(2) This they do in the Latin office of the Virgin, and in some of their English devotional books. Indeed there they omit likewise all but the first sentence of our fourth Commandment, and the promise in our fifth; perhaps to palliate their preceding omission. (3) Isaiah xl. 18. (4) Herodot. lib. 1. § 131.

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"And accordingly, (he saith,) they had neither any painted or engraved figure of him for one hun"dred and seventy years; but temples, void of any image of any shape; thinking it impious to "liken a superior nature to inferior ones; and impossible to attain the notion of God otherwise "than by understanding."5 And Varro, one of the most learned of their own authors, after acknowledging, that " during more than one hundred "and seventy years they worshipped the gods "without any visible representation," added, that "had they never had any, their religion had been "the purer; for which opinion, amongst other evidences, he brought that of the Jewish people: "and scrupled not to say in conclusion, that they "who first set up images of gods in the several "nations, lessened the reverence of their country"men towards them, and introduced error con66 cerning them." So much wiser were these heathen Romans in this point, than the Christian Romans are now.

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But when some of the eastern kingdoms had fallen into this corruption, particularly the Egyptians, who claimed the invention as an honour, the great care of God was to preserve or free his own people from it. The words of this Commandment express that purpose very strongly; and very clearly forbid not only making and worshipping representations of false gods, but any representa tion of God at all. And to show yet more fully that even those of the true God are prohibited by

(5) Plut. in Num. page 65. Ed. Par. 1624

(6) Aug. de Civ. Dei, lib. 4. c. 31. Dionysius Halicarnassensis indeed saith, lib. 2. c. 15. p. 87, that Romulus erected images. But as he mentioned them no otherwise than incidentally amongst the provisions made by that Prince for divine worship, his assertion is not so much to be regarded, as the two contrary more formal ones. Or we may suppose, that Numa took them down.

(7) Herodot. lib. 2. § 4.