MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS. 315 II. Roman Idolatry. IT has been an old temptation to mankind, almost ever since human nature was made, that we desire to find out some -. thing just like God. Hence arose a great part of the idolatry of ancient ages, and of almost all the heathen world : Hence the skilful and impious labours of the statuary and the painter hence all the gaudy glittering images, and all the monstrous shapes that possess and inhabit the temples of the gentiles. They were all designed to represent the shining glories, or the active powers of divinity. The fruitful brain of the poet and the priest have yet farther multiplied the images of godhead, to make it appear like something which we cannot feel, hear, or see. But " to whom shall we liken God ; with what likeness will ye compare me ? saith the Holy One of Israel ; ' Is. xl. 18, 25. He is, and will be for ever, the Great Inimitable, and the Infinite Unknown And yet this 'folly has not spent itself all in the heathen world. The Jewish nation was often fond of idols, and they would more than once have the figure of divinity among them ; though the wilderness of Sinai, in the days of Moses, and the tents of Dan and Bethel in .Ieroboam's reign, can bear witness that it looked much more like a calf than a God. Israel too often fell in with the rest of the nations, and "changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to cor- ruptible man, and to birds and to four-footed beasts, and creep- ing things." The christian world indeed has much clearer light, and no- bler discoveries of the invisible nature of God ; and yet how has the Romish church fallen into gross idolatry in this respect, and with profane attempt they have painted all the blessed Trinity ! Whatsoever pretence they may derive from the human nature of the Son of God, or from the dove -like appearance of the Holy Spirit, to draw the figures of a dove or a man, as a memorial of those sacred condescensions ; yet I know no sufficient warrant they can have to fly in the very face of divine prohibition, and to paint and carve the figure of God the Father like an old man, when he never appeared amok men in any bodily forms ; and our Lord Jesus himself says of hin, "Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape ;" John v. 37. But this popish church descends,yet to meaner idolatry ; and because Christ, who is God manifest in the flesh, represents him- self in a metaphor, as the bread of life, to support and nourish our souls, therefore they turn their Saviour into a real piece of bread : They make a God of dough, and they devour and they worship the work of the baker. O sottish religion, and stupid professors ! Could we ever have imagined, that such an absurd superstition, that gives the lie grossly to sense and reason at once, should ever find room in the belief of man, in spite of all his sen- x 2
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