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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
book_n	believe_v	prove_v	scripture_n	3,079	5	6.9180	4	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A56393	Reasons for abrogating the test imposed upon all members of Parliament, anno 1678, Octob. 30 in these words, I A.B. do solemnly and sincerely, in the presence of God, profess, testifie, and declare, that I do believe that in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper there is not any transubstantiation of the elements of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, at, or after the consecration thereof by any person whatsoever, and that the invocation or adoration of the Virgin Mary, or any other saint, and the sacrifice of the mass, as they are now used in the Church of Rome, are superstitious and idolatrous : first written for the author's own satisfaction, and now published for the benefit of all others whom it may concern.	Parker, Samuel, 1640-1688.	1688 (1688)	Wing P467; ESTC R5001	62,716	138

the Egyptians Assyrians and Chaldeans And that is my Second Head of Discourse that the Gods that they worshiped at that time were nothing but the Heavenly Bodies or the Sun as the Supreme Deity This is evident enough from what hath already been discoursed Idolatry in general being every where described in Scripture by the Worship of the Host of Heaven or Heavenly Bodies Thus Deut. 4. 19. Lest thou lift up thine Eyes to Heaven and when thou seest the Sun and the Moon and the Stars even all the Host of Heaven shouldst be driven tempted to worship them which the Lord thy God created for the use and benefit of all Nations under the whole Heaven So Chap. 17. v. 2 3. If there be found any among you that have wrought Wickedness in the sight of the Lord your God in transgressing his Covenant and hath gone and served other Gods and worshiped them either the Sun or Moon or any of the Host of Heaven ye shall stone him to Death 2 King. 17. 16. They left all the Commandments of the Lord their God and made them Molten Images two Calves and made a Grove and worshiped all the Host of Heaven and served Baal So Manasseh erected Altars to Ball and worshiped the Host of Heaven chap. 21. 3. So Iosiah when he destroyed Idolatry brought out the Vessels of the Host of Heaven And the Jews when after their return from Captivity they would enter their solemn Protestation against Idolatry they do it in this form Thou even Thou art Lord alone thou hast made Heaven the Heaven of Heavens with all their Host c. Nehemiah 9. 6. So Jeremiah 19. 13. Ierusalem and Iudah shall be destroyed because they have burned Incense unto all the Host of Heaven and have poured out Drink Offerings unto other Gods. So Zephaniah 1. 5. God threatens to destroy the Worshipers of Baal and of the Host of Heaven And lastly St. Stephen in his last Speech upbraiding the Jews with their Idolatry says that God gave them up to Worship the Host of Heaven So evident is the Practical Notion of Idolatry through the whole Series of Scripture that it was the worshiping the Heavenly Bodies as the supreme Deities or as Iob emphatically expresses it Chap. 31. ver 26. If I beheld the Sun when it shin'd or the Moon walking in brightness and my Heart hath been secretly enticed or my Mouth hath kissed my Hand this also were an Iniquity to be punished by the Iudge for I should have denyed the most High God. What can be more plain than this Definition of Idolatry that it is the Worship of the Sun and Moon because it would have excluded the Worship due only to the most High God And the very Word that we commonly translate Images in general signifies properly Images of the Sun. Thus Leviticus 26. 30. God threatens them I will destroy your Images as we translate it but in the Hebrew your Chamanim i.e. Images of the Sun. So the second of Chronicles chap. 34. v. 7. And so it is set sometimes in the Margent even in the English Translation or Sun Images as Isaiah 17. 8. Ezek. 6. 4. And so all learned Men of all Nations all Religions ever understood the old Notion of Idolatry till this last Age when Folly and Passion cast it at any thing that peevish Men were angry with So Rabbi Maimon the most learned and judicious of the Jewish Doctors discourses at large that the antient Idolatry was nothing but the Religion of the Eastern Nations who acnowledge no other Deities but the Stars among whom the Sun was supreme in Opposition to which false Principle he says God enacted the Law of Moses This was the sense of all the other old Heathen Nations as may be seen at large in Eusebius's Collections of their several Opinions in his First and Third Book of the Preparation of the Gospel where he proves that the antient Heathens worshiped only the Stars without any Notion of Heroes and Demons The same is attested by all the Historians by Diodorus Siculus of the Egyptians by Herodotus of the Persians and Chaldeans by Strabo and Iustin of the Arabians by Caesar of the Germans so Macrobius in his first Book Saturnal proves it of all the antient Idolaters that it was the Worship of the Sun as the supreme Deity So in the antient Hymn to Iupiter ascribed to Orpheus it is the Sun only that is all along adored In short so all learned Men interpret all the several Idols that we read of in the Holy Scriptures particularly those two learned Protestants Mr. Selden in his learned Book De Diis Syris and Gerard Vossius de Idololatria proves all the Idols mentioned in Scripture to have been only so many several Appellations of the Sun whom the antient Idolaters believ'd to have been the supreme God and Creator of the World as Baal Baal Peor Bel Moloch Dagon Baalzebub Mythras c. In a Word the whole Nation of the Critiques that agree in nothing else are unanimous here tho indeed the thing is so evident in all the Accounts Histories and Descriptions of the Antient Idolatry that it is to me the greatest astonishment in the World that Men should apply it to any other purpose I know there was another sort of Idolatry introduced afterward the Worship of Men and Women but I find no such Practice in the Scriptures but take it to have been much more modern and a meer Invention of the vain and lying Greeks but whensoever it came in it was grafted upon the old Stock of giving the Worship of the supreme God not only to created but to mortal Beings Here it were easie to wander into a large Field of Mythologick Mystery but besides that I take all Mythology to be much more Fable than the literal Fable it self I have resolved to confine my self to the Information of the Holy Scriptures from whence as we have the most infallible Testimony that can be had so in this case we can have no other all other Writings whatsoever being by some Thousands of Years too modern to give any Account from their own Knowledge of those Antient Times And for a more acurate account of this I shall refer the Reader to that admirable Book of Dr. Spencers concerning the Jewish Laws and the Reasons of them in which he proves every Minute Circumstance of the ritual and ceremonial Law to have been enacted only for the prevention of Idolatry or Sun-Worship There any Gentleman that delights in antient Learning may have his glut of Pleasure and Satisfaction for beside the great Compass and Variety of polite Literature he hath brought Wit Sense Reason and Ingenuity into the Synagogue I will only exemplifie the thing in some few Particulars The first is the Institution of some Rites peculiar to God's own Worship both as a Bar to preserve them from any other Worship in which those Rites were not us'd and as an Obligation to bind them the faster

Moses the Man that brought us up out of the Land of Egypt we wot not what is become of him they force Aaron to restore to them the Symbols of their Old Gods to go before them instead of this new God that now seem'd to have deserted them and to those they ascribe their Deliverance out of Egypt and this is the first chearful Act of Devotion that they seem to have perform'd since their Deliverance For as for all their Worship of the True God especially at the Delivery of the Law it seems to be forc'd and uneasie to which they were rather over-aw'd by dreadful Appearances than inclin'd by their own Choice And the Solemn Sacrifice that was made immediately after was the Act of Moses rather than the People who rather seem'd Spectators than Actors and therefore as soon as they thought themselves quit of him which was immediately after they set up their Idol and were transported in their Devotions towards it to a Degree of madness They rose up early in the Morning and offered Burnt-Offerings and brought Peace-Offerings and the People sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play This Solemnity had been endear'd to them by Custom and Education and there could be no other ground of their great Joy than that they were restored to the Exercise of their former Religion and the Worship of their Old Gods of which the Calf was one of the most eminent Symbols so that when they say that was the God that deliver'd them out of Egypt their meaning is the God of which That was the Symbol or Representation according to the Language of those Times and indeed of the whole Old Testament to give the Name of the Deity to the Idol Now at that time we find no other mention of any other Deities than the Sun and Heavenly Bodies so that this Calf could be the Symbol of no other Gods than the Sun and therefore was ever reckoned among their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their holy Animals as the Egyptian Priest and Antiquary Manetho informs us of which Aries and Taurus were the chiefest and both of them consecrated in honour of the Sun being the two first Signs in the Heavens but the Festival of Aries was the most Solemn when the Sun entring into that Sign began the Joyful New Year In Opposition to which the Israelites were commanded to cut the Throat of the Paschal Ram upon that very Day with all the Ceremonies of Contempt as shall appear more afterward This invincible Obstinacy in their Old Religion notwithstanding the mighty Works God had wrought for their Deliverance is severely upbraided to them long after by God himself to his Prophet Amos Have ye offered unto me Sacrifices and Offerings in the Wilderness Forty Years O House of Israel But ye have born the Tabernacle of your Moloch and the Star of your God Remphan and their Images which ye made to your selves This is a plain Description of their great averseness to the Worship of the True God in the Wilderness when God declares that in reality they never Worshiped him at all but stuck close to their old God Moloch which is but a Synonymous Word for the God Baal i. e. the Sun and therefore they are promiscuously us'd in Scripture to express one and the same Deity Thus Ieremy 19. 5. They have built the High Places of Baal to burn their Sons in the Fire for Burnt Offerings unto Baal But Chapter the 32. v. 35. the same Crime is thus express They built the High Places of Baal to cause their Sons and Daughters to pass through the Fire unto Moloch by which it is undeniably evident that they were but Synonymous Terms for one and the same God and indeed they are Words of the same Signification denoting Supreme or Kingly Power and so were appropriated by them to the Sun as Sovereign Lord of the Universe This strange Inclination of the Israelites to Idolatry or the Worship of Baal and Moloch is so vehemently upbraided to them in the Scripture as shews it to have been inveterate and impetuous beyond Example So God himself upbraids it to them that when he did such mighty things for them in their Deliverance from Egypt and only required them to renounce the Idols of Egypt Yet they rebelled against me and would not hearken to me They cast not away the Abomination of their Eyes nor the Idols of Egypt And when Ioshua had setled them in the Holy Land he forewarns them to serve the True God sincerely and to put away the Gods which their Fathers served on the other side the Flood and in Egypt By which it appears they had not yet parted with their Old Gods but the next Generation made a total Revolt and the Children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and served Baalim and they forsook the Lord God of their Fathers which brought them out of the Land of Egypt and followed other Gods of the Gods of the People that are round about them and bowed themselves unto them and provoked the Lord to Anger and they forsook the Lord and serv'd Baal and Ashteroth This whole Book is nothing else but a Narrative of their Sin by Idolatry their Punishment by Captivity their Repentance by imploring of the Mercy of the God of Israel till at last after so many Relapses they are thus answered by God in their Addresses and Supplications unto him And the Children of Israel cryed unto the Lord saying We have sinned against thee both because we have forsaken our God and also served Baalim And the Lord said unto the Children of Israel did not I deliver you from the Egyptians from the Ammorites from the Children of Ammon from the Philistins Also the Zidonians and the Amalekites and Maonites did oppress you and you cry'd to me and I delivered you out of their hand yet you have forsaken me and served other Gods wherefore I will deliver you no more go and cry unto the Gods that ye have chosen let them deliver you in the time of your Tribulations But upon their Reformation they are delivered and as soon relapse of which a Train of Instances are to be seen in that Book Here it may be observ'd all along that the Scripture Notion of Idolatry is renouncing and forsaking the True God to Worship other Gods or Baalim that is Idols of the Sun whom they commonly call'd the King of Heaven And so they sin on till God suffered his own Ark the Symbol of his own Presence to be carried into Captivity They apply themselves to Samuel to intercede for them Samuel returns them the old Answer that God himself had often made If ye return unto the Lord with all your Hearts then put away the strange Gods and Ashteroth from among you and prepare your Hearts unto the Lord and serve him only and he will deliver you out of the Hands of the Philistins Then the Children of