Selected quad for the lemma: lord_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
lord_n	aaron_n	absence_n	moses_n	76	3	7.7737	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A59894	A short summary of the principal controversies between the Church of England, and the church of Rome being a vindication of several Protestant doctrines, in answer to a late pamphlet intituled, Protestancy destitute of Scripture-proofs.	Sherlock, William, 1641?-1707.	1687 (1687)	Wing S3365; ESTC R22233	88,436	166

the Church of Rome truly represented the Answer to Monsieur de Meaux or to Papists Protesting against Protestant Popery nor the Vindication of the Catechism truly representing the Doctrines and Practices of the Church of Rome in answer to the first and second Sheets of the second Part of the Papist Misrepresented and Represented Is our Author then one of those who are employed some times to do a little job at Writing but are not permitted to read any of our Books but what and when their Superiors please This gives an account of that Mystery how they can so confidently urge such things as all the World now laughs at for poor Men they know no better and what some so uncharitably call impudence is only ignorance He proceeds Their Test and Homily call the honour we pay to sacred persons and things Idolatry We must either then challenge Protestants to prove this proposition or conclude them calumniators We know what we profess and practise to be as the Catholick Church teaches we hear our Doctrine and Practice confidently said and solemnly subscribed to be Idolatry Sure then we may conclude that Protestants believe the proposition and decent it is that they give a reason of a Faith so injurious to the Catholick Church or henceforward renounce it This still makes good my conjecture that he has only heard in general of such a charge as this but never read the Arguments whereby some Protestants make good this charge at least as they apprehend for me-thinks had he known these proofs he should first have answered them before he had called for more but I assure him it will be an easier task to conclude them Calumniators than to undertake to answer them and therefore if he be wise let him stick to that if they believe and practise as the Church of Rome teaches which in defiance of common sence he will call the Catholick Church I am sure they give another kind of honour to the Cross and Reliques and Images than to the Bible but if he thinks that the Catholick Church always taught what the Church of Rome now teaches I would desire him to read a late Discourse intituled The Antiquity of the Protestant Religion concerning Images which will better inform him But since he calls so importunately for proofs it may be thought very uncivil to deny him and therefore I shall briefly represent to him the reasons why some Protestants have charged the Church of Rome with Idolatry in worshipping the Cross and Images and shall be very glad for the sake of the Church of Rome to see them well answered They lay their charge in the second Commandment which forbids the worship of Images and all representative objects and say that the words are so large as to comprehend all manner of Images which are set up for worship that the Law expresly forbids without any distinction of the end and intention of doing it all external acts of adoration as bowing down to them or before them that it does not meerly forbid the worship of Images as Gods for the Heathens themselves were never so senseless as to believe that their Images of Wood or Stone or Silver or Gold were Gods but only visible representations of their invisible Deities That it does not only forbid the worship of the Images of Heathen Gods but of the Lord Iehovah for the reason whereby Moses enforces this commandment is that they saw no similitude on the day that the Lord spake to them in Horeb out of the midst of the fire Deut. 4. 15. and therefore they must take good heed unto themselves lest they corrupt themselves with Images that they saw no Image of God is a good argument against their making and worshipping the Image of the true God but it is no direct argument against the Images of Heathen Gods and therefore this must be a prohibition of worshipping the true God by Images Another Scripture argument against Image-worship is from the infinite perfections and excellency of the Divine Nature that no Image can be made of God but what must be a reproach and debasement of his Majesty To whom then will ye liken God or what likeness will ye compare to him c. Isaiah 40. 18 c. and this surely is an argument against making and worshipping any Image of the true God. They consider farther that Aaron's Calf was not an Image of a false God but a Symbolical representation of the Lord Iehovah For they expresly call it the God which brought them out of the Land of AEgypt and when Aaron himself appointed a Feast for the Worship of this Molten God He said to●morrow is a Feast to the Lord or to Iehovah Exod. 32. 4 5. and therefore these Israelites are charged with changing their glory i. e. the Lord Iehovah who was the Glory of Israel into the similitude of an oxe which eateth grass Psalm 106. 20. But how can this be true if they did not intend this Calf as a Representation of the Lord Iehovah And it is evident that they made this Calf only as a Divine presence to go before them in the absence of Moses For while Moses delayed to come down out of the mount the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron and said unto him Up make us gods which shall go before us for as for this Moses the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt we know not what is become of him Verse 1. So that they did not think of changing their God but only wanted a Visible and Symbolical presence of God with them instead of Moses who when he was with them was a kind of Divine presence God conversing familiarly with him and by him giving them directions and orders what to do and yet the worship of this Calf which was not worshipped as a God or the Image of a false God but as a Symbolical Representation of the Lord Iehovah was Idolatry The like may be said of the Calves at Dan and Bethel which Ieroboam set up in imitation of the golden Calf and for Symbolical representations of the God of Israel For so he himself tells them Behold thy Gods O Israel which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt that is the Lord Iehovah whom Ieroboam did still own and Worship For he had no intention to change their God but only to prevent their going up to Ierusalem three times in the Year to Worship there according to the Law which he feared might prove the destruction of his new Kingdom And therefore God himself makes a great difference between the sin of Ieroboam and the sin of Ahab who introduced the worship of Baal a false God. And therefore though Iehu still preserved the golden Calves which Ieroboam set up yet he calls his Zeal in destroying Baal his Zeal for the Lord Iehovah Which is another Scripture-example of Idolatry in worshipping the Image or Representation of the True God. Another instance is the

Brazen Serpent which Moses set up in the Wilderness which was neither a God nor the Image of any God neither of the Lord Iehovah nor of any Heathen God and was not at first set up to be worshipped but only to be looked on by those who were stung with fiery Serpents and was preserved as a kind of holy Relique as a lasting memorial of that deliverance God wrought for them by it But when the Children of Israel burnt Incense to it though they could intend to Worship no other God in it but the Lord Iehovah who gave it that miraculous Power and could Worship it only as a memorative Sign of God's mighty Power yet Hezekiah destroyed it with the other Instruments of Idolatry 2 Kings 18. 4. And yet I think I could make a much better Apologie for the Worship of the Brazen Serpent than of the Cross. For that was a Type of Christ crucified a Type of God's own appointment a miraculous and wonder-working Type which I should think should as much deserve to be worshipped as the Picture or Image of the Tree whereon our Saviour died For if a memorative Sign of Christ deserve such Divine Honours let them give me a reason if they can why the Type of a cruoified Saviour ought not as much to be worshipped by the Iews in those days as the Figure of Christ's Cross now Thus the Protestants argue against the worship of Images from the Second Commandment and from the Reasons and Authorities of the Old Testament and as for the New Testament they can find no alteration made in this Law there we are commanded indeed to keep our selves from Idols but the Gospel has given us no new notion of Idolatry and therefore they reasonably conclude that what was Idolatry under the Old Testament is so under the New. And indeed they look upon the Second Commandment as a natural or moral Law and such Laws Christ neither did nor could alter no more than he could alter the Eternal Reasons of things For the Prohibition of Image-worship is founded in the Invisibility Purity Spirituality and immense Glory and Perfections of the Divine Nature which cannot be represented by matter and these Reasons are as unchangeable as God is and the Law must be as unchangeable as the Reasons of it And therefore we find these very Reasons urged by St. Paul in the times of the Gospel Forasmuch as we are the Offspring of God we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto Gold or Silver or Stone graven by Art or man's device Acts 17. 29. Not as if the Heathens fancied that their Gods were like the Images they worshipped for this is not only denied by their Philosophers but the very Nature of the thing shows it for they worshipped such kind of Images as it was impossible for them to conceive should be the likeness of any God not only the Images of Men but unpolished Stones and Trees Birds and Beasts and creeping things which they did not take to be Gods nor the proper likenesses of their Gods but symbolical Representations of them but the Apostles Argument is this That it is a ridiculous thing to make any Image of God when we cannot make any thing like him as foolish a thing as it would be to paint a Sound and that it is an affront to so glorious a Being to represent him by that which is so very unlike him and so infinitely unworthy of his Majesty and Greatness And though this Argument from the Invisibility and Spirituality of the Divine Nature does not conclude against making the Images of Christ and his Apostles who had the shape and figure of men which might be painted or carved no more than it did against many Images of Heathen Gods most of whom were no better than dead Men and Women yet it holds against the worship of any Image for God alone who is a pure and infinite Spirit is the sole Object of our religious Worship and to worship God by an Image is to reproach his Nature and to debase him as low as matter and to worship that which can be painted is to worship a false Object for Christ as God and so only he is the Object of our Worship cannot be painted and to worship any material Image though it be not made for the Supreme God is yet a Reproach to the Divine Nature as it signifies that something which is divine and a fit Object of our Adorations may be represented by material Images and Pictures But the Protestants consider farther that if the Worship of Images was forbid by the Law of Moses it must needs be much more contrary to the Gospel of our Saviour which has less to do with Matter and Sense than the Law had Our Saviour tells us That God is a Spirit and those who worship him must worship him in Spirit and in Truth in opposition to the external and typical and figurative Worship of the Law and if this typical Worship which was allowed when the Worship of Images was forbid be now abrogated as less pure and spiritual they think it very strange that the Worship of Images which is the most gross and material and unmanly Worship that can be invented shall be allowed under the spiritual state of the Gospel And there is one Argument to this purpose which I would desire our Author seriously to consider viz. That there is no material Temple in the Christian Church much less Statues and Images for the understanding of which we must consider what notions the Heathens had of their Temples what notion the Iews had of it and that there is no such Temple in the Christian Church As for the Heathens their Temples were the Houses of their Gods where they dwelt and were confined and shut up by some Magical Spells and Charms as the Images of their Gods were fastned there that they might be always present to attend the Sacrifices and Worship of their Votaries For they did not believe that their Gods were omnipresent and therefore they confined their presence to Temples and Images that they might know where to find them Their Temples were the places where they kept the Statues and Images of their Gods to whom such Temples were dedicated and where they believed such Gods dwelt according to that of Menander 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That a just and righteous God must tarry at home to defend those who placed him there This Origen gives an account of in his third and seventh Book against Celsus and the thing is so known that I need not prove it a Temple and an Image in the Heathen Theology were inseparably united an Image to represent their God a Temple as a House for him to dwell in and where they might be sure to find him Under the Jewish Law God so far condescended to the weakness of that People as to a have visible Presence among them first in the Tabernacle and then in the