Selected quad for the lemma: reason_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
reason_n	image_n	worship_n	worship_v	2,495	5	9.2639	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A65488	Eleaven choice sermons as they were delivered by that late reverend divine, Thomas Westfield ...	Westfield, Thomas, 1573-1644.	1655 (1655)	Wing W1414A; ESTC R38251	108,074	268

Land and may it be the good pleasure of God to continue this glory among us till Jesus Christ come in glory with all his Saints But brethren doth not this glory of God seeme to remove doth it not seeme to fleet a little O should God withdraw his word from us and the profession of it Should God remove the candlesticke out of his place should God withdraw this gracious presence of his in all his Ordinances then I tell you Mothers what you should name your children that are borne next Ichabod Where is glory when God is gone from you I read of some foolish Nations that were wont to fetter and chaine their gods that they might not depart from them Surely our God cannot be chained nor fettered but yet there is a way to hold him still when hee seemes to be departing I gat hold on him saith the Church and would not let him goe Cant. 3. 4. I will not let thee goe till thou blesse mee saith Jacob Genes 32. v. 26. When our blessed Lord seemed to the two men that were travelling to Emaus that hee would leave them the Scripture saith They constrained him to stay with them We may constraine our God there is a holy violence we may offer to our God by repentant teares and importunate prayers by which wee may stay our God with us still and this is as Tertullian calls it A holy violence pleasing and acceptable to God But I stand no more upon the words now I come to the thing They changed their glory that is their God How may a people change their God They may change their God two waies First when they forsake him and set up and worship some other God in his stead as the people forsook the Lord and served Baal and Ashtaroth Judges 2. 13. This is the grossest kind of Idolatry This is a breach of the first Commandement Or secondly a people may change their God when they change the truth of God into a lie when they represent and worship God in an Image when they represent God in a corporeall a visible a finite a circumscribed Majesty this is to change a God this is against the second Commandement And you must know that thus the people changed their God here at this time for wee doe not thinke that they made this calfe to be their god Their sin was bad enough let not us make it worse then it was They had cast off now all Religion and the feare of God let not us thinke they had cast off sense and reason with it Can wee imagine that this people were such calves as to think that the calf that they themselves had made yesterday was the very God that brought them out of Egyt three months before the calfe was made Never imagine that they took not this calfe to be their god What then They tooke it to be a figurative signe of their god I know they call it their god These are the gods that brought thee out of the land of Egypt Or as it is in Nehemiah chap. 9. verse 18. This is thy God O Israel that brought thee out of the land of Egypt But as this Image is called a calfe in my Text They made a calfe in Horeb though it was no calfe but the Image of a calfe So they called it their god but they did not thinke it to be their god they tooke it as an Image of their god as a figurative signe of their god therefore Aaron proclaimes To morrow is an holy day to Jehovah not to the calfe but to Jehovah whom they worshipped in the calfe I pray marke this rule that I shall give you The truth of God is turned to a lie and God is changed to the Image that is worshipped though God himselfe and none but hee be worshipped in that Image I say God is changed into that Image that is worshipped for him though the true God and none but he be worshipped in that Image Here is the reason of it The rule of Divine worship is not the will of the worshipper but it is the will of him that is worshipped Now it was never Gods will to be worshipped in an Image Take a similitude Suppose a subject a vassall should devise an honour of his owne braine to his Soveraigne to his King and hee should set up a toad and hee will have it in a glasse and come every morning and bow to that toad and being asked why hee did so hee should say O I doe it not to the toad but to the honour of my Soveraigne and Prince doe you think this Prince will like well to be resembled by a toad I tell you brethren there is a thousand times a greater disproportion between Almighty God and an Image set up for him then there is between a Prince and a toad Not to speake of that infinite inequality and distance that is between God and a mortall man there is a great distance even between a toad and an Idoll a great difference For The toad is the workmanship of God an Idoll as is an Idoll it is the workmanship of man A toad it is a living creature it hath sense and motion the Image is a senselesse block it hath neither life nor motion Therefore heare how it pleaseth the Spirit of God in Scripture to call consecrated Images hee calls them sometimes lies sometimes vanities sometimes nay oft abominations sometime Dung-hill-gods sometimes Divels You worshipped divels What divels Idols the worke of their owne hands Revel 9. 20. I pray heare how the Spirit of God in Scripture shewes his detestation of all Images in his service Hearken how hee thunders in the second Commandement Thou shalt not make to thy selfe any graven Image thou shalt not bow downe and worship it Hearken what the Prophet Esay saith Confounded be all they that worship Images Hearken what the Apostle saith in the New Testament Babes take heed of Idols 1 John c. ult v. ult I pray looke over the Bible and see if ever you finde any of Gods children except at such times as they had corrupted their waies worshipping of Images Enough out of Scripture against Images Now because wee are in this controversie to deale with such men whom the authority of Scripture doth not satisfie such unreasonable men as are not content with the authority of Scripture and because they say this stands upon tradition the worshipping of Images in the Church I pray give mee leave a little besides my custome to shew you the testimony of the Fathers the determination of Councels and the long tradition of the Church against Images Of every one a word and some few of many There is no point that a man may be so copious in as in this First for Fathers Fieri non potest c. so Origen It is not possible that a man should know God and be a suppliant to an Image There is no doubt saith Lactantius but there is no Religion where there is a worshipping