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glorified not God, as God. Which general charge he also draws forth into particulars; as, that they changed his glory into the similitude and images of men, and beasts, and birds; where, by glory, he means God's worship, to wit, that by which men glorify him, and not the essential glory of his nature; it being such a glory, as was in men's power to change and to debase; and therefore must needs consist, either in those actions, or those means, which they performed the divine worship by. I know no place, from which we may more clearly gather what the scripture accounts idolatry, than from this chapter. From whence, that I may represent to you what idolatry is, and wherein one sort of it, at least, does consist, you may observe, that the persons who are here charged with it are positively affirmed to have known and acknowledged the true God. For it is said of them, that they knew his eternal power and godhead, in this twentieth verse; nay, and they worshipped him too. From whence this undeniably and invincibly follows, that they did not look upon those images, which they addressed to, as gods, nor as things in which the divine nature did or could inclose itself; nor, consequently, to which they gave, or ultimately designed their religious worship. This conclusion therefore I infer, and assert, that idolatry is not only an accounting or worshipping that for God which is not God, but it is also a worshipping the true God in a way wholly unsuitable to his nature; and particularly by the mediation of images and corporeal resemblances of him. This is idolatry: for the persons here spoken of, pretended to glorify the true God, but they did not glorify him as God, and upon

that account stand arraigned for idolaters. Common sense and experience will and must evince the truth of this. For can any one imagine, that men of reason, who had, their senses quick, and their wits and discourse entire, could take that image or statue, which they fell down before, to be a god? Could they think that to be infinite and immense, the ubiquity of which they could thrust into a corner of their closet? Or, could they conceive that to be eternal, which a few days before they had seen a log, or a rude trunk, and perhaps the other piece of it a joint-stool in the workman's shop?

The ground and reason of all worship is, an opinion of power and will in the person worshipped to answer and supply our desires; which he cannot possibly do, unless he first apprehend them. But can any man, who is master of sense himself, believe the rational heathens so void of it, as to think that those images could fulfil the petitions which they could not hear, pity the wants they could not see, do all things when they could not stir an hand or a foot? It is impossible they should; but it is also certain, that they were idolaters.

And therefore it is clear that their idolatry consisted in something else, and the history of it would demonstrate so much, were it proper to turn a sermon into an history. So that we see here, that the sin condemned in the text, was the worshipping of the true God by images. For the defence of which, there is no doubt but they might have pleaded, and did plead for those images, that they used them not as objects, but only as means and instruments of divine worship, not as what they worshipped, but as that, by which they directed their worship to

God. Though still, methinks it is something hard to conceive, that none of the worship should fall upon the image by the way, or that the water can be conveyed into the sea, without so much as wetting the channel through which it passes. But however, you see it requires a very distinguishing head, and an even hand, and no small skill in directing the intention, to carry a prayer quite through to its journey's end: though, after all, the mischief of it is, that the distinction, which looks so fine in the theory, generally miscarries in the practice; especially where the ignorant vulgar are the practisers, who are the worst in the world at distinguishing, but yet make far the greatest part of mankind, and are as much concerned and obliged to pray, as the wisest and the best; but withal, infinitely unhappy, if they cannot perform a necessary duty without school-distinctions, nor beg their daily bread without metaphysics. And thus much for the first thing proposed; namely, the sin here spoken against by the apostle in the text; which was idolatry.

2. The second is the persons charged with this sin. And they were not the Gnosticks, as some whimsically imagine, who can never meet with the words. γινώσκοντες, γινώσκειν, γνῶσις, οι γνωστον, but presently the Gnosticks must be drawn in by the head and shoulders; but the persons here meant were plainly and manifestly the old heathen philosophers; such as not only in the apostles, but also in their own phrase, professed themselves to be wise. Their great title was ropol, and the word of applause still given to their lectures was oops. And Pythagoras σοφῶς. was the first who abated of the invidiousness of

the name, and from σοφὸς brought it down to φιλό copos, from a master to a lover of wisdom, from a professor to a candidate.

These were the men here intended by St. Paul; men famous in their respective ages; the great favourites of nature, and the top and masterpiece of art; men, whose aspiring intellectuals had raised them above the common level, and made them higher by the head than the world round about them. Men of a polite reason, and a notion refined and enlarged by meditation. Such, as with all these advantages of parts and study, had been toiling and plodding many years, to outwit and deceive themselves; sat up many nights, and spent many days to impose a fallacy upon their reason; and, in a word, ran the round of all the arts and sciences to arrive, at length, at a glorious and elaborate folly; even these, I say, these grandees and giants in knowledge, who thus looked down, as it were, upon the rest of mankind, and laughed at all besides themselves, as barbarous and insignificant, (as quick and sagacious as they were to look into the little intrigues of matter and motion, which a man might salva scientia, or at least, salva anima ignorare,) yet blundered and stumbled about their grand and principal concern, the knowledge of their duty to God, sinking into the meanest and most ridiculous instances of idolatry; even so far, as to worship the great God under the form of beasts and creeping things; to adore eternity and immensity in a brute or a plant, or some viler thing; bowing down, in their adoration, to such things as they would scarce otherwise have bowed down to take up. Nay, and to rear temples, and make altars to fear, lust, and

revenge; there being scarce a corrupt passion of the mind, or a distemper of the body, but what they worshipped. So that it could not be expected, that they should ever repent of those sins which they thought fit to deify, nor mortify those corrupt affections to which they ascribed a kind of divinity and immortality. By all which, they fell into a greater absurdity in matter of practice, than ever any one of them did in point of opinion; (which yet certainly was very hard;) namely, that having confessed a God, and allowed him the perfections of a God, to wit, an infinite power, and an eternal godhead, they yet denied him the worship of God: thus reversing the great truths they had subscribed to in speculation, by a brutish, senseless devotion, managed with a greater prostration of reason than of body.

Had the poor vulgar rout only, who were held under the prejudices and prepossessions of education, been abused into such idolatrous superstitions, as to adore a marble or a golden deity, it might have been detested indeed, or pitied, but not so much to be wondered at: but for the stoa, the academy, or the peripaton to own such a paradox; for an Aristotle or a Plato to think their Nous aidos, their eterternal mind or universal spirit, to be found in, or served by, the images of fourfooted beasts; for the Stagirite to recognise his gods in his own book de Animalibus; this, as the apostle says, was without excuse: and how will these men answer for their sins, who stand thus condemned for their devotions? And thus, from the persons here charged by the apostle with the sin of idolatry, pass we now to the

3d thing proposed; namely, the cause or reason

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